Yesterday my paranoid side was active when I said, concerning Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s trip to Lebanon and Israel, “The fix is in.”
Well, today’s hot-off-the-presses AP story doesn’t do anything to ease my paranoia:
The United States has given Israeli forces between 10 and 14 days to finish dealing Hezbollah “a strategic blow,” a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official told FOX News, as both Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas continued to volley rockets across the Lebanon-Israel border.
Mr. Hyde says:
A deal has been cut. Saudi Arabia’s hand was hovering over the oil spigot, so Israel’s chain has been duly yanked tight around its neck.If he’s right, then Hizbullah will live to fight another day, and that is a huge, huge, victory for Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Lebanon will be completely in his thrall after all the dust settles.
And we, the defenders of Western Civilization, will live to rue the day that we did not give Israel a chance to finish the job.
20 comments:
I sympathize with your Jeckyll-and-Hyde problem. I feel the same way about Arab democracy. In my more optimistic moments (say, after reading the Lebanese secularist Fouad Ajami's latest book), I think that the mayhem in Iraq is the work of a desperate minority, found among Sunni and Shia alike, and that the Fukuyama tide of history will sweep the Arabs up too. Then I find myself thinking, often after that day's dispatches from Iraq have come in, that they simply can't do consensual government over there, and are doomed to an Algerian sort of nightmare.
Baron,
Relax. Just yesterday the IDF said it needs ten days to finish the job. Yes, I know, I picked that claim apart. But they could always know something I don't.
DEBKAfile claimed yesterday that the US is ticked at Israel because they're not hitting Hezbullah hard enough and not finishing them off quickly enough, so they are trying to put pressure on the IDF to get the job done already. So who knows what's really going on?
Not me. That's why speculating on this sort of thing is such a challenge.
Carl, I want you to be right.
Everyone, please help me silence my inner cynic!
Carl I too hope you're right... it seems like Israel is running out of friends... and everybody is wanting to return to the intollerable status quo!
Whatever is said in public is smoke
It seems to me that Israel's biggest problem now is not so much the US and the rest of the world, but the lefty cowards in their own government.
Carl...I hope you're right too. I heard an Israeli man interviewed last night on Hugh Hewitt's show and he was PO'd. He called the men in charge the 3 stooges and is frustrated and angry that the IDF isn't going in and hitting hard. I wish they would too. A swift, but stunning defeat of Hezbollah is what we all need.
Unfortunately it is going to take something much bigger than 9/11 to wake the West up and wage total war against islamofacism. Right now I think a dozen of our embassies could get taken out and not much would change and other than chest thumping and yelling and some token strikes. I certainly would not be at all discouraged if I were a terrorist and certainly not afraid of the West. Hizbullah will fully reconsituted militarily in a year's time - all they have to is squeeze and extort the Lebanese, and of course they will get some help from Syria and Iran. The next time around they will have biochemical agents to unleash on Israel and the same old concern will be over muslim civilian deaths. Wait until Iran gets its nukes, then the real fun begins.
Lord, this is depressing. Remember — it's years ago now — when we imagined we had a president with some steel in his spine, who talked tough and backed it with action, who was inner directed and not blown about by the winds of international criticism? I think that's how G.W. Bush once actually imagined himself, and he tried to play the role, but after a few months he just wasn't up to it.
Instead, Bush turns out to be Bill Clinton redux. He's all slogans and sound bites, vote buying and fawning over "victim" groups, Israel's right to exist but let's get this peace process thing back on the rails, God Bless America but borders, what borders?
I, too, would like to believe our grand pooh-bahs are playing some deep game that will sort out Islamic terrorism once for all while humming the politically correct tune for the sake of diplomacy. Nothing gives me confidence that's what's happening, though. I greatly fear this government is so divided among itself in a country divided among itself that it simply reacts to events from day to day as if they were tablets on Mount Sinai or opinion polls.
I wonder, would it take ten days to get one nuke off over Tehran?
See, that would end the whole damn show.
Not that anyone has the b*lls to do it.....
Sorry Baron, we cynics have to stick together!
I hate to say it but I was a cynic from the start. I knew that dollars would win the day, as they usually do.
But there is a little tiny bit of me that hopes that this is all dis-information and that Israel has big plans for the Hez. and Syria.
Pass the bottle...
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
goesh:
Unfortunately it is going to take something much bigger than 9/11 to wake the West up and wage total war against islamofacism.
If Europe woke up today, it would be too late, as I think the Islamofascist cancer has spread too widely to be extracted without killing the host.
But if 9/11, 3/11, 7/7 and 7/11 did not wake up Europe, I think nothing will, not even an atomic attack. If Spain is typical of Western Europe, then in fact, the worse the attack, the quicker the surrender to Sharia Law will come.
I'm with Mark Steyn on this one -- if there is a European reaction to Islamism, the reaction itself will be run by extremists.
So even if Europe wins, it loses.
Zerosumgame,
Spain is not typical of Europe, her government is one one end of the extreme of Europe, where Denmark is at the other end of the spectrum... judging the rest of Europe by the extremes is rather pointless and self-deceiving!
Whether Europe will wake in time to stop the Islamo-madness before war or civil-war breaks out is doubtful, given the delusions about Islam prevailing at most European governments, whether the European reaction when it comes will be in the form of a totalitarian reaction is uncertain, but it is a danger -- but that's not a danger that's unique to Europe. In many ways the situation in Europe is much the same as pre-WWII, where nobody wanted another war and the peace movements were rather strong, trying to prevent war at all costs -- demonizing those that saw clearly that war was coming while doling out appeasement, until the enemy crossed one line too many. Same thing will happen again, there will not be a decisive action before one too many lines have been crossed... and when that happens things are going to get ugly!
But while Europe might be sleeping, it's not sleeping alone... the situation in the US is not that different than it is in Europe and can change fast depending on the election results!
Zonka:
In many ways the situation in Europe is much the same as pre-WWII, where nobody wanted another war and the peace movements were rather strong, trying to prevent war at all costs -- demonizing those that saw clearly that war was coming while doling out appeasement, until the enemy crossed one line too many.
There are two major difference between the Aryan Nazis of the 1930s and the Islamo-Nazis of today, both of which make the Islamonazis even more dangerous.
1) The atomic bomb.
2) Their willingness to die for their hate, and take millions of even their own Muslims to death with them in their warped bid for world domination.
But while Europe might be sleeping, it's not sleeping alone... the situation in the US is not that different than it is in Europe and can change fast depending on the election results!
I largely agree with you. So much so, in fact, that I think if the Democrats win the Presidency in 2008, we may not see a 2012 election.
I remember that Reagan held Israel back from finishing Arafat off ... only to allow Arafat to live and rule over PA controlled areas--thus proving that terrorism works. Consequently, we got far more terrorism.
Now Bush is going to stop Israel from finishing off Hezbollah! Indeed, Nasrallah will be a hero when Israel recedes to her border. And Iran will see that the West is a paper tiger if given time.
Sometime I throw my hands up and say "with Republicans like these who needs Democrats." If only Republicans could be tough on Islamists as they were on Communists ...
If only Republicans could be tough on Islamists as they were on Communists ...
Actually, they were NOT tough on Communists until Reagan. Kennedy and Johnson were tougher in fighting Communism than either Eisenhower or Nixon.
And I'm a lifelong Republican.
Zerosumgame wrote:
There are two major difference between the Aryan Nazis of the 1930s and the Islamo-Nazis of today, both of which make the Islamonazis even more dangerous.
1) The atomic bomb.
2) Their willingness to die for their hate, and take millions of even their own Muslims to death with them in their warped bid for world domination.
Not entirely true! Even in a worst case scenario the nuclear arsenal of the muslim world is very limited, and while good as a terror-threat it's a one shot weapon, meaning that they'll be able to use nuclear weapons exactly once, before being obliterated! Apart from the few nukes that the Islamic world possesses, their societies and infrastructure is to put it mildly lacking. The German Nazi regime, had a well functioning industry, military and infrastructure and in stratetic terms were a much more formidable enemy than the whole Islamic world as of today, nukes included.
Zonka
Not entirely true! Even in a worst case scenario the nuclear arsenal of the muslim world is very limited, and while good as a terror-threat it's a one shot weapon, meaning that they'll be able to use nuclear weapons exactly once, before being obliterated!
That "one-shot" deal of yours would be enough to create a second Holocaust, destroy Israel, and deal Judaism a final death blow. Judaism could not survive two Holocausts within 100 years.
Beyond that, once Iran got the bomb, she would probably develop a nuclear capability to build 3-5 weapons a year. She would only need one to exterminate us Jews. What would she do with the others?
And we probably would not even get to that stage. If Israel has a nuclear arsenal of the size that she is widely believed to have, an Israel in her "death throes" would almost certainly obliterate the entire Middle East, including oil and gas fields.
That wouldn't leave a very nice world to live in, would it?
You might reflect that one of the biggest appeasers of Islamic extremists is a certain Tony Blair.
http://tinyurl.com/lz7pe
It has become clear that the FCO's policy extends not only to the encouragement of the South Asian Maududi-ists, but to the Muslim Brotherhood. John Ware reported yesterday that the FCO subsidised a Muslim Brotherhood conference in Istanbul:
Sheikh Qaradawi and his wife were amongst 180 Muslim leaders from Europe, Egypt and Saudi Arabia flown by the Foreign office to the Turkish capital Istanbul for a conference called "Muslims in Europe" held in a luxury hotel.
A Foreign Office spokesman said the estimated £300,000 cost of the conference was "about right."
He said the event was "facilitated" by the Foreign Office's department "Engaging with the Islamic World" headed by Frances Guy, former British ambassador to Yemen.
The depth of unhappiness with the pro-Islamist policy within the FCO can be gauged by the degree of enthusiastic leaking over the last year in the direction of Martin Bright: now the political editor of the New Statesman. Martin Bright has turned this information into a Channel 4 documentary, "Who Speaks for Muslims" which will be shown this Friday at 7:30 p.m. He has also published an article for the Cameronian think tank, the Policy Exchange: When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries.
Zero, you forget, most countries in western europe have lived with a low level of terrorism for the last 50 years, on and off. The scale of London and Madrid wasn't actually that huge in terms of things blown up and, though the fact that people were killed should have made some impact, ultimately the larger fact that terrorists in various forms have been setting very large bombs in this country, and other countries, since the late 1950s rather mitigates against an attack being a particular shock to us. It's a sad thing, to be so desensitised to this sort of thing, but that's how we are. It'll take something like the demolition of the eifel tower or a nuke over berlin, I think.
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