That gushing sound you hear is 10 million wingnuts pissing their pants.

Why does the Lieberman Weekly hate America?

That gushing sound you hear is 10 million wingnuts pissing their pants.

Bloody brilliant.

When ideologies clash, the only victors are images.

Well, GC, I would agree with that short term, but the Allieds vs. Axis in WWII long-term wasn't so bad. If the Middle East in 60 years is still at war, then Bush will properly be judged as a failure.

If the Middle East in 60 years is still at war, then Bush will properly be judged as a failure.

Ah, the soft bigotry of low expectations again. It's so taxing to support Shrub, isn't it?

"If people continue to breathe air, then Bush will be vindicated!"

Amazing.

Nasrallah the religious warrior, icon of the Arab world, is apparently currently hiding out in the Iranian embassy.

Well, craigie, what do YOU think would be the proper historical benchmark? It took at least 46 years for the Cold War to be sorted out.

Muckraker is reporting that an Arab linguist who was kicked out of the Army for being gay was asked about his involvement in - wait for it - community theatre when he was investigated.

Wonder how many people will audition for the role of Professor Harold Hill in this falls production of The Music Man at your local community center?

It's always nice to see without fail, liberals romanticize and gush over terrorists, cop killers, and the dictators of our time.

I think there's a distinction between 'evicted' and 'they just left'.

For religious maniacs everything is religion. If he's 'already won' the world will never be safe until Islam is obliterated.

GC:

Was he a homosexual or not, regardless of how they found out?

I prefer Ummagumma.

And it's always nice to see Freedom Fries spouting the party line and engaging his keyboard before the clutch has been released engaging his brain.

They don't reveal his sexuality, just the community theatre bit.

Thomas, I too hold out hope that some future president may pull our bacon out of the fire where Bush has so giddily dropped it.

the world will never be safe until Islam is obliterated.

Classy.

It took at least 46 years for the Cold War to be sorted out.

Charlie, I try not to engage you directly, but really - is this your benchmark? Isn't the whole point of ShrubWorld that Cold Wars are for sissies, and Actual Wars are what we want?

By Actual War standards, we've already won WWII and pacified the losers. By those standards, Bush is a moron. By Grade 3 reading standards, Bush is also a moron. By emotional maturity standards, Bush is still a moron.

By toilet training standards, Bush is an adult. I'm guessing on that one, but I want to be fair to the man. I'll give him that.

"And it's always nice to see Freedom Fries spouting the party line and engaging his keyboard before the clutch has been released engaging his brain."

Mostly he's right on this one, though.

- wait for it - community theatre when he was investigated.

Oh shit I'm doomed. I knew that role as Brutus was going to catch up with me sometime. No wait is it only musicals they're concerned about? If so I'm safe.

Mostly he's right on this one, though.

Only in the bizzarro world that US wingnuts inhabit could a straight sober assessment of a religious political figure done by a center right pro war magazine be called romanticizing and gushing.

By those standards, Bush is a moron. By Grade 3 reading standards, Bush is also a moron. By emotional maturity standards, Bush is still a moron.

Perhaps, but, damn, the man sure knows how to give a backrub....

Bush stepped on his dick when David Gregory asked him a question. Video here.

craigie: You are being mighty generous, but in the age of Depends we just can't be sure...

I would hope that every American is praying for Nasrallah to achieve the martydom he so dearly deserves. Gee, I hope he gets a few extra virgins, to boot.

Bush stepped on his dick when David Gregory asked him a question.

Was he trying to stop Dick from shooting Gregory in the face? I wish I could watch video at work. Sounds very exciting.

GC, I think that that is the most honest GWB has ever been. DG asked him why things are more violent now in the ME than 5 years ago, and GWB responded that his strategy is too promote war over peace.

Doesn't "managed calm" rank right up there with "I'm the decider"?

Some blame the UN for the killing of their observers by the IDF in Lebanon. The Israelis tried shock and awe in Lebanon in 1996 Boutros Boutros-Ghali caught hell from the US when he failed to suppress a report that criminalized the IDF shelling of the UN post in Qana, which killed 106 Lebanese civilians. This killing at Khiyam involved shelling for hours, in spite of many calls from UN personnel to the Israelis. I call it a war crime.

Many Israelis, like Bill O’Reilly, John Bolton and many in the Bush administration, loathe the UN. Now, the UN is clumsy and partly corrupt, like our Congress, and our Homeland Security Department, but I think that we’d be worse off without it. Those with the most to lose, if we descend to the war of all against all, are the rich Western countries.

Quoting Bob Koehler, www.commonwonders.com/archives/col356.htm, true friends of Israel object to insane and self-destructive policies. Hizbollah are killers, with increasing support in Lebanon, and they are well organized. Widespread destruction of Lebanese cities and towns, shelling of Lebanese army posts and Christian villages, this increases support for Hizbollah. The longer that the “birth pangs of the Middle East” continue, to quote idiotic Secretary Rice, the more danger to moderate Arab governments. Times have changed. Israel can smash the Arabs in days in a tank war. If it’s guerilla warfare, we’re in a new century. Air power is insufficient. “Don’t start a fight that you can’t control and win”. John F. Kennedy understood this in 1962. Bush, Olmert and Rice do not. They have made Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah into an Arab hero.

Some ridicule the "Arab street". If the killing in Lebanon continues for months, I expect some moderate pro-Western governments to fall. Their democratically elected successors will be virulently anti-Israel and anti-US. You might want to read the War of the End of the World by Llosa and Stephen King's The Stand.

enozinho,

With religious maniacs anything that isn't their religion is a provocation.

It seems to me that it was diplomatically stupid to roll out a massive post-9/11 counterterrorism realignment and dub it a "War on Terror." It looks like a War on Islam. The fact that it was an act of Muslim terrorism that sparked that realignment should have called for extra caution in how that counterterrorism realignment was peddled to the international community. The fact that both the public cheerleaders and the Administration itself have used the terminology of the Crusades to describe their "War"; the fact that the Administration's focus is overwhelmingly on Mulsim terrorism (ignoring other religious terrorism, as well as nationalist and political terrorism); the fact of the Administration's diengagement from the Israeli-Arab conflict (and therefore its tacit approval of whatever Israel and Egypt in particular do);... These factors and the picture they suggest--an undeclared war on Islam by a powerful and wealthy Christian West--almost certainly create anxiety among everyone who considers themselves a part of the umma.

Josh Marshall's post on the Bush press conference question:

BREAKING: President Bush Really Big Doofus

Yes, I grant you, this may have been reported in other outlets before. But we're here listening to the Bush-Blair press conference. And a few minutes ago a reporter (I think David Gregory, but will check on that) asked the president in so many words: You said Iraq was going to bring about new Middle East but now the Middle East is a complete disaster.

Certainly, this would be a challenging question on more levels than one. But the president's answer, quite a lengthy one actually, showed in a really frightening detail how President Bush seems to be basically brain dead on this issue. We'll try to get a copy of it up on line. You really have to hear it to believe it.

Notice in the video that he manages to work 9/11 into his answer, even though it doesn't appply to the question. No surprise there, he works 9/11 into every answer. I just like to point out that he's a monothematic chucklehead.

Nepeta - I posted the link upthread and linked to it at my place.

"Only in the bizzarro world that US wingnuts inhabit could a straight sober assessment of a religious political figure done by a center right pro war magazine be called romanticizing and gushing."

Actually, the people who live in bizzaro world are those who view terrorists who fire behind civilian and UN human shields, lauch rocket attacks indiscriminately at civilian centers, kidnap citizens of another nation as mere "religious political figures".

Note the other piece in the new New Republic proclaiming that Hezbollah is a fanatical, apocalyptic religious army that can't be deterred, but that Israel's bombardment of Lebanese civilian infrastructure is a classical campaign of deterrence.

What is so peculiar (and grotesque) but not in any sense unsurprising about western and particularly American coverage of this unfolding catastrophe is the oblivious lack of context. The exchange of rocket and artillery fire between Hezbollah and Israel has continued off and on since Israel withdrew its forces from undisputed territories in Lebanon six years ago (however little it has been reported in the US press), and as nasty as Hezbollah is there are unresolved issues between Israel and Lebanon's Shiites.

There is the question of Shebaa farms, a prize bit of water-rich, arable land that a 1960s summit between Syria and Lebanon deemed to be Lebanese. The territory remained under Syrian control however, and was annexed as part of the Golan Heights by Israel; it remains under Israeli control today. Prime Minister Siniora has repeatedly told the Bush administration that compelling Israel to cede the Shebaa farms was the best if not only hope of empowering his government to fully implement 1559.

And of course there is the issue of Lebanese Shiites being held in Israeli prisons by the multitude.

None of these issues should be enough to justify continued rocket attacks into Israel, but the American media has portrayed this conflict as somehow arising from the ether, the dark hearts and minds of Hezbollah. What is unprecedented here (at least for recent times) though is the extent to which Israel has escalated the level of violence, not Hezbollah's actions.

And I'm not sure what Israel thinks it is accomplishing. Lebanon's population remains widely traumatized by a generation of civil war, and its government extremely fragile. The humanitarian crisis unleashed by this conflict has a not incidental chance of quickly becoming a political crisis as well, and the collapse of Siniora's government could follow. There are reports of Christian villages in the north refusing to accept Shiite refugees, and hints of a gathering anarchy in parts of the country.

What Israel may succeed in doing - apart from avenging its dead, and pride - is bringing about not just a humanitarian disaster with which the government of Lebanon cannot cope, but the ultimate partition of the country. And you can rest assured that the government of a new Shiite state in the south won't be run by liberal democrats.

What Israel may succeed in doing ... is bringing about ... the ultimate partition of the country. And you can rest assured that the government of a new Shiite state in the south won't be run by liberal democrats.

Bingo. Israel is just following the model in Lebanon that GWB established in Iraq.

With religious maniacs anything that isn't their religion is a provocation.

As goes religion in this statement, so goes "political discourse" in these here United States.

Ignoring the fact that Nasrallah is charismatic, popular, smart and ruthless is a clear path to ruin. The last time an Arab leader this smart showed up, his name was Assad. Thankfully, the possibility of a Shiite politician gaining power in Syria proper is close to nil, regardless of how weak Bashar Assad is. On the other hand, Hizb Allah is not only a useful tool of power projection for Damascus, but a useful counterweight against the rise of group like the Muslim Brotherhood. Regardless of how the war turns out, I suspect we will be seeing much more of Nasrallah in the future.

Thomas wrote:

Well, craigie, what do YOU think would be the proper historical benchmark? It took at least 46 years for the Cold War to be sorted out.

Right, but Vietnam is still a failure that did nothing to advance the cause of freedom and end the Cold War. Iraq will be judged equally, if not worse, because taking out Iraq unleashed Iran.

"It's always nice to see without fail, liberals romanticize and gush over terrorists, cop killers, and the dictators of our time."

No, what's "nice" to see, apparently, is the glimmer of a reflection of a faraway morage of what you want to see, fighter of freedom. The real question is why you so desperately want to see something that isn't remotely true, while the rest of us would rather discuss something complicated and not given to the simple-minded blatherings of childish hero-worshippers.

Gushing? You guys do the gushing about dictators (in cod-pieces, prefertably) and then try to put that sickness on others. Sorry, not buying. But a good therapist might be able to give you some insights.

Everybody knows that when you exterminate wasps you have to rile them up a bit. Your chance of getting stung in the short term is pretty high, but at least they won't be digging through the wall into your bedroom.

"Israel is just following the model in Lebanon that GWB established in Iraq."

I think this is a good analogy. Some have suggested that Israel *intends* to collapse the government of Lebanon as a matter of policy; I don't buy it. Even a casual awareness of Israeli media suggests something else, namely that Israel ascribes almost magical powers to Siniora's government. It is really the only good expalanation (other than biblical vengeance) for Israel's bombardment of civilian infrastructure. The idea of course is to brutally intimidate Lebanon's government into fully implementing 1559. It is having the opposite effect. The only opinion poll I have seen indicates that close to 90% of Lebanese support Hezbollah in this conflict, and Israel's actions are weakening not empowering Siniora's government.

There may be a question though as to whether Iran would like to see a Shiite mini-state on Israel's border (arguably there already is one in almost everything but name). My understanding is that Syria opposed and prevented the partition of Lebanon after the civil war. But even if the dissolution of Lebanon isn't in Syria's interest that doesn't mean it isn't in Iran's.

Linus: What Israel may succeed in doing - apart from avenging its dead, and pride - is bringing about not just a humanitarian disaster with which the government of Lebanon cannot cope, but the ultimate partition of the country.

Not unlikely, as that is the de-facto situation. In the 2005 elections, the Amal-Hezbolla Alliance Party took 100% (23) of the seats in South Lebanon, 18% (10) of the seats in Mount Lebanon & Bekka, and 0% anywhere else (overall 26% or 33 seats).

Iran, Syria told to back peace or risk confrontation

I told you the Bush administration put Israel up to deliberately overreacting in order to provide an excuse to draw Iran and Syria into a military confrontation that couldn't be blamed on Bush.

Bush wants all-out war in the Middle East so he can continue his reign of terror and "war presidency" and prey on the fears of Americans in order to stymie criticism of his administration, take their minds of his dismal failures as president, divert attention from rampant GOP corruption, and provide an excuse for dismantling civil liberaties in this nation, turning it into the de facto dictatorship he would prefer.

"Not unlikely, as that is the de-facto situation. In the 2005 elections, the Amal-Hezbolla Alliance Party took 100% (23) of the seats in South Lebanon, 18% (10) of the seats in Mount Lebanon & Bekka, and 0% anywhere else (overall 26% or 33 seats)."

Sure, and Lebanon (like Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, and any number of other countries in the Arab world and Muslim Central Asia) probably never should have been a country in the first place.

The Bush administration has to be sure unleashed radical change in the Arab world, but I doubt it is the change they intended. If I had to guess, I suspect the map of the Arab world (and possibly Central Asia as well) will look very different a generation from now, with a number more states (formed along ethnic, sectarian, and religious lines) than currently exist. The question in my mind is just how bloody it will be.

Doesn't "managed calm" rank right up there..."?Global Citizen 3:42 PM

With religious maniacs anything that isn't their religion is a provocation. cld 3:57 PM

...human shields, lauch rocket attacks indiscriminately at civilian centers, kidnap citizens of another nation as mere "religious political figures".Freedom Fighter 4:10 PM

Timeline of events * April 2002 - During Operation Defensive Shield, soldiers greatly increase the use of Palestinians as human shields...

After bombing orphanages, Israeli forces have bombed more than one ambulance. Twice, jet fighters, using precision missiles, shot the exact center of the red cross at the top of the ambulances. This doesn't surprise me, many people in the IDF are Russians who were trained in Russia to fight in Chechnya. That whole war has been one huge war crime and has spawned years of 'terrorism.'

Here is the human price of the inhuman Israeli occupation

when you exterminate wasps you have to rile them up a bit....Tom 5:03 PM

Who is winning the hearts and minds?
Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead.
The latest poll by the Beirut Center found that 8 percent of Lebanese feel the US supports Lebanon, down from 38 percent in January.
"This support for Hizbullah is by default. It's due to US and Israeli actions," says Saad-Ghorayeb, whose father, Abdo, conducted the poll.

Here's the other article I was looking for
The "hiding among civilians" myth
Israel claims it's justified in bombing civilians because Hezbollah mingles with them. In fact, the militant group doesn't trust its civilians and stays as far away from them as possible.
By Mitch Prothero
Nabatiya, southern Lebanon
Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around those targets to destroy them, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.
But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians like the plague. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been. ...

Mike,

If they don't trust their own civilians who are they fighting for?

People are fickle, self-serving short-sighted bastards who will sell out their own mothers for the right price. That's just part of the human condition.

If they don't trust their own civilians who are they fighting for?

Hezbollah is fighting to be seen as the defenders of their civilian populations; they don't trust them anymore than the Bolsheviks trusted the civilian population of the USSR, or the various Straussian right-wingers in the US trust the American people.

I never understand why the MSM, particularly the liberals, inflate the reputation of terrorists like Nasrallah and make them into some combination of mastermind and hero. Nasrallah is a terrorist who has made a massive strategic miscalculation that started a war, is costing him his fighters, killing innocents, and with any luck, will get him killed. And TNR prints a story making him out to be a hero and a success? Very hard to understand, other than perhaps as an innate anti American/military/Bush and/or Israel bias.

brian:

Right. Brought to you by the magazine that endorsed Joe Lieberman for president.

Ever hear of "know your enemy?"

Bob

I don't think they needed to start a war with a foreign country to be seen as defenders when they already had something like 100% of the vote, legitimately, in the Shiite part of Lebanon.

But, then, when you contrast them with Republicans, you may have a point, Republicans can never rest unless they're having (though, in practical terms, pretending to have) a war with somebody. It's the social conservative death cult.

If the Republicans were heavily supplied with arms and money from a foreign country and then assault a third country in the interest of supporting their patron's ambitions, what would you think of them? Are they really defending you?

don't think they needed to start a war with a foreign country to be seen as defenders when they already had something like 100% of the vote, legitimately, in the Shiite part of Lebanon.

If they only wanted power in the Shi'ite part of Lebanon, probably not.

But, then, when you contrast them with Republicans you may have a point, Republicans can never rest unless they're having (though, in practical terms, pretending to have) a war with somebody. It's the social conservative death cult.

I didn't contrast them with the Republicans, I compared them with Straussian right-wingers. While most of the latter are also the former, most of the former are not the latter.

If the Republicans were heavily supplied with arms and money from a foreign country and then assault a third country in the interest of supporting their patron's ambitions, what would you think of them?

I don't think the question is relevant; whether they are in fact taking money and arms from an outside power and acting as that power's proxy (I think that overstates the influence of either Iran or Syria; certainly they supply resources, but I don't think Hezbollah is a simple proxy for either) their strategy is not to be seen by the people they hope to win over as such a proxy.

Plus, of course, the "would that strategy work on you?" question is, of course, entirely beside the point.

On NBC news last week the Lebanese Social Affairs minister blamed Syria and Iran for using Hezbollah as a proxy. I think that suggests they are pretty generally seen as such.

From Third World Quarterly,

http://almashriq.hiof.no/ddc/projects/pspa/hamzeh2.html

the dispatch of 1,500 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to the Syrian-controlled Biqa' region in the summer of 1982, under the pretext of fighting Israel, brought Iran into Lebanon.2 It was then that Hizbullah was secretly formed under the sponsorship of Iran. The Syrian-Iranian agreement on stationing the Iranian Revolutionary Guards contributed to consolidating the emergence of Hizbullah, which further enhanced its power in Lebanon. . . .Working secretly under Iranian sponsorship, however, Hizbullah waited until 1984 to declare its own birth publicly through a communiqué, on the second anniversary of Sabra and Shatilla's massacre, promising 'to continue the march for the liberation of Palestine'.4

nepeta and Global Citizen:

I didn't see anything wrong with Bush's response to David Gregory's question today; in fact, I thought it was great calling him out like this:

. . . the reason why you asked the question is because terrorists are trying to stop that progress. And we'll ultimately prevail, because they have -- their ideology is so dark and so dismal that when people really think about it, it will be rejected. They just got a different tool to use than we do: They kill innocent lives to achieve objectives. That's what they do. And they're good. They get on the TV screens and they get people to ask questions about, well, this, that or the other. I mean, they're able to kind of say to people, don't come and bother us because we will kill you.

And my attitude is, is that now is the time to be firm. And we've got a great weapon on our side, and that is freedom, and liberty. And it's got -- those two concepts have got the capacity to defeat ideologies of hate.

This was a good response to that question too:

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: I don't think, actually, it's anything to do with a loss of American influence at all. I think -- we've got to go back and ask what changed policy, because policy has changed in the past few years. And what changed policy was September the 11th. That changed policy, but actually, before September the 11th this global movement with a global ideology was already in being. September the 11th was the culmination of what they wanted to do. But, actually -- and this is probably where the policymakers, such as myself, were truly in error -- is that even before September the 11th, this was happening in all sorts of different ways in different countries.

I mean, in Algeria, for example, tens and tens of thousands of people lost their lives. This movement has grown, it is there, it will latch on to any cause that it possibly can and give it a dimension of terrorism and hatred. You can see this. You can see it in Kashmir, for example. You can see it in Chechnya. You can see it in Palestine.

Now, what is its purpose? Its purpose is to promote its ideology based upon the perversion of Islam, and to use any methods at all, but particularly terrorism, to do that, because they know that the value of terrorism to them is -- as I was saying a moment or two ago, it's not simply the act of terror, it's the chain reaction that terror brings with it. Terrorism brings the reprisal; the reprisal brings the additional hatred; the additional hatred breeds the additional terrorism, and so on. But in a small way, we lived through that in Northern Ireland over many, many decades.

Now, what happened after September the 11th -- and this explains, I think, the President's policy, but also the reason why I have taken the view, and still take the view that Britain and America should remain strong allies, shoulder-to-shoulder in fighting this battle, is that we are never going to succeed unless we understand they are going to fight hard. The reason why they are doing what they're doing in Iraq at the moment -- and, yes, it's really tough as a result of it -- is because they know that if, right in the center of the Middle East, in an Arab, Muslim country, you've got a non-sectarian democracy, in other words people weren't governed either by religious fanatics or secular dictators, you've got a genuine democracy of the people, how does their ideology flourish in such circumstances?

So they have imported the terrorism into that country, preyed on whatever reactionary elements there are to boost it. And that's why we have the issue there; that's why the Taliban are trying to come back in Afghanistan. That is why, the moment it looked as if you could get progress in Israel and Palestine, it had to be stopped. That's the moment when, as they saw there was a problem in Gaza, so they realized, well, there's a possibility now we can set Lebanon against Israel.

Now, it's a global movement, it's a global ideology. And if there's any mistake that's ever made in these circumstances, it's if people are surprised that it's tough to fight, because you're up against an ideology that's prepared to use any means at all, including killing any number of wholly innocent people.

And I don't dispute part of the implication of your question at all, in the sense that you look at what is happening in the Middle East and what is happening in Iraq and Lebanon and Palestine, and, of course, there's a sense of shock and frustration and anger at what is happening, and grief at the loss of innocent lives. But it is not a reason for walking away. It's a reason for staying the course, and staying it no matter how tough it is, because the alternative is actually letting this ideology grip a larger and larger number of people.

And it is going to be difficult. Look, we've got a problem even in our own Muslim communities in Europe, who will half-buy into some of the propaganda that's pushed at it -- the purpose of America is to suppress Islam, Britain has joined with America in the suppression of Islam. And one of the things we've got to stop doing is stop apologizing for our own positions. Muslims in America, as far as I'm aware of, are free to worship; Muslims in Britain are free to worship. We are plural societies.

It's nonsense, the propaganda is nonsense. And we're not going to defeat this ideology until we in the West go out with sufficient confidence in our own position and say, this is wrong. It's not just wrong in its methods, it's wrong in its ideas, it's wrong in its ideology, it's wrong in every single wretched reactionary thing about it. And it will be a long struggle, I'm afraid. But there's no alternative but to stay the course with it. And we will.

Or this, from the official website of the Lebanese Army,

http://www.lebarmy.gov.lb/article.asp?ln=en&id=6915

Hezbollah, benefiting from Iranian and Syrian unlimited support, made Lebanon become the only battle ground between the Arab states and Israel. Hezbullah, appearing first as a military movement in 1983 following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, became the military arm of Iran and Syria in its struggle against Israel in South Lebanon. Iran did not limit its policy of using Hezbollah as a proxy for their struggle against Israel, but, moreover, as a counterweight force against the U.S. involvement in Lebanon. Such strategy resulted in the mounting of two attacks against the U.S. marines in Beirut and at the airport as well as the taking hostage of U.S. and foreign citizens.
Hezbollah, based on its Islamic ideology (emanating from the Irani Islamic Revolution teachings) and the financial and military backing of Iran, enhanced by the dispatching of one thousand members of the Irani Revolutionary Guards, became the main politico-military force among the Shi’a community in Lebanon and the main arm of what became known later as the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.
Syria acquired through its long and strong military presence in Lebanon an upper hand in using Hezbollah to serve its strategic needs to pressure both Israel and the U.S. diplomacy in the region. The government of Lebanon fell under the Syrian umbrella and, consequently, took a back-seat position supporting the Syrian strategic posture, providing Hezbollah with all the legitimate political support as the main arm of the resistance.

I don't think the "would that strategy work on you?" question is beside the point at all, I think it is entirely the point when you consider Hezbollah's relation to the people of Lebanon.

Could you imagine the Knights of Columbus armed to the teeth and controlling large portions of this country, answering not to the elected government of the US, but to the Vatican, and desperate to destroy Canada at all costs?

Sounds pretty screwy...

On NBC news last week the Lebanese Social Affairs minister blamed Syria and Iran for using Hezbollah as a proxy. I think that suggests they are pretty generally seen as such.

I think its more indicative that it is in the interests of the Lebanese Social Affairs ministers (and, more broadly, the Lebanese government) that they be seen as such.

But, even assuming they are currently seen that way, the point of the strategy is largely to render current perceptions moot by washing them away in pain for which the external enemy will be overwhelmingly blamed, and whoever is seen as most effective at fighting that enemy will be rewarded.

Its not unlike the feature of cults in which they act as both the source and relief of pyschological distress to establish authority (in fact, I'd argue its an instance of it: charismatic leadership, strong boundary control, and all the other typifying features of cults are found in groups like Hezbollah.)

Both sides are pursuing similar strategies, hoping that the more pain Lebanese civilians feel and blame on the other side, the more favorable the ultimate outcome will be to their desires. The battle is largely about spinning the suffering.

'Whatever battlefield setbacks Hezbollah may suffer in Lebanon, on this larger stage, Nasrallah has already won."

That's because we let him win, and them win, time and time again. Calling for proportional responses is letting them win. Calling for more talk, is letting them win. They count on the fact that the civilized world does not have the stomach to sustain the level of violence for very long. They've sustained a high level of internal and external violence for centuries.
Time and death are nothing to them and we haven't figured that out yet.

November 1979: Muslim extremists (Iranian variety) seized the U.S. embassy in Iran and held 52 American hostages for 444 days, following Democrat Jimmy Carter's masterful foreign policy granting Islamic fanaticism its first real foothold in the Middle East.

1982: Muslim extremists (mostly Hezbollah) began a nearly decade-long habit of taking Americans and Europeans hostage in Lebanon, killing William Buckley and holding Terry Anderson for 6 1/2 years.

April 1983: Muslim extremists (Islamic Jihad or possibly Hezbollah) bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 16 Americans.

October 1983: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) blew up the U.S. Marine barracks at the Beirut airport, killing 241 Marines.

December 1983: Muslim extremists (al-Dawa) blew up the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing five and injuring 80.

September 1984: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) exploded a truck bomb at the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut, killing 24 people, including two U.S. servicemen.

December 1984: Muslim extremists (probably Hezbollah) hijacked a Kuwait Airways airplane, landed in Iran and demanded the release of the 17 members of al-Dawa who had been arrested for the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, killing two Americans before the siege was over.

June 14, 1985: Muslim extremists (Hezbollah) hijacked TWA Flight 847 out of Athens, diverting it to Beirut, taking the passengers hostage in return for the release of the Kuwait 17 as well as another 700 prisoners held by Israel. When their demands were not met, the Muslims shot U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem and dumped his body on the tarmac.

October 1985: Muslim extremists (Palestine Liberation Front backed by Libya) seized an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, killing 69-year-old American Leon Klinghoffer by shooting him and then tossing his body overboard.

December 1985: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed airports in Rome and Vienna, killing 20 people, including five Americans.

April 1986: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed a discotheque frequented by U.S. servicemen in West Berlin, injuring hundreds and killing two, including a U.S. soldier.

December 1988: Muslim extremists (backed by Libya) bombed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground.

February 1993: Muslim extremists (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, possibly with involvement of friendly rival al-Qaida) set off a bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center, killing six and wounding more than 1,000.

Spring 1993: Muslim extremists (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Sudanese Islamic Front and at least one member of Hamas) plot to blow up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the U.N. complex, and the FBI's lower Manhattan headquarters.

November 1995: Muslim extremists (possibly Iranian "Party of God") explode a car bomb at U.S. military headquarters in Saudi Arabia, killing five U.S. military servicemen.

June 1996: Muslim extremists (13 Saudis and a Lebanese member of Hezbollah, probably with involvement of al-Qaida) explode a truck bomb outside the Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds.

August 1998: Muslim extremists (al-Qaida) explode truck bombs at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 and injuring thousands.

October 2000: Muslim extremists (al-Qaida) blow up the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 U.S. sailors.

Sept. 11, 2001: Muslim extremists (al-Qaida) hijack commercial aircraft and fly planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 Americans.
America's war with Islamic fanaticism didn't start on 9/11, but it's going to end with 9/11 -- as long as Americans aren't foolish enough ever to put a Democrat in the White House.

We've created the beast, we sure as hell better have what it takes to get rid of it.

cmdicely,

I think we find a common ground there.

Thomas:

You quote Bush who said today:

". . . the reason why you asked the question is because terrorists are trying to stop that progress. And we'll ultimately prevail, because they have -- their ideology is so dark and so dismal that when people really think about it, it will be rejected. They just got a different tool to use than we do: They kill innocent lives to achieve objectives. That's what they do. And they're good. They get on the TV screens and they get people to ask questions about, well, this, that or the other. I mean, they're able to kind of say to people, don't come and bother us because we will kill you.
And my attitude is, is that now is the time to be firm. And we've got a great weapon on our side, and that is freedom, and liberty. And it's got -- those two concepts have got the capacity to defeat ideologies of hate."

Do you truly think that this is an eloquent speech? I don't. This is something a 10-year-old would say.

"They kill innocent lives to achieve objectives." This is a typical Bushism to start with. You don't kill lives, you kill people. Or you end lives.

But WE are killing innocent people also in Iraq, and Israel is killing innocent people in Lebanon, and in fact has killed roughly 10 times as many innocent people as the number of Israeli innocents and military personnel COMBINED.

I am NOT saying that Hezbollah is right. I am NOT saying that Saddam is right or that the Iraqis who've been killing are right. I'm saying EVERYBODY is wrong.

We don't have as much freedom as we would like. And that is such a simplistic answer anyway. The various Islamic groups which are fighting have many motives. The more rabidly religious among doubtless hate what they consider to be the loose morals in the West, and various of them have said so. But they also have many other motives.

Some seek to acquire power only for themselves. Do you think that no one in the West does this? Cheney comes to mind immediately.

Some wish to spread their version of Islam, and I would agree that most of the "terrorists" do practice a particularly malignant version. But while they might actually be able to push that version onto the Islamic peoples in the Middle East, they have ZERO chance of taking over non-Islamic peoples, and I very much doubt that they would succeed in say, Indonesia, which I understand has the largest single group of Muslims in the world.

We currently have fundamentalist Christians in this country who, if they could, would force their brand of Christianity on the rest of us. Some of them HAVE bombed innocent people in service of their twisted religion (Timothy McVeigh). Our Constitution still guarantees separation of religion and state, and I and other liberals will do all that we can to see that that continues.

Also, fundamental theocracies fall of their own weight, given enough time.

Some of the members of Hezbollah, Hamas, etc., see the West and the U.S. in particular as oppressors. They have some reason to believe this. However, they are far more oppressed by the autocracies in their own countries, whether religious or secular.

The United States needs to pull out of Iraq as soon as we can. Our continued presence exacerbates Iraq's ongoing civil war. I see calls from people for us to intervene between Israel and Hezbollah. At this point we should not do so, as Bush and crew have managed to make us poison in the Middle East.

At some point Israel and Hezbollah will tire of killing each other, or other Islamic countries will lean on Hezbollah to stop. That is the time to recruit peacekeepers from all of those countries, and from Europe, Russia and its former satellites, China, Japan, South American countries. NOT the U.S., though.

But longterm solutions will not come until all parties admit that blood is on their hands, and until a forum is established to air legitimate grievances, and a court is established which is empowered to punish those who will continue to bomb, shoot, or otherwise maim others.

And the Arabic peoples and Iranian peoples have to get rid of their autarchs themselves, in their own time and their own ways. Islam was once the pinnacle of civilization. It is behind most of the rest of the world now, and only its peoples, by throwing off the yoke of extremist religious and secular leaders, can let the Middle East flourish, and Islam flourish as a peaceful religion. Then that area will contribute to the world instead of harming it.

I agree with wolfdaugther. We can make things even worse than they are now. This is what the Bush administration doesn't understand. Tactics that wont eh first Gulf War are no help today. The F-22 Raptor is a billion dollar boondoggle. Our government’s reckless gambling- just invade Iraq, don't bother with postwar plans- was adopted by the Israeli government. It isn't Western media who made Nasrallah a hero. Western media don't show unsanitized images from Baghdad, Gaza and Lebanon- our people clean up the blood.
There is no military solution, but that doesn't mean lay down our arms. It means send idiot Rice to talk to people from Syria and Hizbollah. If you talk only to friends and cronies, you can't resolve any conflict.

and the madness spreads. Today a Jewish community center in Seattle was shot up by a man shouting that he was an American Muslim, angry about Israeli agression in Lebanon. Six wounded, one dead.

Has Israel met its Ho? And is that why Israel is expending so much effort militarily and politically to assassinate Nasrallah? Is Nasrallah really the main strategist or just a charismatic leader of Hezbollah's nationalist movement? I know it is a slam dunk to blame Hezbollah as a 'terrorist' organization for most Americans, liberal or conservative, but it is an organization that represents and provides public services to the largest and poorest group of the Lebanese population, as well as providing that group with more political power than it has ever had. I do not want to see any war, I hope Mr. Nasrallah can find a way to stop retaliating against Israel and use his leadership power for the common good, but I do see Hezbollah's resistance and defiance of Israel's military might as a positive for opposition to Israeli militant hegemony. I think capturing/kidnapping soldiers to trade for the thousands of people Israel holds is not a proper us of the power Hezbollah has, even if those soldiers were in Lebanon. It was definitely not worth the cost in lives and makes the leadership of Nasrallah just as suspect as Ohlmert's. But for most to condemn Hezbollah without condemning Israel and recognizing Hezbollah's grievance with Israel's continuous aggression is not going to solve any problems either.

If instead of capturing those soldiers Nasrallah had led a huge march at the border demanding the release of those thousands of Arabs Israel holds, I think he would have been murdered or brutally incarcerated. The IDF would have made the Birmingham police look like a bunch of little girls. But that is probably what Nasrallah should have done. If the oppressed Arabs should ever take my advice, just make sure IDF violence against non-violent protest is well video taped.

I hate to bring it up, but the First Intifada was pretty much non-violent, with the exception of a lot of rock throwing. I recall many scenes from TV news of young men marching and some throwing rocks, yet when Israel killed many of them indiscriminately and arrested them and broke everyone's right hand, there was little popular outrage in the US. So maybe I am wrong that public opinion would change Israel and make them compromise with a generous solution for peace. Rachel Courie does not receive much popular sympathy. I have not lived in such an oppressed state. The Vietnamese nationalists obtained their goal, but at what cost? From the comfort of my life it does not seem worth the killing and damage unleashed The suffering that drives the people of Southern Lebanon must be great.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR: I don't think, actually, it's anything to do with a loss of American influence at all. I think -- we've got to go back and ask what changed policy, because policy has changed in the past few years. And what changed policy was September the 11th. That changed policy, but actually, before September the 11th this global movement with a global ideology was already in being. September the 11th was the culmination of what they wanted to do. But, actually -- and this is probably where the policymakers, such as myself, were truly in error -- is that even before September the 11th, this was happening in all sorts of different way

Wolfdaughter:

I will take principles over eloquence any day. The fact that he called Gregory's question for what it really is speaks volumes to me. Look, this is a real war for our existence, whether you want it to be or not. I will take the leader you at least gets that over the Democrats hiding their collective heads in the sand. BTW: How many "innocent" lives were killed in WWII? Would you have been saying FDR, Churchill, and Truman were "wrong" then too?

As for Timothy McVeigh, I've never heard that he went after our government as a Christian -- as perverted a reason as Islamic terrorists -- you realize there is one theory he was al Qaeda though, right?). Also, I have no problem with separation of Church and state. I don't want a theocracy either.

maracucho:

I'll look you up the first time the U.S. has to rely on the F-22 Raptor to protect American interests en masse.

Global Citizen:

I see you got up there safely AND have Internet access : )

Timothy McVeigh made reference to the Branch Davidians' persecution as one of the reasons for blowing up a Federal building full of people.

Should be "I will take the leader WHO at least gets that concept . . ."

As I said, that would be as perverted from true Christianity as al Qaeda is from Islam. Here's a link to McVeigh's alleged Islamic connections:

http://www.militaryspot.com/oklahoma-city-bombing.htm

>Look, this is a real war for our existence, whether you want it to be or not.

No it fucking isn't. Whether you want it to be or not.

And you clearly want it to be. What the hell is wrong with you, why is your life so empty that you need to feel like your living in some great period, another Crusade?

I mean, Tim McVeigh Al Queda. Do you even realize how messed up you are to think that?

I never said I believed McVeigh's ALLEGED Islamic connections, and more than I believe was using some perverted brand of Christianity. Hitler didn't kill Jews because he was a Christian either. Get it?

Too early on a weekend. "and more than I believe was using" should be "any more than I believe he was using . . ."

I'm willing to bet that Freedom Fighter has never done any fighting.

How about it Freedom Fries...Have you ever been on the wrong end on an AK47? Have you ever shed your blood for freedom?
Have you ever been a life taker?

Until you have STFU.