QUOTE(~veronique~ @ Jul 20 2006, 05:35 PM)
"THIS IS OUR WAR TOO".................
Israel-Hizbollah fight is policy windfall for Bush By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent
Thu Jul 20, 3:14 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel's campaign to destroy Hizbollah is a foreign policy windfall for the Bush administration, which hopes it will boost the U.S. war on terrorism and heap pressure on its nemesis Iran, analysts say.
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"It's not just Israel that doesn't want a ceasefire here," said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.
Long a stalwart ally of Israel, the White House has repeatedly voiced support for Israel's right to self-defense and denied the nine-day-old Israeli bombardment could be considered America's war too.
But administration officials admit the current fighting, triggered by the Islamic militants' capture of two Israeli soldiers and rocket attacks into northern Israel, is also furthering some U.S. goals.
"To the extent that this is part of the war on terror, we certainly have an interest in it," White House spokesman Tony Snow said on Wednesday.
He said the attacks by the Iran- and Syria-backed Hizbollah had forged a sense of international determination to rein in the militant group, while encouraging international progress toward a U.N. resolution curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
While some experts say the escalating bloodshed may fuel Arab resentment and trigger an anti-U.S. backlash, several analysts say the fighting is a chance to let someone else's military promote what are also U.S. objectives, while gaining leverage for Washington's own diplomatic efforts.
"This seems like the perfect opportunity for the United States to bang the drum and say to people, 'Look, you need to wake up and smell the coffee,"' said James Carafano, a security expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which is considered close to the administration.
"The people who are causing evil in the Middle East are Syria, Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas. These people are just as bad as al Qaeda and we've got to stand together and deal with this if we want peace in the Middle East," he said.
'GOLDEN' OPPORTUNITY
Several experts including Makovsky said the conflict helped the United States show Iran it could not scare the world or divert attention from its nuclear program by using Hizbollah as a military proxy.
Influential conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer called the current conflict a "golden, unprecedented opportunity" to try to promote the U.S. goal of dismantling Hizbollah.
"Everyone agrees it must be done. But who to do it? No one. The Lebanese are too weak. The Europeans don't invade anyone. After its bitter experience of 20 years ago, the United States has a Lebanon allergy," he wrote in the Washington Post, referring to a 1983 Beirut bombing which killed 241 U.S. servicemen.
The campaign against Hizbollah also fits squarely into the Bush administration's long-held position that the war on terrorism it declared after the September 11 attacks cannot be limited to al Qaeda, but must include a broad spectrum of militants it says hate America's way of life.
The United States has long included Hizbollah on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
"What's under attack is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States," William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, wrote in the magazine's current issue.
The administration may disagree, but Kristol concluded, "This is our war too."
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Israel warns Damascus but says it will avoid all-out warIsrael-Hizbollah fight is policy windfall for Bush By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent
Thu Jul 20, 3:14 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel's campaign to destroy Hizbollah is a foreign policy windfall for the Bush administration, which hopes it will boost the U.S. war on terrorism and heap pressure on its nemesis Iran, analysts say.
ADVERTISEMENT
"It's not just Israel that doesn't want a ceasefire here," said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.
Long a stalwart ally of Israel, the White House has repeatedly voiced support for Israel's right to self-defense and denied the nine-day-old Israeli bombardment could be considered America's war too.
But administration officials admit the current fighting, triggered by the Islamic militants' capture of two Israeli soldiers and rocket attacks into northern Israel, is also furthering some U.S. goals.
"To the extent that this is part of the war on terror, we certainly have an interest in it," White House spokesman Tony Snow said on Wednesday.
He said the attacks by the Iran- and Syria-backed Hizbollah had forged a sense of international determination to rein in the militant group, while encouraging international progress toward a U.N. resolution curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.
While some experts say the escalating bloodshed may fuel Arab resentment and trigger an anti-U.S. backlash, several analysts say the fighting is a chance to let someone else's military promote what are also U.S. objectives, while gaining leverage for Washington's own diplomatic efforts.
"This seems like the perfect opportunity for the United States to bang the drum and say to people, 'Look, you need to wake up and smell the coffee,"' said James Carafano, a security expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which is considered close to the administration.
"The people who are causing evil in the Middle East are Syria, Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas. These people are just as bad as al Qaeda and we've got to stand together and deal with this if we want peace in the Middle East," he said.
'GOLDEN' OPPORTUNITY
Several experts including Makovsky said the conflict helped the United States show Iran it could not scare the world or divert attention from its nuclear program by using Hizbollah as a military proxy.
Influential conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer called the current conflict a "golden, unprecedented opportunity" to try to promote the U.S. goal of dismantling Hizbollah.
"Everyone agrees it must be done. But who to do it? No one. The Lebanese are too weak. The Europeans don't invade anyone. After its bitter experience of 20 years ago, the United States has a Lebanon allergy," he wrote in the Washington Post, referring to a 1983 Beirut bombing which killed 241 U.S. servicemen.
The campaign against Hizbollah also fits squarely into the Bush administration's long-held position that the war on terrorism it declared after the September 11 attacks cannot be limited to al Qaeda, but must include a broad spectrum of militants it says hate America's way of life.
The United States has long included Hizbollah on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
"What's under attack is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States," William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, wrote in the magazine's current issue.
The administration may disagree, but Kristol concluded, "This is our war too."
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By Harvey Morrisin Jerusalem
Published: July 20 2006 03:00 | Last updated: July 20 2006 03:00
As Syria came under Israeli and US pressure yesterday not to interfere in the Lebanon crisis, senior Israeli officials said Israel had no interest in a conflict with the regime in Damascus.
Israel was reported to have sent a stern message to Bashir al-Assad, Syrian president, amid claims his country was resupplying its Hizbollah allies in Lebanon with rockets to replace those destroyed in the one-week Israeli offensive.
The officials said, however, that Israel's only target was Hizbollah. "Syria is evil but it is a regime," said one. "Israel does not want to open an all-out war in the Middle East."
President George W. Bush warned Syria on Tuesday to stay out of Lebanon, from which it withdrew its forces at United Nations insistence more than a year ago.
A sign that the pressure might be working came yesterday with the first indication from Damascus that it favoured a ceasefire. Mr Assad made the ceasefire call in a telephone conversation with Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister.
The Israeli officials said there were no differences with Washington on a policy of limiting the war to Hizbollah. Although both sides regard Syria as a sponsor of terrorism in the region, they were reported to be at odds last year over how to deal with the Damascus regime.
In strategic talks at the end of last year, the US side was said to have favoured a policy of regime change, while Israel - less convinced than the Americans of the benefits of democratisation in the region - warned that the collapse of the Assad regime might lead to the emergence of a hardline Islamist leadership. At the time, Washington urged Israel to tone down demands for immediate implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1559 on disarming Hizbollah in favour of pressing Syria over its alleged role in the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.
Signalling those differences had now been shelved, the Israeli official said yesterday: "Israel and the US see eye to eye. Do you think the US wants another front on top of Iraq? There's no logic to it." Israel says that Syria, along with Iran, masterminded Hizbollah's cross-border attack that sparked the current crisis. Officials claim Syria's motive was to avoid an international judgment of its responsibility for Hariri's murder.
Syria and its Hizbollah allies are concerned that resolution 1559 would also require an agreement on borders. The UN has accepted that Israel fulfilled its obligation to withdraw completely from Lebanese territory when it removed its troops in 2000. Syria and Lebanon, however, insist that the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms border area is Lebanese rather than Syrian territory, as the UN has ruled.
Agreement on that dispute would remove Hizbollah's justification for a frontline military presence on the border and might pave the way for a peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon's new democratic regime.
Syria had always insisted that Lebanon, where its influence had inevitably declined following its military withdrawal, could not make a separate peace with its southern neighbour.
..............................................................benny
or 
