Who is running foreign policy here....
Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. Only permanent interests - Lord Palmerston
I sometimes wonder if those that work in our beloved State Department know which is which. From Little Green Footballs, I saw this:
State Dept. Wants to Delay Arms to Israel
According to the New York Times, State Department officials are working to delay arms shipments to Israel: Israel wants hastened shipment of US rockets: NYT.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel has asked the Bush administration to hasten delivery of short-range anti-personnel rockets armed with cluster munitions, which it could use to strike Hizbollah missile sites in Lebanon, The New York Times reported on Friday.
Sourcing its report to two American officials, the newspaper said the request for M-26 artillery rockets, which are fired in barrages and carry hundreds of grenade-like bomblets that scatter and explode over a broad area, is likely to be approved shortly.
But the newspaper said some State Department officials want to delay approval because the rockets, while likely effective against hidden missile launchers, would also likely cause civilian casualties if used against targets in populated areas.
They don't get it....they are still of are the opinion that only army vs army conflicts rate. The enemy has deliberately changed the rules of warefare no matter what our State Department employees believe. To our enemy, (and I truely believe that Israel's enemies are ours - it is just right now, they are just not fighting us where we are now), our strictures are our weakness and they are going to exploit them, laughing all the way.
They are fighting to win - there is only one rule and that is there are no rules.
Our folks are mired so much in the letter of the law of war (the Geneva conventions) that they forget the spirit of war (Patton: "...your duty is not die for your country...make the other S.O.B. die for his!" and Reagan: "It's simple: we win and they lose"). Our enemy embraces this philosophy while we dance around it.
Too often it seems, the diplomats and wanna be's seem to want to over think everything. And then go ahead and do just that - think too much. I will grant that I know nothing of diplomacy (that's why I am an engineer and not a high level manager), but just as in engineering, one can make things too complicated.
In engineering, simple is elegant and often, hard to achieve. In this case, it is simple. Israel, our staunch friend and ally, is fighting our foe and fighting for its life.. Help them win by getting what they have already purchased, to them.
...because of the current circumstances...”
Careful, or those circumstances will become ours.
