Unclear on the Concept
The President and Secretary Rice are strenuously promoting their policy regarding the war in Lebannon.
It seems to me that the whole idea of a "cease-fire" is that the most important thing is to stop the shooting as soon as possible. It's easy to see why that might be a good idea: it's easier to get and keep people talking when they aren't actively shooting at each other, and in the meantime human lives are saved, many of them innocents caught in the war zone. The hope, of course, is that the cease-fire will lead to an enduring peace, but that isn't the point of the cease-fire. The point of a cease-fire is its immediacy, not its sustainability.
If a cease-fire were meant to be sustained indefinitely, it would be called "a peace agreement." First you get people to stop shooting, then you work your butts off to keep them from starting again. You don't walk away and come back in six or nine months. A cease-fire is the beginning of the process, not the end. It's the continuing engagement of skilled negotiators and an ongoing peace process that sustain it. Sustainability is not something you can determine in advance.
Of course, there is a way to be sure in advance that when the fighting stops, it will stay stopped. That's to pick a side and make sure it wins, destroying its enemy. You could do this by rushing armaments to one side, or by refusing to get seriously involved in restraining it. But in English we don't call that trying to get a cease-fire.
Meanwhile, the desire for there to be a real cease-fire increases as the news comes from Human Rights Watch that Israel may be using cluster munitions, a heinous, brutal armament that should never be used in a populated area. Scattering hundreds of bomblets throught the villages of southern Lebanon isn't the way to minimize civilian casualties, now or in the future.
I imagine it will be harder for Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush to create an enduring peace when decades from now, children are still having limbs blown off from munitions fired today. But sowing the seeds for decades of seething hatred of the United States and providing pretexts for vengence against us has never seemed to concern them in the past, so I doubt it will now.
I applaud their new-found concern for an enduring Middle East peace. It just seems to me that serious people have been trying for that for decades, so I don't understand how Condi and George think they'll have progress any time soon. This really isn't time to make the best the enemy of the good, whatever their neo-con ideology or millennialist bias tells them.
Me, I'd be happy with any cease-fire we can get, for as long as we can get it. Old ladies and children are dying, and if the Israelis are firing cluster shells, the carnage will linger on and on. Make the firing cease, and then worry about establishing something that lasts.
President Bush expressed concern for the civilians killed and harmed by Israeli bombs, but stopped short of calling for an immediate cease-fire that might not last.Secretary Rice said this the other day:
"I support a sustainable cease-fire that will bring about an end to violence," Bush said.
But if we look for a ceasefire that simply freezes the status quo ante, then we will be back here again in another six months, or nine months, or a year, looking for another ceasefire as Hezbollah uses southern Lebanon as a base to launch rockets against Israel.I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around just what these two are getting at here. What's with this concept of an enduring, sustainable cease-fire? And why should the pursuit of it delay for even a nanosecond the end of civilian deaths?
It seems to me that the whole idea of a "cease-fire" is that the most important thing is to stop the shooting as soon as possible. It's easy to see why that might be a good idea: it's easier to get and keep people talking when they aren't actively shooting at each other, and in the meantime human lives are saved, many of them innocents caught in the war zone. The hope, of course, is that the cease-fire will lead to an enduring peace, but that isn't the point of the cease-fire. The point of a cease-fire is its immediacy, not its sustainability.
If a cease-fire were meant to be sustained indefinitely, it would be called "a peace agreement." First you get people to stop shooting, then you work your butts off to keep them from starting again. You don't walk away and come back in six or nine months. A cease-fire is the beginning of the process, not the end. It's the continuing engagement of skilled negotiators and an ongoing peace process that sustain it. Sustainability is not something you can determine in advance.
Of course, there is a way to be sure in advance that when the fighting stops, it will stay stopped. That's to pick a side and make sure it wins, destroying its enemy. You could do this by rushing armaments to one side, or by refusing to get seriously involved in restraining it. But in English we don't call that trying to get a cease-fire.
Meanwhile, the desire for there to be a real cease-fire increases as the news comes from Human Rights Watch that Israel may be using cluster munitions, a heinous, brutal armament that should never be used in a populated area. Scattering hundreds of bomblets throught the villages of southern Lebanon isn't the way to minimize civilian casualties, now or in the future.
I imagine it will be harder for Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush to create an enduring peace when decades from now, children are still having limbs blown off from munitions fired today. But sowing the seeds for decades of seething hatred of the United States and providing pretexts for vengence against us has never seemed to concern them in the past, so I doubt it will now.
I applaud their new-found concern for an enduring Middle East peace. It just seems to me that serious people have been trying for that for decades, so I don't understand how Condi and George think they'll have progress any time soon. This really isn't time to make the best the enemy of the good, whatever their neo-con ideology or millennialist bias tells them.
Me, I'd be happy with any cease-fire we can get, for as long as we can get it. Old ladies and children are dying, and if the Israelis are firing cluster shells, the carnage will linger on and on. Make the firing cease, and then worry about establishing something that lasts.
posted by Paul at 11:18 AM |
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