Astounding. Frightening. Despicable. And yet, these are the people who claim a mandate to police the world. From The Weekly Standard, “What did you do in the war, UNIFIL?”:
DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. “peacekeeping” forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.
UNIFIL–the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978–is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.
Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah “fired rockets in large numbers from various locations” and Hezbollah’s rockets “were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations” are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.
This war was fought on cable television and the Internet, and a lot of official information was available in real time. But the specific military intelligence UNIFIL posted could not be had from any non-U.N. source. The Israeli press–always eager to push the envelope–did not publish the details of troop movements and logistics. Neither the European press nor the rest of the world media, though hardly bastions of concern for the safety of Israeli troops,
provided the IDF intelligence details that UNIFIL did. A search of Israeli government websites failed to turn up the details published to the world each day by the U.N.Inquiries made of various Israeli military and government representatives and analysts yielded near unanimous agreement that at least some of UNIFIL’s postings, in the words of one retired senior military analyst, “could have exposed Israeli soldiers to grave danger.” These analysts, including a current high ranking military official, noted that the same intelligence would not have been provided by the U.N. about Israel’s enemies.
Sure enough, a review of every single UNIFIL web posting during the war shows that, while UNIFIL was daily revealing the towns where Israeli soldiers were located, the positions from which they were firing, and when and how they had entered Lebanese territory, it never described Hezbollah movements or locations with any specificity whatsoever.
So long as we continue to allow the rhetoric of emotionalism frame the international narratives of war, the group most willing to exploit that emotionalism—whether through doctored photographs, appeals to the moral authority, disinformation campaigns, scapegoating, and specious equivocations—has the upper hand in the “hearts and minds” battle.
This is one of the hallmarks of the surrender of “truth” to a contingency-based relativism that eschews the hard work of making judgments for the easy work of rubbing its chin and pretending the absense of a purely objective platform from which to judge truth means that competing “truths” are equally valid.
The will to power rules in such rhetorical situations. And it is the hallmark of both progressivism and transationalism.
(thanks to nukemhill)
Proofread!
Ah, thanks, Foucault!
From what I’ve gathered, Hezbollah threatened UNIFIL, bribed them with cash, and plied them with Lebanese hotties (presumably not the potato-faced ones in the black head-to-toe bags).
Just imagine what Israel could accomplish if it decided to play just the honey-trap part of the Hezbo game. Israeli women start off as the hottest on the planet, and they don’t turn into bitter, crazy, ululating, obese brood mares after thirty.
It’s another reason Israel is hated in that part of the world. Jealousy, pure and simple.
So was this about the UN’s Moral Authority, or the Palestinian Authority? Because I’m having a hard time telling the difference.
Blow Me!
So Jeff, what do you use to get all the stains out of the living room carpet? It must be like house training a puppy that never grows up.
tw: filled Ahh, to be filled with such sanctimony…
So, the UNIFIL was running recce ops for Hezb’allah. If they weren’t legit targets before, they most certainly are now.
Call it what you want, I call it being on the other side.
I just now had a conversation with a good friend of the commie “I am a democrat” variety of person and he is convinced that while certain media giants have every right to censor bugs bunny cartoons that MIGHT be offensive to someone, there is absolutely no excuse for those same media giants to censor art which is controversial in regards to 9-11. Nor is do they have the right to censor holocaust denial.
I am never astounded by the socialist religion and it is not a suprise to me at all that they would collude with facist of any sort. They have been doing so since the beginning and they will until the end.
And this person walked away unharmed?
And this person walked away unharmed?
Posted by Robert Crawford
Relax. Why are you so angry?
Well, I have a personal belief that there is no reason to make slippery slopes even slippery with blood.
Well not at this point anyway.
I can take a stab at that…..
I KID.
But really, I get pretty angry at people with a certain logic sometimes. Enough to actually consider that a few whacks might knock some sense into them. But then again, I don’t think it has really come to that here in the US of A, and I really hope it never does.
Jeff, have you read Tom Wolfe’s “Hooking Up?” Cuz a what he has some real smark innalekshul things to say about ‘reader-response theory.’
TW—Various, as in ‘various sorts of fools, jackanapes and buffoons on the tenure committees…’
Ed Morissey has a post up at Captains Quarters concerning Nasrallah’s shock that Israel went off on Hezbellah because of a couple of little kidnappings etc. He is afraid to come outside it seems because the Jews will kill him. He does not sound like a winner to me.
Does this really surprise anyone? The Dutch blue helmets all but loaded the buses at Srebencia – serving the Serbs with a smile. And those were troops from a NATO country! Imagine a French lead force of Third World troops on the order of ECOMOG…bleah.
Not real clear on the concept of “jokes”?
On the other hand, someone advocating censorship for some cases, but not in others when the claims are indistinguishable in terms of harm, is a fool, and a particularly dangerous kind of fool.
That I will agree with. I have long thought that most of my pals in this predicament suffer this way because they aren’t really against what they say they are against, they just wish their team was running the show. Lately though, I am not so sure if that is the case. I sort of feel the hostility is now so irrational that it defies rational conversation or thought.
I’m unsuprised the French want to lead this thing, now. I mean at first I thought it was just another opportunity to try to appear to have some balls.
But now with this, I realize it’s part of the long, French tradition of assisting people who want to kill off Jews, while avoiding the bite of the blame.
Er uh, what you said. Yeah!
Jeff, your brilliance is sometimes obscured by your use of the English language.
Can anyone explain why we continue to host and fund these douchebags? (Other than a complete lack of intestinal fortitude.)
Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?
Even worse:
“IDF forces from the Golani Brigade blasted open a Hizbullah bunker overnight Saturday some 400 meters from the security fence near Rosh Hanikra, it was reported on Sunday. The bunker was discovered a mere stone’s throw from a UN post.
According to Lt.-Col. Jassem Elian, a senior officer in the Golani Brigade, “Hizbullah dug a 40-meter by two-kilometer pit, in which they built dozens of outposts.”
Elian added that the bunker had “shooting positions of poured concrete,” and that the combat posts inside were equipped with phone lines, showers, toilets, air ducts, and emergency exits, as well as logistical paraphernalia for Hizbullah.
A Golani officer told the Jerusalem Post that among the force’s findings was a Katyusha rocket launcher, most likely used in rocket attacks against northern Israel during the war.
He also mentioned that Golani forces had initiated the move to uncover the bunker after the same battalion, in an earlier operation, had discovered maps specifying certain areas where Hizbullah had planned such tunnels in south Lebanon. “
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525953897&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
UNIFIL didn’t notice?
Unlikely that they wouldn’t have noticed, given that UNIFIL troops have been getting killed over there for a quarter century.
But what are UNIFIL troops? If I were to guess from what I see posted above, I’d think the UN was the United Nations of France, it’s own sovereign state… No, it’s currently comprised of Poles, Irish, Italians, Turks, Finns, et al… Maybe they’re the ones backing Hezbollah, eh?
Now that is the worst sentence of all time. It’s not just wildly pretentious and pathetically nonsensical, it’s obscenely long. Have you no time for pause, even when you find yourself typing the word “judge” in the same sentence as “judgment”, or wrapping back around to your ponderous “”truth””? When we obsess with form beyond our strength, we’re surely compensating for something…
I don’t believe the counterpoint to Israel’s action is relativism. I don’t believe it’s the condoning of terrorism. I believe it’s the assertion that Hezbollah still exists, after all the dead civilians; that the dead died for nothing, and this ceasefire could have come long ago, had Israel more expeditiously accepted (non-relative) “objective” “truthtruthtruth”: Hezbollah has been made more powerful by Israel’s incursion.
I notice that many commenters who disagree attack the form of the message rather than the content. “That sentence is too loooong!! I can’t read that many words at once with having periods in there and stuff.!!”
I also fail to see any pretentiousness. I magine that means JG used words you don’t understand.
Furthermore, the sentence makes perfect sense.
If you hang around here long enough, and if you read carefully, you might actually increase not only your vocabulary and knowledge, you’ll also find it much easier to read longer sentences. And it’s free. Such a deal.
That’s a long sentence? Your attention span is clearly deficient and you should also seriously consider a remedial English Comprehension program.
As far as “ponderous” goes, it would be difficult to imagine anything more so than that final para. Three sentences all beginning with “I believe”. No doubt intended to sound sonorous but revealing instead a pedant.
The stick up your ass is obscenely long, the sentence not so much.
Do you have any reason for these beliefs? Or are we just supposed to gape in awe as we await their inscription in stone? If all you have are unfounded pompous proclamations then you can just fuck right off.
Yes, killing people makes them more hearty, so we can presumably extend your logic to the notion that the Lebanese people are stronger and better having been bombarded.
Or, we can pull our heads out of our asses and take a look at the source of any and all strength that Hezbollas has: Iran.
Or, we can whine about sentences we actually have to pay attention to when we’re reading. If you can’t stand the heat, target, get out of the fire zone.
tw: Run!
If they’re not competently led, with a clear set of ROE’s and the authority to enforce their mandate, it hardly matters what the composition of the force is. Recall the Canadian “peacekeeper” who, in an email home shortly before his death in an IAF airstrike, wrote of the Hezbollah operations just a few meters from the UN post he was manning.
Can anyone explain why we continue to host and fund these douchebags? (Other than a complete lack of intestinal fortitude.)
Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?
Posted by Oneyedman
I think in GWs case its a matter of having all the mouth breathers, con artists, and bed wetters all in one place so we can keep an eye on them. God only knows what mischief they’d get up to if we let them wander around loose.
target: You must read only pablum; go sit at the kids’ table.
And stay away from Proust:
tw: book. Cities of the Plain Vol 4 of “Remembrance of Things Past”
Good advice at any time.
(Eh, Marcel! It’s a goddamn cookie! Get over it!)
Now that is the worst sentence of all time. It’s not just wildly pretentious and pathetically nonsensical, it’s obscenely long. Have you no time for pause, even when you find yourself typing the word “judge†in the same sentence as “judgmentâ€Â, or wrapping back around to your ponderous “”truth”â€Â? When we obsess with form beyond our strength, we’re surely compensating for something…
You’re the reason people become engineers.
Actually, I’d want to get a look at the original text, but I’d call that the fault of the translator. That’s an extended compound sentence, and might well have been better translated with some additional punctuation.
Or maybe he actually thought like that, in which case I’d like to have seen him competing in a breath-holding contest.
Short attention span is why engineers become engineers.
I prefer Musil to Proust, he did better to justify his curious reluctance to utilize his laptop’s Enter key.
Still, don’t you feel silly comparing that muck to Proust? I mean, if the sins against style and logic aren’t enough, how about when he omits a preposition in a flurry of loquacious fuckery?
Well, at least none of your odd little cult has accused me of “eschewing objectivity” for failing to concur with you; I’ll consider that a point victoriously (sonorously?) made.
But it was broken logic that first prompted me to step in, broken logic of the pathologically political sort. Someone has asked again, what has made Hezbollah more powerful? B Moe, how can you ask? How can anyone with a mind ask?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNr5eEwHEV8M&refer=home
Hezbollah has been reinforced by just the sort of pan-Arab nationalism we witnessed in the days of Nassar. This is money, this is public support, this is power. Olmert’s promise to destroy Hezbollah has made a fool of him and of Israel. If only he’d guarded his rhetoric, at least he could boast the credibility of a threat redeemed. Instead, Hezbollah still exists, still releases Israelis at its own mercy, and is widely beloved for asserting Arab military prowess against all odds.
You see, when you say you’re going to retrieve your hostages and destroy H by invading, and withdraw without having achieved either end, you’ve lost. And this loss has made populist heros of terrorists.
So avoiding utter destruction is now considered victory?
Israel very nearly destroyed Hizballah, has not withdrawn, and is in fact in control of southern Lebanon. Olmert has lost politically, Olmert is not Israel. When Olmert is gone, and the UN finishes stepping on their own dicks again, Israel will finish the job
Only with you and the rest of their supporters, to the rest of us they are still dispicable, murderous buffoons.
What do you imagine Hezballah doing to capitalize on this splendid victory? Seriously, I am curious as to how you think they can parlay this into something positive for themselves?
Hezbollah doesn’t have to parlay anything into anything. They have their support nations who will keep them fortified. They are the front line forces of Iran. All they have to do is hang on, re-arm, dig in more, get the North Koreans to continue to help with their tunnels, and keep going. Every tick of the clock helps Hezbollah and Hezbollah helps Iran by keeping Israel busy. Certainly providing months worth of provarication so that nothing gets done. Just a little Southern Belle here. Keep it on the application. What does Israel do now? About the UN providing operational control for Hezbollah, I’d say Iran got its money’s worth for what ever dues they pay to the UN. Plus, had the benefit of the UN technology probably provided by US and other such folks.
Sanctions and resolutions just kill more trees when they are not killing people.
It’s all a boon-doggle for the UN folks… Mothers cry, children in Israel die, and the UN grinds down upon us all.