I think, within the context of the current crisis, that is about as close to 'spot on' as it is possible to be....I wonder how long that journalist will survive
I saw a retired Lebanese army General interviewed last week...he straight out said that 1/2 the Lebanese Army is Shiite and will not fight Hezbolah who are also Shiite. Deploying the Lebanese Army to the south will be like sending 15000 reinforcements to Hezbolah.
The French, Germans and whomever would be nuts to send their own soldiers, armed or otherwise, into that situation.
We have not seen the end to this crisis... and once again the UN is functioning in cloud cuckoo land
The west has lost the ability to wage war the way war needs to be waged...the 'other side' understand this well and uses it to their advantage time after time. Can anyone imagine how WW2 would have been run had Germany and Japan been awash with CNN, BBC etc Journos and camera people?
Israel dropped leaflets all over Southern Lebanon which essentially said "If you're not interested in fighting leave...if you are, we'll be right back".
I am convinced that the main reason Hezbolah has widespread community based support in the south is because the community has been brainwashed. People in the west need to understand that the populations in these types of countries don't have the access to information we do...they only get what Nasralah and his cohort want them to hear. The educated elite in the north of Lebanon do have access to information and often hold a different view as a result.
MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of people world wide don't even know 911 happened at all and many that may have heard are told it was a Zionist plot to anger the US population against Islam. For God's sake there are educated Americans who believe that!
What do you think Nasralah says to a grieving Lebanese parent holding the broken body of a 6 year old killed in an air raid when they ask why this happened?
"Well for 60 years we have been trying to destroy the State of Israel (a euphamism for kill all Israelis) and dozens of times each year our angry and dissaffected youths walk over the border into Israel (after we have wound them up tighter than a clock and pointed them that way) and blow up bus loads of Israelis, often children...and then 5 years ago 20 of our Saudi brothers hijacked 4 American airliners and flew them into the tallest buildings in New York killing nearly 6000 of the Godless infadells...oh and a bunch of Muslims too, but you get that...Oh and then there was the time some of your brothers blew up some embassies in Kenya...oh and we attacked one of their ships...actually on various occassions we have attacked quite a few of their ships and then there was the time..."
"Of course Saddam has been a bit of an embarrassment...he's murdered lots of Muslim women and children...actually 100s of thousands...not sure why...he had a real long war with Iran too...can't remember why...and well...it's just better to be at war than be a nobody that no-one has ever heard of...but fear not my sister, the fighting will stop when we have taken over the world and killed all the people who object"
What average Lebanese, Palestinian, Irani etc would not react along the lines of
"Well for FECKS SAKE LEAVE THEM ALONE"
The average man and women
the world over wants the exact same thing...a job that provides a roof over their head, food on the table, an education for their children and to live their lives in peace while worshiping, or not, the God of their choice. It does
NOT matter whether they are Palestinian, Lebanese, Afghan, Pakistani, Syrian, Irani, Saudi or from Charleville, New York or Manchester.
When the west can work out how to hold the nutcases (both terrorist and political) at bay long enough to give
that to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq etc we will live in peace...and, sadly, not before.