UN TROOPS SALUTE TERRORISTS

By W. Thomas Smith Jr.

If someone had simply told me this, I might've had a difficult time believing it until actually seeing the photograph.

The saluting soldiers - one wearing wearing a light-blue (United Nations color) helmet, the other a beret - are actually members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

They are saluting, of course, the Lebanese flag. But they are also saluting the remains of terrorists returning to Lebanon from Israel following the recent "swap" between Israel and the terrorist group, Hezbollah.

Notice what else they are saluting: The giant photograph on the truck bearing the terrorists' remains is that of recently assassinated Imad Mughniyeh, the infamous Hezbollah-butcher who was responsible for blowing up the American Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks (also a French paratrooper barracks) in Beirut in 1983 , and then torturing and murdering an unarmed American sailor in 1985. Beyond those attacks and over the years, Mughniyeh directed a series of lesser-reported kidnappings and murders against Americans and others.

Mughniyeh was for years wanted by the FBI, which had a multi-million dollar bounty on his head, but he was killed in February of this year, and has since morphed into some bizarre form of cult hero to the Jihadists.

In the aftermath of Mughniyeh's assassination, Hezbollah began holding him up as some great Islamist leader. Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, a Hezbollah founder who - amazingly - has had op-eds published in the Washington Post and Newsweek (that's another shameful story we'll save for another day), declared: "The resistance [Hezbollah] has lost one of its pillars." Even Lebanese Pres. Michel Sleiman, then commander-in-chief of the Lebanese armed forces, paid public condolences to the Mughniyeh family, many of whom have been deeply involved in the business of international terror.

But it wasn't simply Hezbollah and their pals on Lebanese soil. As I wrote in Townhall.com: Jihadism's Dangerous Liasons:

"Mughniyeh was respected by both the Iranian mullahs and Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants. Both Iraq's Shiia militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr and Sunni Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi (Al Sadr's 'supposed arch-foe,' as Glick says) called for revenge killings. Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moualem publicly referred to Mughniyeh as 'a backbone of the Islamic resistance.'"

Now we see United Nations soldiers saluting Mughniyeh and the bodies of his comrades in terror.

Makes one also wonder why UN troops failed in their mandate to keep the air and seaports open - among other failings - when Hezbollah attacked Lebanon in May. And what kind of message does this send to the majority of the people in Lebanon (who are pro-democracy and afraid of an increasingly dominant Hezbollah) when they see international peacekeepers recognize terrorists as soldiers worthy of military courtesy?

- Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. online at uswriter.com.