Reply #11: I just wonder what the role of this force is to be [View All]

[kenny blankenship]

If Israel decides to send an amored column up Lebanon's way are these peacekeepers really going to repel it with antitank missiles? I have a hard time seeing that. But if not repelling invaders what are they there to do? Meanwhile are they going to be conducting search and destroy missions to remove Hezbollah from the declared buffer zone? If I were French or Italian I wouldn't want my country's troops dying in place of Israeli ones for that mission. Whenever US and Euro forces have visited Lebanon to "keep peace" before, as in the 1980s, they quickly revealed that they were there to wage war against Muslims. That may not be the conscious objective behind sending a "peace keeping" force to Lebanon this time, but if they begin acting as though they control southern Lebanon while Hezbollah, now more than ever no doubt, sees itself as the legitimate government of that area if not all Lebanon, there's going to be a repeat of the disaster that befell foreign troops in the 1980s. I can't imagine that this possibility isn't worrying Chirac at nights.