Among other things Powell talked about in his visit to Egypt was the possibility of American peacekeepers (and possibly Europeans) on the ground in the West Bank. He said the same thing after his meeting with the Neville Chamberlains in Europe a few days earlier. This is one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a long time.

Let’s assume for a moment that a cease-fire somehow gets going, and Powell’s security suggestions are implemented. That leaves American ground troops, most likely lightly armed, patrolling the border between Israel (lets assume for the moment that the Israelis have abandoned their West Bank settlements) and a newly created Palestinian “state”. Now what happens when the first Hamas whack-job picks off his first GI Joe with a sniper rifle? Or takes out a Hummer full of soldiers with a suicide attack.

At this point, the peacekeeper on the ground is faced with a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. If he goes after the guys attacking him, the Palestinians go apeshit. The Arabs do the whole outrage thing about evil crusading Americans and threaten an oil embargo, sending the world economy into a tailspin. Iraq will show its solidarity with the Palestinians by annihilating the Kurds. Most irritating of all, the French will start bitching louder than usual about America’s “simplicity”.

The other option is to retreat to more secure positions. This tells Hamas and their familiars that the gringos are nice, soft, easy targets, that they can get away with attacking. This’d have god knows how many repercussions, as every piece of crap who hates America would think he’s got a pass to grab an AK-47 and take a few potshots at the nearest American. If we then follow Clinton’s example in Somalia (or, to be fair to our pinko-leaning friends, Reagan’s example in Lebanon), we get the hell out of Dodge, leaving the current Israeli-Palestinian madness to start over, most likely in a bloodier and more ruthless form.

The Israelis have been dealing with these issues since the latest Intifada started. We’d just be substituting the US Army for the Israeli Defense Force. This isn’t a solution, because the rallying cry for the Palestinian leadership is still “Death to Israel!” As long as the goal of Palestinian militants is the outright destruction of Israel, whoever stands in the way of the suicide bombers is just another target.

Let’s just send the Europeans instead. They like this peacekeeping crap, and maybe after they bring home a couple of French or German bodybags they might be a little less fanatical in their rejection of every action Israel takes, but probably not. If there’s one thing the Euro-pansies are good at, it’s hypocrisy.