US envoy Thomas Barrack’s approach to Hezbollah and Lebanon demonstrates why even under the great deal-maker Donald Trump, America doesn’t grasp the fundamental issues of the Middle East conflict.
Barrack insists that for peace and stability to be achieved, Hezbollah must be convinced that there’s a brighter future for it, too.
The US State Department lists Hezbollah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). But in his remarks to Lebanese media yesterday, Barrack referred to Hezbollah as “a political party [that] also has a militant aspect to it.”
According to Barrack, “Hezbollah needs to see that there’s a future for them, that the road is not harnessed solely against them, and that there’s an intersection of peace and prosperity for them also.”
Like so many American envoys before him, Thomas Barrack has things backwards.
Hezbollah isn’t a political party that happens to also have a “militant aspect.”
Hezbollah is a terrorist army that also holds sway over Lebanon’s parliament.
Slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah wasn’t a politician. He was a jihadist in command of a well-equipped and highly-trained military force dedicated to Israel’s annihilation.
Barrack’s mislabeling of Hezbollah in this regard is what in turn produces his conclusion that Hezbollah is a legitimate movement that needs to be part of Lebanon’s brighter future.
He fails to understand, or is unwilling to accept, that Hezbollah, like Hamas, represents a hateful ideology and exists for the stated purpose of destroying Israel. Without that goal and the means to achieve it, Hezbollah’s raison d’être disappears.
Hezbollah needs to be sidelined, if not removed entirely, for there to be any hope of lasting stability.
It was the well-meaning, but woefully ill-considered voice of people like Thomas Barrack that prevented effective opposition to the Nazis prior to World War II. Only belatedly did the US, Britain, and others realize that the Nazis couldn’t be treated with, and mustn’t be part of the solution. No, for the sake of peace, the Nazis had to be destroyed.
And the same is true of Hezbollah.
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I believe that those who have never worn their countries uniform or served in a war zone or heard the bullets of their enemies snap past their ears or heard the smack of those bullets hit human flesh, should ever be allowed to negotiate with any terrorist enemy of our country. Or be part of any negotiations of that kind, not knowing the truth of your enemy through experience is a weakness, and the enemy of the US and Israel in the middle east knows that weakness very well. Israel is strong and knows the enemy, the US should listen to the ally who knows the enemy best, not try to make deals that don’t interest the enemy in any way other than using it to get the best of the inexperienced Americans.