Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Ceasefires and "Victories"

How interesting - the first spin on the Lebanon ceasefire is coming from Syria.

As one might expect, they are claiming a Hezbollah victory of sorts. Somewhat more intriguing is some of the other comments:

He praised the "the glorious battle" he said had been waged by Hezbollah, and said peace in the Middle East was not possible with the Bush administration in power in Washington.

"This is an administration that adopts the principle of pre-emptive war that is absolutely contradictory to the principle of peace," he said. "Consequently, we don't expect peace soon or in the foreseeable future."


I tend to agree that BushCo no longer has the "political capital" to play "honest broker" in the Middle East.

Equally significantly, I see that Iran is making threatening noises in Israel's direction. It seems to me that this is a "counter move" in response to the ongoing US pressure on Iran regarding nuclear weapons.

Although the ceasefire in Lebanon appears to be holding (certainly longer than I had initially thought it might), I think it remains very clear that the region will remain downright unstable for quite some time to come - likely until some credible new moderating force emerges - possibly China or India?

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