August 13, 2006
No Resolution At All
Why the U.N. can’t solve the problem of Hezbollah.
by Bruce Thornton
Private Papers

The U.N. resolution that supposedly will solve the problem of Hezbollah is a perfect example of the delusions inhibiting the West in its fight against jihadist terror. According to the resolution, the current impotent U.N. force — the same one that blithely sat by for years as Hezbollah prepared its attack on Israel — will be beefed up and given permission actually to stop Hezbollah with force. But don’t worry: the U.N. will be supported by the fearsome Lebanese army, which up to now has shown no ability or inclination to prevent an armed gang from high jacking Lebanon ’s foreign policy and unilaterally plunging the country into ruin.

Delusional is too weak a word to describe this resolution. Does anyone really believe that U.N. troops, no matter where the soldiers come from, are going to use force against Hezbollah? I won’t even bother asking that question about the Lebanese army because the answer is too obvious, given the high level of support for Hezbollah among the Shia rank and file. But don’t bet on troops from France or any European country killing jihadists who are admired and supported by European Muslims. The French couldn’t even stand up to punk teenagers protesting a perfectly reasonable law intended to loosen up a sclerotic economy. I can’t see the same government standing up to Muslim rioters angry over the government’s participation in a Zionist-Crusader plot to kill the warriors of Allah.

Once again the diplomatic dance of the seven veils is performed by the West to create the illusion of consummating a solution to the crisis when the whole time no one has enough testosterone actually to do so. I know why the Europeans engage in this charade: they’ve convinced themselves that as long as the jihadists have Israel and the U.S. to hate, they’ll leave Europe in peace. Sound familiar? Just give Hitler the Sudetenland and he’ll be satisfied and we’ll have peace in our time. Europe is so addled by prosperity and multicultural fantasies, all subsidized by American military power, that until the ticking jihadist bomb blows up in its face — and maybe not even then, if Spain is any indication — it’s not going to do anything that gets in the way of afternoon adultery and café philosophizing about unsophisticated cowboy Americans.

But why are we Americans going along with this farce? I’d like to think there’s some clever tactical ploy we don’t know about, but the answer seems to be that we still buy into all the lies endlessly recycled by the self-loathing media and intellectuals. You know the CNN/New York Times/Middle East Studies Association mantra: most Muslims are moderates who just want to get along, but a failure to resolve the Palestinian issue, the on-going war in Iraq, America’s other imperialist depredations, the lack of political freedom and economic opportunity, and post-colonial hangovers have all rendered them vulnerable to extremists who have high-jacked the faith and distorted it to justify murder.

Of course very little evidence supports this fantasy, and mountains of evidence refute it, but it still serves a purpose: camouflaging the moral degeneracy of many in the West who, no longer believing in anything other than pleasure and comfort, have no basis for calling evil by its proper name. It’s much easier to indulge the “all cultures are equally wonderful” lie, or sadly invoke the “cycle of violence” canard, or fall back on “moral equivalence” to avoid making a judgment that might hurt the feelings of those exotic little brown people so beloved by jaded Westerners.

And since we don’t believe there is anything worth killing or dying for, we turn this moral nihilism into a virtue by chanting that  “force solves nothing,” and that talk, talk, talk will get at the “root causes” and solve the problem. Except we’ve been talking and talking and talking for fifty years — remember Oslo and Camp David ? — and the jihadists and their millions of supporters still want to destroy Israel and the West, and are perfectly happy to murder innocents to do so. The net result is the current U.N. resolution that treats a terrorist gang like a state actor whose agreement to the terms of the resolution is required. Does no one else see the abject folly of this behavior? But why should we be surprised, when for years we’ve been treating terrorists (e.g. the PLO, now retooled as the Palestinian Authority) like legitimate state functionaries?

And then we have the gall to proclaim, “Terrorism won’t work.” Who are we kidding? It’s been working for decades. How else explain the speed with which the U.N. and the media have fastened on to this conflict, while millions elsewhere ( Sudan , Rwanda , Congo , Tibet ) have suffered and died while the rest of the world basically yawned? How else explain the obsession with the Palestinian Arabs and Israel ’s legitimate attempts to ward off an enemy that wants to destroy it? Anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, imperial and colonial guilt are all factors, but the pervasive threat of terrorist violence is the key element in the West’s selective concern with one small group of aggressors while ignoring countless other victims of genuine tyranny and oppression. And, of course, the jihadists take our fear as an encouraging sign that we deserve to die unless we embrace a spiritually superior Islam.

The U.N. resolution will not solve the problem of Hezbollah. It will simply postpone the solution. Meanwhile Hezbollah will regroup and rearm, Syria and Iran will continue to make mischief, and the same old useful idiots in the West will peddle the same old excuses for Islamic dysfunction and Western appeasement.