Devil's advocacy time, with a note that I do kinda wanna see much of the Administration rendered down into a wall, up against which its senior members would be placed:
That State Department quote has a point, though. I think there's something else in that bolded definition of "ceasefire" that's worth keeping in mind. Hostilities that are suspended and hostilities that are ended are different things, and the latter actually is preferable to the former in pretty much all cases.
If you just plonk down a ceasefire - out of the blue, without much of an attempt to address or fix the issues behind the conflict in the first place - then you really are likely to be back where you started in the end. Look at Korea, or the Middle East after 1956, 1967, 1973, Chechnya after the Russian defeat in 1996, and so on. While it can be preferable to the alternative, it's not a lasting solution.
Now, the other half of that problem is that actually ending the hostilities would involve a lasting solution of some sort or another, but I'll be buggered if I know what one is. Israel has their own ideas (either drive Hezbollah out of range of Israel, get Lebanon to disarm it, or destroy it themselves), to which I'm not entirely unsympathetic at this point, but if anyone out there has any ideas that are going to lead to a decade - or a week - of peace in the region, they don't seem to be saying much about it.
I dunno. I can't think of a way to handle this that won't be back at square one in a year.
no subject
That State Department quote has a point, though. I think there's something else in that bolded definition of "ceasefire" that's worth keeping in mind. Hostilities that are suspended and hostilities that are ended are different things, and the latter actually is preferable to the former in pretty much all cases.
If you just plonk down a ceasefire - out of the blue, without much of an attempt to address or fix the issues behind the conflict in the first place - then you really are likely to be back where you started in the end. Look at Korea, or the Middle East after 1956, 1967, 1973, Chechnya after the Russian defeat in 1996, and so on. While it can be preferable to the alternative, it's not a lasting solution.
Now, the other half of that problem is that actually ending the hostilities would involve a lasting solution of some sort or another, but I'll be buggered if I know what one is. Israel has their own ideas (either drive Hezbollah out of range of Israel, get Lebanon to disarm it, or destroy it themselves), to which I'm not entirely unsympathetic at this point, but if anyone out there has any ideas that are going to lead to a decade - or a week - of peace in the region, they don't seem to be saying much about it.
I dunno. I can't think of a way to handle this that won't be back at square one in a year.