Daily Archives: August 16, 2006

What’s not to love?

Okay, so maybe there’s not a lot for Hezbollah to love in Resolution 1701.

Nasrallah was quick to agree to it as means of cease-fire, Hezbollah’s agreement to stop fighting, of course, being as necessary as Israel’s. Heck, probably more necessary than Prime Minister Siniora’s, now that I think about it. But Hezbollah’s agreement to me looks more and more like a merely cynical move, in light of their more recent threats to refuse withdrawal and disarmament.

Sort of like how the underpinning of society itself is simply cooperation, likewise the first necessary thing for any contract (as also in treaty or cease-fire agreement) is good faith, something that I surely have not been fully appreciating as to be so lacking all around among the parties involved. And Hezbollah especially, as they’re the first to look to violating the terms of 1701, terms to which they agreed only days ago.

But then that takes me back to why they should abide by it in the first place (again, other than the simple fact that they said that they would). I noted t’other day that the agreement of all states to effect disarming non-governmental bodies, i.e., Hezbollah, in 1701 was a nifty piece of maneuvering. Nifty, yes, but not good from Hezbollah’s point of view. So why should they allow it?

And say Syria and Iran may also make all nice and say they agree to stop arming Hezbollah, and but then just ignore the ban and continue to supply them with missiles.

But I assume that the administration is way ahead of me. Well, I hope they are. Oh, they must be. I mark Secretary Rice as being way smarter than I am. But then I also see that she is constrained by her own ideology as well as that of the administration’s constituency. (Oh, and John Bolton’s utter nuttiness.) But anyway I assume that the U.S. is thinking like five steps ahead of poor me.

Although maybe that’s not a good thing either. Maybe we’re counting on Iran and Syria to violate 1701, and that could be just the casus belli that we need. But I suppose that we really don’t have the resources to take on another war or two. We’re overextended in Iraq as it is.