Alan K. Henderson's Weblog

The first thing the terrorists did, they had guns, they started firing pistols in the air. But the forces of good, the good guys beat them back, and they call for a ceasefire, PLO and everybody else and they had just little pistols and, you know, penny ante little weapons. They called for a ceasefire, and during the ceasefire they loaded up with rifles and then they attacked again. Forces of good beat 'em back with their rifles, and so they called for another ceasefire -- and then they loaded up with hand grenades, and we beat 'em back with their hand grenades. Their hand grenades weren't enough for the forces of good. They called for a ceasefire. Then they loaded up with suicide bombers. They started sending their kids out there with bombs strapped to them and blowing up innocent people all throughout parts of Israel -- and then we beat them back with that, and they called for a ceasefire. During the ceasefire they ratchet up again, and they load up with Katyushas, Katyusha missiles. But the forces of good beat 'em back, and so they called for a ceasefire!

They're always calling for a ceasefire!

Do you note it's always the bad guys that are really leading the call for a ceasefire? In this case you've got some of the world, "There needs to be a ceasefire and so forth, and the Israelis need to do this," but the bottom line in most instances it's the bad guys after they've got their clocks cleaned start waving the white flag saying, "We need a ceasefire." After the Katyushas now they've come back with rockets and when the forces of good, beat them back, what will they come back with next after their next demand for a ceasefire? The bottom line is this. The moral, my friends, is that ceasefire does not mean end of hostility. Ceasefire simply means, "Time-out! Time-out! We Hezbollah guys need to find a more powerful weapon and we'll be back at you when we get it." There is no such thing as a ceasefire in their lexicon; there's no such thing as a ceasefire in their dictionary. It's nothing more than a ruse. So when they demand ceasefires or when they have their allies around the world demanding cease-fires, it's simply to buy some time to amp up, to load up and to increase their own armaments -- and Bolton is exactly right.

The notion that you just declare a ceasefire and act as if that's going to solve the problem, I think, is simplistic. Among other things, I want somebody to address the problem of how you get a cease-fire with a terrorist organization. I'd like to know when there's been an effective ceasefire between a terrorist organization and a state in the past. This is a different kind of situation, and I'm not sure that that sort of old thinking, conventional thinking works in a case like this.