Showing posts with label Bosnia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bosnia. Show all posts

20060825

White blogule to UNIFIL v 2.0 - Touche, Mr Bolton

As expected, France will contribute with about 2,000 soldiers to the new UNIFIL. The Quai d'Orsay managed to get what it wanted : a stronger force, a stronger UN, a stronger Europe and above all (let's hope) a stronger Lebanon. Not a remake of the 1995 fiasco in Bosnia. Not the dirty quick fix the US diplomacy dreamt of.
Bush dared criticize France for doing nothing but there is a big difference between doing nothing during the bombing of Lebanon (follow my stare) and putting a positive pressure on peacemakers during the ceasefire. I tend to believe the second option to be more efficient for a durable peace in the region. Besides, I prefer the French position (send 200 troops first, add 2,000 once the conditions are confirmed) to the Italian (promise 3,000 troops first, send 2,000 once the frame is set).
As expected, some Israelis are starting to wonder what went wrong. Many do ask the right questions : did we have to wage this war in the first place ? why did we use forbidden US weapons against civilians ? can we trust our leaders ? what's wrong with our country at the national and the international level ?... Unfortunately, others speak louder with the wrong answers : victory was at hand but politicians failed the military and didn't go all the way, Israel needs a tougher regime.

20050708

Red blogule to Bush's terrorist training camps

Even if, this time again, the bombs didn't strike the US, the landscape looks terrible : propaganda, torture, gulags, illegal abductions on foreign soil and now journalists in prison... George W. Bush's Amerika looks everyday more like Kim Il-Sung's North Korea.
As terror strikes London like Baghdad any given day, as Bosnia / Chechnya veteran fighters start messing with what's left of Afghanistan, one can only imagine how long the World will pay for the US historical suicide in Iraq. Thanks to Uncle Sam, today Iraq is a much easier training camp for foreign terrorists than 1980s Afghanistan, 1990s Bosnia or 2000s Chechnya.
Bush keeps talking about good vs evil and the use of force to retaliate - Blair keeps talking about attacks against civilization... but such speeches are music to the ears of fundamentalists. What these leaders need to protect is not their own "way of life" but the basic rights of moderate majorities under the spell of extremist minorities.

After this awful wake up call in the deadest middle of the G8 meeting, will the World eventually admit how wrong that war was ? Back then, Iraq had nothing to do with terror, and Saddam was more under stronger control than ever (even he wouldn't have performed that much destruction that quickly) - a smarter approach was possible and almost under way. The US is not only wasting people and key ressources in Iraq ; it keeps fueling the extremists with more energy. Off course Iraq shouldn't be abandoned now, but the World would be safer without this unnecessary front.
Removing the Talibans was a true war on terror, but the right way to fight terror was and still remains at its very roots : solving the Palestine issue (following the footprints and roadmaps of moderate 1995 leaders), supporting the moderates versus the fanatics and moreover eradicating the very world poverty G8 members were supposed to meet for...
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