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Haig: Iran, Syria Behind Hezbollah
Iran and Syria are responsible for Hezbollah’s aggression against Israel, according to former Secretary of State Alexander Haig.
In an exclusive interview with NewsMax.com, Haig said: "Hezbollah would never move without the OK of both Iran and Syria. I don’t know if they went into the kind of detail that involved taking a prisoner and moving in. The original thing might have been a little gluttony on the part of Hezbollah locally - they went into a tunnel and ambushed a tank and killed some Israelis. According to my information, the Israelis didn’t handle it too well as they normally do but in this case they didn’t - they left the tank and that’s when they got in trouble.
"But there is no doubt that what’s happening now is fully supported by Iran and Syria, mostly Iran because Syria is now a ward of Iran’s."
Haig was critical of what he called "a lot of chickenhearted guys out there in the media. Every time they can find a reason to make it look like there is no way the West can win, they use it.
"They are very high on the idea that air power won’t be able to do the job and now insist that the Israelis can’t use [military force] because they are not strong enough and Hezbollah is a lot tougher and they’ll have to take a lot of casualties. In other words, do nothing.
"Their poor-mouthing of the air attacks isn’t justified. Everybody knows that you have to control the ground.”
Story Continues Below The Israelis have to go into Lebanon as they have now, Haig told NewsMax.com, approving of the current strategy now in play.
"They should limit [the extent of] their incursions to the Litani River in south Lebanon. That’s exactly the right thing to do. Go in there, cut off the bridges, cut off the roads to Syria and isolate Hezbollah in that 20-mile span between the border and the Litani River. Just chew them up.”
As far as the U.S. role in the current conflict is concerned, Haig said: "We have to make it very clear, not by bombast publicly, but by private communications that if Iran or Syria were tempted to get involved that we are going to take action against them -- but only in that case. They have to understand that. But I don’t think Iran and Syria want a war.
"I think this thing was designed as a diversion from the brouhaha on the nuclear question and the fact that there was a lot of irritation developing, not only in Europe that is beginning to see a little more of what this is really all about, but also in the Sunni dominated Arab world, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan and Egypt and the Gulf states. They realize now that they are the first target of non-Arab [Shiite] Iran.
"There’s a lot of shifting going on. I understand that Syria has already approached Turkey and told them that they are going to have to become more active in seeking an immediate ceasefire. So don’t think Israeli air power hasn’t had a devastating impact on Hezbollah.”
He added that there should not be a ceasefire before Israel attains its objectives. Noting that there is a lot of pressure on the Israelis to seek a ceasefire before that have achieved their objectives, Haig observed that there is "a lot of it in the State Department as usual -– among the Arabists in the State Department -– and there’s a lot of it in the Congress.”
Haig was critical of the past failures of the U.S to appreciate what Israel has been facing from Hezbollah for a long time.
"I warned President Reagan that the U.S. was going to have to face this Hezbollah gang after they had murdered our Marines [with the bombing of the barracks] in Lebanon - and if he didn’t go then [the U.S.] would have to face it when it’s going to be far tougher.”
He recalled that left alone to do what they wanted in Lebanon, they have been digging tunnels and planting mines for years.
"Now they [the Israelis] are going to have to go in and set up a cordon sanitaire between the border and the Litani and there can’t be any ceasefire until that’s been delivered by negotiation which is believable. Even now you hear [Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] talking about an international peace keeping force, which is a step tougher than having a U.N. peacekeeping force.”
Asked if Israel did set up a cordon sanitaire along the line of the Litani River, would that not require the presence of an occupying peace keeping force, Haig agreed, saying "that’s why they are talking about the Lebanese being responsible for their own territory.”
When NewsMax asked if he agreed with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that we are in the middle of World War III, Haig said: "I long thought that we have been in the middle of World War III with respect to [Islamic] fundamentalism.”
Predicting where all this is going is a tough call, Haig told NewsMax.com: "It pretty hard to predict because of the imponderables -– one being the question of the need for consistency of U.S. policy -– and there I give the president high marks.
"We always tend to underestimate the effectiveness of Israeli military power. I do think that relative to these terrorist groups they have become weaker rather than stronger, especially Hezbollah which is the class terrorist group. They are disciplined, politically sagacious, and extremely well-armed by Iran. They have the advantage of their targets being non-combatants.
"I know that [modern Singapore's founder] Lee Kuan Yew warned the president when he visited him two years ago that this was a global war –- that Indonesia is heavily penetrated by Islamic, fundamentalism that Malaysia is penetrated but not to the same degree but to a worrisome degree and that there are other areas that threaten both Russia and China and I think they are beginning to suspect this themselves.” Editor's note:
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