Hezbollah's goal

After provoking Israel to attack, and then sequestering themselves and their rockets among the women and children of Lebanon, Hezbollah assured that there would be civilian deaths; in continuing their attacks and escalating the war they guaranteed the death toll would mount. And it was inevitable that as people died the Lebanese population would begin to see Hezbollah as defenders; it was likewise predictable that images of destruction and reports of death would win general Arab support, world-wide sympathy, and the inevitable demands for a cease-fire.

I believe it has been Nasrallah's intent all along to reduce weak Lebanon to rubble while winning support, thus softening it up for Hezbollah's next move, to take control of the entire country — and after that the region.

Terminus of the crescent. Hezbollahnon.

A democratic Iraq solves everything

From today's New York Times:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq on Wednesday forcefully denounced the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, marking a sharp break with President Bush’s position and highlighting the growing power of a Shiite Muslim identity across the Middle East.
...

"We call on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression.”

Yup. Got that nailed.

Collective punishment?

Is that what it we called it when the Allies were blasting the hell out of Germany and Japan?

Just curious.

Innocent civilians being killed in Lebanon? No doubt. As in Israel.

But the analogy to WWII is unavoidable; the Allies were fighting to stop the terror inflicted by Hitler's Germany and Tojo's Japan, and the British literally for their lives. Israel is fighting for her life and to stop the terror that has rained down upon her villages for years. So it pains and infuriates me to hear a BBC reporter, of all people, assert quite smugly that Israel is "over reacting" and even "guilty of war crimes."

Perhaps the time for Lebanon to have cried for help and intervention would have been when they saw that Hezbollah was taking over their south and their politics, and that their intent to destroy Israel was certain to put Lebanon in danger.

Bin Laden and Hezbollah

The next time some creep claims that Bill Clinton blew some chance or other to take out bin Laden, ask why Ronald Reagan "cut and ran" after Hezbollah blew up the US Marines barracks in Lebanon — killing 225 Americans and 51 French Legionnaires. What if he had taken them on?

A war supporter throws in the towel?

Lawrence Kaplan, writing for The Plank (TNR's blog) yesterday:

The fact is, there is very little that we can do to dampen the sectarian rage and pathologies tearing Iraq apart at the seams. Did the Army make a mistake when it banished "counterinsurgency" from the lexicon of military affairs? Absolutely. Does it matter in Iraq? Probably not.
. . .

Even if America had arrived in Iraq with a detailed post-war plan, twice the number of troops, and all the counterinsurgency expertise in the world, my guess is that we would have found ourselves in exactly the same spot. The Iraqis, after all, still would have had the final say.

At TPM, Josh Marshall takes it this way:

You could summarize what Kaplan is saying as, Our guns and our money and ideas are no match for their history and their hate.
. . .
[H]ere you have the final come-down. Not an admission of error here or there or in execution, but total -- that the whole idea and concept and program was upside-down-wrong in its essence.

Mark the moment -- that's the ghost given up.

Atrios disagrees:

Kill Them All

While I'd like to be wrong, I believe Josh is missing the message here. This is not Lawrence Kaplan admitting "the whole idea and concept and program was upside-down-wrong in its essence." This is Kaplan saying the only option is to exterminate the brutes.

I'd like to be wrong, but Kaplan's recently been mocking Democratic desires to withdraw. So, staying doesn't help. Withdrawing is a silly idea. The other alternative is?

Indeed.

Yoo Who?

I'm reminded of Herb Caen's pithy observation, after Truman fired MacArthur: "MacArthur thought he could walk on water, but Truman pulled the water out from under him!"

So it has been with the Bush Administration, claiming unto itself every power and authority imaginable simply by virtue of the thoughtless Congressional vote, a week after the attacks of September 11, 2001, allowing him to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible.

It appears that, buried beneath all the rant and rhetoric about the Administration's "secret" surveillance programs (not to mention its hot pursuit of "traitorous leakers"), culminating in this week's Supreme Court decision, there may actually be a pony.

Consider today's New York Times piece describing the reaction of one who should know:

JOHN C. YOO, a principal architect of the Bush administration's legal response to the terrorist threat, sounded perplexed and a little bitter on Thursday afternoon. A few hours earlier, the Supreme Court had methodically dismantled the legal framework that he and a few other administration lawyers had built after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"What the court is doing is attempting to suppress creative thinking," said Professor Yoo . . .

Read the whole article! Link