Wow, they're polling almost as well among the Lebanese as Saddam Hussein did among Iraqis when he ruled over them.

Well, they're also killing Hezbollah's members and destroying its rockets. The Israelis might think that that counts for something.

We had better not send those aircraft carriers to Midway: it might make the Japanese angry; they might even hate us.

Why? What are a few young nuts and some armaments?

Oh jeez. Oj you're not actually falling for the "it's creating more terrorists" version 2.billion?

The Shia will be free to govern south Lebanon when Israel is gone. They may even call their gvt Hizbullah. What they may not do however is consist entirely of an armed proxy for Iran, with tens of thousands of missiles aimed at Israel and cross border raids to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

Lou:

The difference, of course, is that Japan was no threat, but we wanted to regime change them for ideological reasons. It was really a no lose situation for us. Israel, on the other hand, is truly threatened by radicalized young Muslim men but is helping create them.

A few young nuts? Uh-huh. No, rather highly trained military units, sophisticated bunkers and communications/spying equipment, etc.

Belmot has quite a good post on this today. It took a decade and more for the Iranians to build HB up to what it is today. It'll take a few weeks for Israel to move them back to square one. Perhaps Israel will have to do it all over again in another 10 years, but I doubt it. By then the mullahs will be out, as will the chinless physician in Damascus.

Jim:

No, not more terrorists. It does give them reason to hate Israel. When they have their state they'll have every right to re-arm openly.

They already hate them and will continue to hate them with a homicidal intensity. I know, 'the legacy of imperialism' makes them nutty. One would need to think mighty highly of themselves before believing that they have the power to create monsters were none exist. Occasionally, murder and mayhem can be traced to nothing but the influence of mindless evil.

They've had their state since Israel left. The Beirut gvt left them to their own devices. They chose to remain the creature of Iran. Israel let Iran and Syria arm them. They finally called no mas at explicit acts of war.

If HB wanted to be left alone, they wanted have crossed the border to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

We wouldn't tolerate Canukistani military members crossing our border to kidnap our soldiers.

Why should Israel?

This is the same old song and dance. The West, whether Israel or the US can't do this that or the other b/c it will "create more terrorists".

Nonsense.

There's an article in the Brit Spectator, hardly an uncritical supporter of the war on terror, that draws precisely the opposite conclusions to the CSM -- that the rest of Lebanon blames HB, not Israel.

Jim:

To the contrary, Israel certainly can do what it's doing and is amply justified in doing so--it is idiotic, not wrong.

By the way,oj, it hardly matters whether Japan was a threat in an existential way if they believed they were a threat and were willing to act on it. Your retroactive, deterministic wisdom is getting played, tired.

No one believed they were a threat, least of all the Japanese, especially after their one-off shot failed so spectacularly.

If your assumptions are correct, then how do you explain the abscense of new generations of Nazis in Germany and extreme militarists in Japan.

The answer might be the unconditional destruction of both regimes!

Military solutions precede succesful political solutions.

OJ,

This is another one of you "we all ought to be made to wear helmets in our living rooms if it saves even one life" arguments. How do you stumble across these rhetorical curiosities?

"Don't make the Nazi savages mad"?? Am I a racist wahoo to think that sort of, I dunno, wussy? Don't you think the jew-hating imams have a little to do with foster jew-hatery? How about UN funding and protection for jew-haters?

Jew-killing is not sport. Kill the jew-killers. It's pretty simple out here in wahoo-land. Damascus can wait a few weeks.

Now return your fetal position and think this one through.

'78 worked.

Yes, if a whole series of things that were true of Nazi Germany and aren't true of the Shi'a of Lebanon were true then you might get a post-WWII effect:

(1) If Shi'ism were a marginal scientific rationalist theory incapable of engendering long term support, rather than a great religion, you might stamp it out.

(2) If the Shi'a of Lebanon were to attack a number of great powers such that a consensus were created to put them down, rather than having a border dispute and left over issues with Israel and a reasonable desire to separate themselves from the North.

(3) If Israel were going to kill the same percentage of Lebanese that the Allies killed Germans and destroy the cities and infrastructure as thoroughly.

(4) If a friendly Sunni totalitarian power could be convinced to take half the population and subject them to totalitarian rule in perpetuity and, at the same time, serve as a seeming existential threat to both the Shi'a and the Israelis, such that they were forced to forget their own differences post haste.

Instead we have a situation where a people bound by a great religion are demanding political rights that we all recognize as legitimate. They're a nuisance but not a military threat to anyone. The Isaraelis have neither the stomach to kill them in the numbers that y'all require nor the international imprimatur. And building up a Sunni power to re-oppress the Shi'a and threaten the existence of Israel doesn't seem to be in the offing.

You only have everything about the comparison wrong.

Palm:

Sure that could possibly work. But this is reality, not your dreams. The Israelis aren't going to kill much of anyone. And remember, Saddam tried killing them into submission with rather poor results. Think Israel can be more brutal?

Note to that I'm making the opposite of the hysterical helmet argument. Hezbollah is low hanging fruit and there was no point to these attacks given how little threat they posed and what a de facto ally they are.

Slightly OT - was listening to the usual "it's Israel's fault" from a coworker when CNN had a statement that over 150-200 rockets have been fired by Hezbollah into Israel in the past week. All of the philosophical stuff above is nice but rockets are raining down on you you need to act.

Didn't we hear the same claim during the recent intifada, that Israeli actions were creating more terrorists?

In the real world, the Palestinians eventually ran out of loonies. Presumably something similar will happen in Lebanon.

The problem, as I've pointed out before, following Fuad Ajami and others, is that the HB are not a nationalist movement for the Shia community in S. Lebanon.

I have no problem with the Shia. They probably ought to have their own state. Heck, a whole bunch of Shia states across the region.

The problem for them, however, as with the Sunni, the vast majority of whom I don't have anything against either, is that a bunch of thuggish madmen are calling a helluva of lot of the shots.

In this case, it's the Iranian mullahs, who couldn't care less about the Lebanese Shia.

Iran has to be driven from the S. Lebanon. That is why HB as it exists now must be smashed. And why they will be smashed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've read over the years, here's what American foreign policy should be and have been, according to OJ:

--Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan: not a threat. (Was our reaction to the whole Pearl Harbor thing "disproportionate"?)

--USSR in the '50s: a huge threat, we should have started a nuclear war to stop it then. (Apparently this would not have created any new, young Communists.)

--Islamic law anywhere/everywhere: not a threat. (Suggested slogan: "Don't worry, it's Abrahamic!™")

--Middle East, now: Take out Syria and Iran. (Oddly, this creates no new terrorists, unlike what Israel is doing.) Or do we ally with Iran, since they're Shias? I could swear I've read both.

--North Korea: Another war we should start ASAP. (Again, the PR backlash is inconsequential.)

All this doesn't add up for me. Is OJ just trolling his own blog to boost ad revenue or something...?

Pap:

Don't be silly--the USSR was never a threat. Nor are Syria or North Korea. We should just change all regimes that oppress their own people.

Jim:

Rather they are the vehicle of the Shi'as national aspirations, the leadership just has other, unpopular, goals in mind too. Forcing a nation upon them would restrict their capacity to pursue the other ends.

Joseph:

Israel's adventures in Palestine drove a secular rationalist party that the Israelis preferred dealing with from power and replaced it with an Islamist one. That was a very good thing, but the opposite of what Israel wanted.

papya-

The killing and persecution witin the USSR and it's satelites had to end because it was not liberal democracy. It was just a question of when and how many casualties. So, it was never a threat. Looking back it just so obvious. Islamic theocracies will be good because it is Abrahamic, you know, like the Judeo-Christian tradition from which the classically liberal, natural law philosophy of the west became fertile ground for the development of the American take on the British tradition. There are no ideological differences between the American Purtitan settlers and the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia, for example, and the Shia messianism will lead the reforamtion of Islamic protestantism.It's all been determined by Francis Fukuyama and the dialectic.

"Forcing a nation on them would restrict their capacity to pursue other ends."

Like it has with North Korea???? Like it has with Iran????

Israel is sure not acting as if this is an existential crisis, which makes one wonder what would be.

Palm:

North Korea is well-contained. Iran shouldn't be until all the Shi'a have states.

But the better analogy is to Palestine, which went quiet when Sharon started forcing a state on them.

b:

Existential? Hezbollah is no more than an annoyance, which is why the response was foolish.

An opponent that can (and will) rain missiles down upon virtually all of your territory is "an annoyance"?

Hezbollah is, for all intents and purposes, an arm of the Iranian military.

Yes, they're also the representative of Lebanese Shi'a popular will. The two aren't mutually exclusive. Likewise, Israel is just an American client state.

David: Indeed, and check this out from The Washington Times (via Hugh Hewitt):

"Intelligence reports indicate the leader of Hezbollah is hiding in a foreign mission in Beirut, possibly the Iranian Embassy, according to U.S. and Israeli officials...If confirmed, the reports could lead to an Israeli air strike on the embassy, possibly leading to a widening of the conflict, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Foreign embassies are sovereign territory and an attack on an embassy could be considered an act of war."

I couldn't decide if that last line made me want to laugh or cry...

OJ: Which is why it's nuts to say that Israel, Iran and the US have common ends.

b: Unlike, say, shooting missiles at the actual sovereign territory.

My mistake. Looking back in the archives, I see that you have advocated nuking the Soviets early on, but at the same time claimed they weren't a threat to us. Silly me, I tend to think of nukes as the last resort means of national defense, not handy tools for no-muss no-fuss regime change....

David:

Iran has an interest in seeing the historically oppressed Shi'a get their own states. So do we. The similarities in theology among Jews, Christians and the Shi'a make us all natural democrats, unlike the Sunni. Ultimately the Middle East just boils down to pushing Sunni Arabs to liberalize as non-Arab Sunni have. The rest is just tensions whipped up by a history of dysfunction.

Pap:

Yes, yours is a morally indefensible position. Nukes should be the first resort because they are dispositive and best save lives and money, and preserve the domestic culture.

David: Actually, I was thinking more along the lines that it would take some serious, serious chutzpah for the current President of Iran to act particularly outraged at an attack on an embassy...

Papaya: think of how far ahead we'd be if only we'd nuked Hanover...

The rest is just tensions whipped up by a history of dysfunction.

Even if that were true, and didn't ignore the reality of Iran, so what? The source of the tensions don't matter as much as dealing with them.

The incidental tensions will take care of themselves when the underlying problems are dealt with.

Yes, yours is a morally indefensible position. Nukes should be the first resort because they are dispositive and best save lives and money, and preserve the domestic culture.

Now I'm sure I've gone through the looking glass....