While Europe basks in self-adulation for its diplomacy and multilateralism, it also demonstrates its impotence and utter uselessness. First, we'll start with the Reason-France-Is-Contemptible du Jour:

After pledging 2,000 troops to a peacekeeping force for southern Lebanon, French President Jacques Chirac said Friday he thought 15,000 more than the territory requires.

"My feeling is that the figure that was put forward at the beginning of discussions — 15,000 for a reinforced UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) — was a figure that was quite excessive," he said in Paris.

Of course, France, acting on behalf of the Arab League, was the primary backer of the UN resolution that mandated the 15,000-"strong" international force. Now, Belgium, which has already caved in on the formerly Western principles of liberty by censoring critics of Islam:

On Friday, Belgium — which earlier hesitated on making a commitment — became the latest nation to promise troops.

Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said about 400 troops will be dispatched to Lebanon. He told journalists the contingent would include de-mining, medical and reconstruction units.

De-mining, medical and reconstruction. That means zero actual troops who could confront Hezbollah. Oh wait, that whole bit about disarming Hezbollah, the Europeans were just lying.

The Europeans, who have bitter memories of their troops being humiliated while serving under weak U.N. mandates in Rwanda and the Balkans, generally agree that the new UNIFIL will not forcibly disarm Hezbollah, but will only oversee a political solution that would induce the militia to turn in its weapons to the Lebanese army.

In order to persuade Israel to halt its effort to disarm Hezbollah by force, the Europeans vowed that their way of diplomacy would be better. But while they lied about having an international force disarm that terrorist group, surely they were serious when then told Israel to trust them on an embargo to prevent Hezbollah from being rearmed. Yeah, right.

Similarly, they are unlikely to agree to any further tasks, such as deploying forces along the Lebanon-Syria border in order to interdict possible arms supplies to Hezbollah.

I have no idea why Israel allowed itself to be snookered by duplicitous, conniving and downright lying European diplomats. Israel agreed to halt hostilities against Hezbollah because the filthy Europeans were persuasive in saying that, this time, there would be no return to the status quo ante and that, unlike with the empty Taif Accords and the empty resolution 1559, Hezbollah would finally be forced to disarm and cease acting as a state within a state. Of course, the Europeans were simply lying, again.

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