TURN THEM INWARDS:

The beast that slouches toward democracy: No woolier idea ever found its way into foreign policy than the premise that democracy will promote Middle East peace. Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrullah has laid a cuckoo's egg in the nest of US policy, conjuring up the specter of a terrorist democracy. (Spengler, 3/15/05, Asia Times)

The great slapping sound heard around Washington last week was the shutting mouths of conservative pundits after Hezbollah put half a million supporters in the streets of Beirut March 8. On March 4, the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer bragged of "the dawn of a glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the Middle East". The National Review's John Derbyshire opined prematurely that "this has been a bad few weeks for us pessimists ... with 1989-style demonstrations out in the streets of Beirut". A prominent Bush detractor, Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, conceded that "Bush is right" and "may change the world". That was then. On March 11, Krauthammer had forgotten about the Middle East and devoted his column to the ethics of frozen embryos.

Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrullah has laid a cuckoo's egg in the nest of US policy, conjuring up the specter of a terrorist democracy. US planners long have worried that Iraq's Islamist al-Da'wa party might find common cause with Hezbollah. With Da'wa chief Ibrahim Jaafari about to become Iraq's prime minister, Lebanese circumstances endanger the entire US venture in Mesopotamia. Bush appears to face a tragic choice: allow Iran to become a nuclear power with a veto on the ground in Lebanon as well as Iraq, or use force against Iran and its supporters. Unless Bush is willing to use (or permit Israel to use) nuclear weapons, the second alternative is next to unworkable. If he chooses the first alternative, the odds that radical Islam will triumph over the West rise sharply.

There is a third alternative, albeit one too terrible to enter into Washington's present consideration, which I will sketch out below.

Civil war in either Lebanon or Iraq might turn into a single conflict, given the Islamist parties' theological and Iran-centered political connections. Nasrullah's control of facts on the ground leaves Washington in apparent Zugzwang, a position in which a chess player is compelled to move, and any move loses. That is why Washington is talking out of both sides of its mouth about Hezbollah. Steven R Weisman quoted an unnamed US official in the March 10 New York Times to the effect that Washington was willing to accept Hezbollah into the Lebanese mainstream: "Hezbollah has American blood on its hands. They are in the same category as al-Qaeda. The administration has an absolute aversion to admitting that Hezbollah has a role to play in Lebanon, but that is the path we're going down."

Spengler probably wishes today, as however many more rallied in Beirut than had at the Hezbollah gathering, that he'd waited a while before wtining on the topic, but there was another event on the ground this weekend that, while less noticed, was more revelatory, Hamas, Fatah backers fight over elections (NASSER SHIYOUKHI, 3/14/05, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Hundreds of youths supporting the militant Hamas group clashed with backers of Mahmoud Abbas' ruling Fatah party on Sunday, injuring at least nine people, during a Hamas campaign rally for student council elections.

The brawl erupted when several hundred Fatah supporters at Hebron University in the West Bank started shouting their own party's slogans in the midst of a large Hamas rally. Harsh words erupted into a fight, sending photographers and cameramen at the scene running for cover.

Student supporters of the militant Islamic Jihad intervened, acting as a buffer and eventually ending the fight.

Hospital officials said at least nine people were injured, including an Agence France Press photographer who received five stitches in the head.

Hamas, the largest and most powerful Palestinian militant group, has emerged as a key player in Palestinian politics. A decision by the group to participate in upcoming Palestinian parliamentary elections has Fatah supporters concerned the Islamic group could defeat them.

Let folks run their own affairs and their struggles with each other will dwarf their concerns over external matters. A Hezbollah trying to run a country will have little time for Israel, just as Fatah and Hamas have shown.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 14, 2005 5:47 PM