Terrorists Hezbollah Taking Over Lebanon

Terrible news. Syria and Iran are evil regimes intent on destabilizing the region. And people wonder why we're in Iraq.

Palestinian Tolerance

On full display.

Why Do We Care?

Why do we care about the Middle East? When people ask me that question, it still shocks me. Do they really not get it? Maybe with the murder of Benazar Bhutto of Pakistan, we need a reminder why it is in America's, in the world's best interest, to care about this sandy, forsaken landscape half-way around the world.

It has been my belief since the beginning that George W. Bush entered Iraq secondarily because of Saddam Hussein's WMD flirtations. Yes everyone, including the lily livered Democrats and squishy Republicans, believed Saddam was a bad guy desiring to do bad things with bad substances. He had done bad things. It wasn't a stretch that he'd do more bad things. But that didn't seem to me to be the most compelling reason for Iraq. To me, and I feel that George Bush must have seen this too, Iraq is first and foremost a strategic launching pad. For all Saddam's bluster, he was weak. No one could imagine how weak until the Yanks marched through Iraq. It happened so quickly, everyone was stunned. But the fall and subsequent search for scant WMDs mattered less than being planted as a bulwark against crazy in the Middle East.

Iraq borders Iran, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, a couple Stans and a lovely thing called the Persian Gulf. Trouble brews in every place on the list. And trouble there means trouble everywhere. Russia trembles with hypermasculine impotence. Any way to cause trouble to the alpha males of the world will be and are being embraced. Putin squeezes Europe already. Georgia sits like a plum in a vice. Iran would happily be the conduit for Putin's displeasure. More on all this here.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan and Pakistan boil with extremism. Here's what's happening now:

"We've really got a new situation here in western Pakistan," said Army Col.
Thomas Lynch III, who has served in Afghanistan and with Central Command, the
U.S. military headquarters for Pakistan and the Middle East. He said the
assassination marks a "critical new phase" in jihadist operations in Pakistan
and predicted the coming months would bring concentrated attacks on other
prominent Pakistanis.

"The Taliban ... are indeed a growing element of the
domestic political stew" in Pakistan, said John Blackton, who served as a U.S.
official in Afghanistan in the 1970s and again 20 years later. He noted that
Pakistani military intelligence created the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"Pakistan must take drastic action against the Taliban in its midst or we will face the
prospect of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of al-Qaida — a threat far
more dangerous and real than Hussein's arsenal ever was," he said, referring to
the deposed Saddam Hussein.

Nuclear warheads in the hands of Jihadists in a country where 40% approve of Osama. America may not be able to do anything from Afghanistan to stop willful annihilation, but I hazard to say it could do less without a mid-east presence.

And Pakistan is a crazy little country compared to China with her supersized ambitions. Imagine the panic should China not get the fuel needed to keep its economic engine humming. Forget for a moment American's cries of despair at being deprived of cheap consumer products, the bigger problem would be an unstable country armed to the teeth.

Don't forget Israel, either. Like Tawain, Israel is a freedom-loving democracy, and America is about democracy building, remember? As shaky as that idea may be as a long-term solution to extremist middle east regime problems, there is one democracy that thrives over there. Should that country be abandoned?

Oh yeah, there's this other little thing called oil. I never have understood what's so upsetting about trading a little blood for a lot of oil. If China, Japan, Europe and America come to a screeching halt economically, the next step would be, inevitably, war. And there would be a whole lot more blood spilled. The whole world is entertwined in ways that could have never been imagined during the World War II era. The internet reflects a world interconnected.

Our fate rests in the Middle East as much as any other country's. The Jihadists hate freedom. They hate life. They believe they have a holy mission. If Pakistan crumbles, if Iran arms, if Afghanistan turns back to the Taliban, if China becomes aggressive, if Russia presses, if, if, if, the free people of the world have big problems.

America is in the Middle East because, well, isn't it obvious?

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Destroying the Veneer of Civilization

Did the Palestinians ever have the veneer? Victor Davis Hansen says:

So now the outgunned Fatah gangsters are suddenly crying about the uncivilized evils of looting, gangs, and random killings. Just as Thucydides warned about insurrectionists destroying civil society, so Fatah once erased civilization's protocols on the presumption that no one else would dare do to them what they routinely did to others. How bizarre that Arafat's followers of all people are reduced to appealing to international norms of decency and legality to avoid their utter destruction in Gaza by Hamas.

And for those who like to play with civilizations foundation:

What lies behind this abject hypocrisy of first undermining civilization and then demanding that it reappear in the hour of need?

Double standards depend on demanding from United States and Europe a sort of impossible perfection. When such utopianism is not--and never can be--met, cheap accusations of racism, colonialism, and imperialism follow. Such posturing is intended to con the West into feeling guilty, and, with such self-loathing, granting political concessions, relaxing immigration, or handing over more foreign aid. Left unsaid is that such critics of the West will always ignore their own hypocrisy, and, when convenient, destroy civilized norms while expecting someone else to restore them when needed.

Exactly.

Eurabia Watch: Italy Reaches South

Brussels Journal shares some alarming news:

The EU Commission and senior European officials at the very highest levels, frequently diffused through various innocent sounding and semi-official organizations, create agreements with Arabs and then quietly implement them later as federal EU policy.

This is accomplished because tens of billions of Euros paid by European tax payers are floating around in an EU system with very little control. Europeans are thus financing their continent’s merger with, in reality colonization by, the Arab and Islamic world without their knowledge and without their consent. If average Europeans understood the implications of what is going on, there would be explosions of anger from tens of millions of people all over Europe and the entire European Union would immediately disintegrate and collapse. However, most people do not yet understand the full scale of this, since our so-called critical and independent journalists remain suspiciously quite about the issue.

Here is an example from Italy. Romano Prodi, Prime Minister and leader of the current left-wing Italian coalition government, is a former leader of the European Commission, the EU’s government, and has been identified by Bat Ye’or as a particularly passionate Eurabian. Upon taking office as PM last year, one of his first announcements was that he would speed up the implementation of Eurabia. Well, it looks like he is a man of his words, as his Minister of Health is now announcing a massive transfer of knowledge and technology to Arab countries:

Italy’s health minister Livia Turco on Thursday launched an intiative by Mediterranean and Middle East countries to co-operate in health care, including sharing research facilities, computer databanks and identifying best practices and excellence in service provision. “The plan is diplomacy in health care through which Italy wants to contribute to peace and development in the Mediterranean region,” Turco said speaking at an international conference in Rome to implement the project. The project will also involve the creation of a “command room” that will co-ordinate initiatives between, national, regional and local governments in the region as well as with universities and other research and education institutions and the private sector, Turco said.

Peace, peace and there is no peace.

I think it is helpful to look at geography when one thinks about Italy "reaching south".

Hezbollah's Purpose & The Destruction They Wrought

Michael Totten reports from Southern (the dangerous Hezbollah part) Lebanon. His escort explains Hezbollah:

“Hezbollah is trying to distract the world from Iran’s nuclear bomb,” Said said, “by making trouble in Lebanon, killings, dissolving the government, and so on. Can you imagine what Iran would do if they got the nuclear bomb? My God. Even right now they do what they want and don’t listen to anyone.”

Here's more:

Israel may have over-reacted in July and selected targets (the milk factory, bridges in the north, etc.) that should not have been hit. But the stark scene on the hill of Maroun al-Ras demonstrated that the Israeli military did not bomb indiscriminately as many have claimed. Unlike Hezbollah, the Israelis are able to hit what they want and they don’t shoot at everything. That mosque wouldn’t be standing if they dropped bombs and artillery randomly in the villages.

“My mother is from Deir Mimas,” Said said. “In July Hezbollah brought their weapons out of the caves and valleys and into the village. My family has a small house there that was burned during the war.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Eh,” Said said. “It’s okay. It is fixed now. Anyway, at first Hezbollah fired their missiles from groves of olive trees. Then they got hit by the Israelis. So they moved into Deir Mimas because the other nearby option was Kfar Kila. Hezbollah didn’t want the Shia villages hit, so they moved into Christian villages instead.”

That sounded right. I recently saw Kfar Kila from the Israeli side. The town is literally right on the border, only twenty feet or so from the fence next to the Israeli town of Metulla. I saw no damage whatsoever in Kfar Kila – and this was one day before the end of the war – but I did hear machine gun fire in the streets ominously close to where I was standing.

And finally, a plea for help. I wonder, do the Democrats really intend to leave all these people behind?

“We have been screaming about this conflict for 30 years now,” Henry said as he dealt himself a hand of Solitaire from a deck of cards in his pocket. “But no one ever listened to us. Not until September 11. Now you know how we feel all the time. You have to keep up the pressure. You can never let go, not for one day, one hour, not for one second. The minute you let go, Michael, they will fight back and get stronger. This is the problem with your foreign policy.”

“Since 1975 we have been fighting for the free world,” Said said. “We are on the front lines. Why doesn’t the West understand this? America can withdraw from Iraq, you can go back to Oregon, but we are stuck here. We have to stay and live with what happens.”

I do believe that people want to live in freedom and peace. There will always be those who prefer war and the power fomenting discontent gives them. Tyranny must be stopped.

Read the whole essay, Michael Totten really writes so visually. I get the feeling of Lebanon from his writing--even more than from the pictures.

Lebanon: Where the Girls Are

This article from The New York Times is very interesting (I'll cover the other interesting one in another post). In Lebanon, the number of eligible women to men is 5/1. The women are turning into aggressive, insipid, provocative tarts to try to snag a man.

Surely, more than economics has to do with this sad state of affairs. Hasn't war eliminated men, too?

Plus, there are lots of Lebanese immigrants here in the U.S. I know a fella who went back home to marry "a nice virgin girl". Sounds like he had lots of choices.

LGF: France Threatens Israel

If Israel continues "incursions" via warplanes into Lebanon, the French "coalition" may/will shoot them down.

This was my concern way back in the day. I want to repeat and go on record: It is not a good idea to have a hostile Europe (to Israel anyway) on Israel's doorstep acting as arbitrar of all that is fair and good.

France has a propensity to be bought by the highest bidder and the political leadership win big electoral points with their Muslim voters when make anti-Israel statements and take anti-Israel actions. This is true in almost all of Europe these days. Europe currently is not friendly to Israel.

Again, why Ohlmert agreed to the United Nations coalition, and even more, to France and Turkey being the "buffer" between Israel and Lebanon, I have no idea.