Two of my friends, retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely and John
Batchelor (co-host of the Batchelor & Alexander Show on New
York’s WABC-AM radio), visited a U.N. compound on the
Israel-Lebanon border about ten days ago. What Paul and John saw
there was something the Israelis see every day. But what Paul
photographed there, and what he and John told me, should shock
every American. The Israeli troops escorting them told Paul and
John that they couldn’t understand why America put up with it. The
Israelis had a hard time believing it was unknown to the American
public.
The “it” they referred to is shown in two of the pictures Paul
took. One shows two flagpoles flying about fifteen feet apart at
the U.N. compound on the Israel-Lebanon border. On one flagpole, to
the left of the picture, is the blue U.N. flag. On the other flies
the yellow flag of the terrorist group Hezbollah. The unmistakable
symbol on the Hezbollah flag is the upheld fist holding an AK-47.
The other picture is of a billboard that faces an Israeli outpost.
It shows an Hezbollah fighter holding up the severed head of an
Israeli soldier. The caption, as I have been told, says something
like, “death to the Israeli dogs.” Paul and John assured the
Israelis that America didn’t know about these depraved displays.
Now the word is out, and we cannot tolerate it. The time has come
to stop the U.N.’s game of coddling terrorists.
Only those who have forgotten who Hezbollah is could tolerate
this flag display. But we haven’t forgotten. We remember that in
October 1983 Hezbollah suicide bombers killed more than 250 U.S.
Marines in Beirut by ramming a truck past a guard post and
detonating a bomb against the Marines’ barracks. In 1984, they
kidnapped and murdered CIA station chief William Buckley. Also in
Lebanon, four years later, they kidnapped Marine Lt. Col. William
R. Higgins. They tortured Higgins before he died, and then
published photographs of his battered body to show how proud they
were of their brutal and cowardly act. Hezbollah is on America’s
list of designated terrorist organizations. In fact, three of its
leaders — Imad Magniyah, Hasan Izz-al-din, and Ali Attwa — are on
our list of the 22 Most Wanted terrorists. We want these men, dead
or alive. Of the two conditions, I do have a strong preference.
The actions of the U.N. in Lebanon amount to a surrender of
strategic ground to terrorists. The area supposed to be under U.N.
control has been given to Hezbollah without a bang or even a
whimper. The U.N. isn’t trying to get it back, and apparently
hasn’t bothered to tell its own councils about it, for fear of
attracting attention. The Israelis are faced with the flag, the
billboard, and incoming fire every day. As Paul told me, the
Hezbollah fire at Israeli positions with rockets and sniper fire.
Because the Israelis face this situation, our government must
know.
Hezbollah fighters range freely in southern Lebanon, and through
the Bekaa Valley. There, they have accumulated about 8,000
short-range Katyusha rockets that they have used to attack Israel.
They also now have larger 270mm rockets, with the claimed range of
over forty miles. With them, they can hit strike the heavily
populated city of Haifa.
When our campaign to get Saddam Hussein begins, the Hezbollah
can make things much more complicated by forcing the Israelis to
respond. Any concerted attack on Israel will certainly draw a
response against Hezbollah, as well as its Syrian ally. Which is
precisely what Saddam wants: a wider war between Israel and an Arab
nation. He believes the Arab nations will rally to his cause if the
Israelis are in the fight. He’s wrong in that, but not in the fact
that a wider war will cause more unnecessary bloodshed.
The Israelis could have long ago taken out the Hezbollah, but
haven’t because of strong American pressure to hold back. At this
point, we should tell them to go ahead, and the sooner the better.
All the pressure we have used on them should be turned on the U.N.
John Batchelor summed it all up: “The U.N. is a fellow-traveler of
terrorism. What I saw at the Lebanese border disgusted me.” John
has it right. The Hezbollah flag flying over the U.N. position is
an insult to the memory of the Beirut Marines, of Col. Higgins, and
of Mr. Buckley. It may well be that U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan is unaware of the flags, but he cannot be ignorant of the
fact that Hezbollah now controls southern Lebanon.
We have put up with Mr. Annan’s coddling of terror for far too
long. He spends too much of his time trying to thwart our plan to
topple Saddam. He scolded President Bush only two weeks ago, saying
that the U.N. would continue to deal with Yassir Arafat as the
leader of the Palestinians despite the President’s determination
that Arafat had to go. If you don’t see a pattern there, you should
look again.
The President should tell Secretary of State Powell to make two
calls to Mr. Annan. In the first, he should demand that the
Hezbollah flag be taken down, and that the commanding officer of
that post be fired immediately. He should also demand an apology to
the survivors of the Americans murdered by Hezbollah. In the
second, Mr. Powell should tell Annan that we expect his personal
support for a Security Council resolution authorizing an attack on
Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. Of course, the attack would
have begun before the resolution is even mentioned. By then, we
should have asked the Israelis to do it, and given them whatever
help they need to do so. I’m sure we could get all the volunteers
we need from among the Marines. The score they have to settle with
Hezbollah is a big one.
The disgrace the U.N. has brought upon itself is too serious to
ignore. America should tell the U.N., in words so simple that they
cannot be misunderstood, that we will no longer tolerate its
coddling of terrorists. The U.N. and Kofi Annan must be required to
take a stand against terror, and to act on it. Until they do, we
should call a halt to any U.S. payment for anything that has to do
with the U.N. If Mr. Annan doesn’t like that, let him tell it to
the Marines.
