(Tablet) Lee Smith - By ordering the strike on Hizbullah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah while attending the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underscored Israel's independence from the global consensus that has resolved not to confront terrorists but rather to appease them. Israel's attack also shows that almost everything U.S. and other Western civilian and military leaders have believed about the Middle East for the last 20 years was simply a collection of excuses. Securing a nation's peace has nothing to do with winning narratives, or nation-building, or balancing U.S. allies against your mutual enemies for the sake of regional equilibrium. Rather, it means killing your enemies. Taking down officers demoralizes a force. Wiping out its chain of command cripples it. With Nasrallah and virtually all of its senior command dead, Hizbullah has been decapitated. Wars are won by killing the enemy, above all, those who inspire their people to kill yours. The Biden administration says the Israelis can't reach their goals through force and the only way forward is through diplomacy. The fact is that U.S. diplomatic assurances regarding Hizbullah are worthless. After UN Security Council Resolution 1701 in 2006 stipulated that there were to be no armed personnel or weapons south of the Litani River, other than those of the Lebanese government and the UN peacekeeping force, Hizbullah's presence and capabilities in south Lebanon have only grown.
2024-09-29 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive