How Bush Plans to Build an Arab "Umbrella" Against Hizballah



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Time

"By Mike Allen
Although some conservatives have been fretting that Lebanese rocket fire and Israeli warplanes are making President Bush look helpless, administration officials revealed to TIME today that they have plans to harness the chaos as a "leadership moment" for Bush that could wind up helping his flagging goal of transforming the Middle East.

These officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will leave Sunday night for a week of diplomacy in the region and will go with the modest goal of forming an "umbrella of Arab allies" in opposition to the militant group Hizballah that incited the conflagration by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers.

"She's not going to come home with a ceasefire, but stronger ties to the Arab world," an administration official said. "It's going to allow us to say that America isn't going to put up with this and we have Arab friends that are against you terrorists. What we want is our Arab allies standing against Hizballah and against Iran, since there is no one who doesn't think Iran is behind this. We're going to say to Hizballah and the terrorist groups, 'This will not stand.' That is the way to bring real change to the Middle East. If you just have a ceasefire, then soon or later, they go back to fighting.""

"Peace" movements create more war: Rhetoric vs. Reality...



















hat tip to conservative blog therapy

"via-
Thomas Sowell.

.. Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.

Was World War II ended by cease-fires or by annihilating much of Germany and Japan? Make no mistake about it, innocent civilians died in the process. Indeed, American prisoners of war died when we bombed Germany.

There is a reason why General Sherman said "war is hell" more than a century ago. But he helped end the Civil War with his devastating march through Georgia -- not by cease fires or bowing to "world opinion" and there were no corrupt busybodies like the United Nations to demand replacing military force with diplomacy.

There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.

"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.

That has been a formula for never-ending attacks on Israel in the Middle East. The disastrous track record of that approach extends to other times and places -- but who looks at track records? ..."

Other fronts of WWIII
The Islamofascists have moved on Somalia.
The Somalian government has asked the Ethiopiam army to come and help them


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AP

"An Islamic gunman crosses a street near Bermuda village in central Mogadishu on July 18. Somalia's powerful Islamist movement has vowed a fight to the death against Ethiopian troops who have moved into the town of Baidoa to protect the country's weak government.(AFP/File)"

Lebanon: The Only Exit Strategy
Charles puts it in perspective in this excellant column.
Make sure you read the whole column.


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washingtonpost.com

"There is crisis and there is opportunity. Amid the general wringing of hands over the seemingly endless and escalating Israel-Hezbollah fighting, everyone asks: Where will it end?

The answer, blindingly clear, begins with understanding that this crisis represents a rare, perhaps irreproducible, opportunity.

Every important party in the region and in the world, except the radical Islamists in Tehran and their clients in Damascus, wants Hezbollah disarmed and removed from south Lebanon so that it is no longer able to destabilize the peace of both Lebanon and the broader Middle East.

Which parties? Start with the great powers. In September 2004 they passed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, demanding that Hezbollah disarm and allow the Lebanese army to take back control of south Lebanon.

The resolution enjoyed the sponsorship of the United States and, yes, France. As the former mandatory power in Lebanon, France was important in helping the Lebanese expel Syria during last year's Cedar Revolution, but it understands that Lebanon's independence and security are forfeit so long as Hezbollah -- a lawless, terrorist, private militia answering to Syria and Iran -- occupies south Lebanon as a rogue mini-state.

Then there are the Arabs, beginning with the Lebanese who want Hezbollah out. The majority of Lebanese -- Christian, Druze, Sunni Muslim and secular -- bitterly resent their country's being hijacked by Hezbollah and turned into a war zone. And in the name of what Lebanese interest? Israel evacuated every square inch of Lebanon six years ago.

The other Arabs have spoken, too. In a stunning development, the 22-member Arab League criticized Hezbollah for provoking the current crisis. It is unprecedented for the Arab League to criticize any Arab party while it is actively engaged in hostilities with Israel. But the Arab states know that Hezbollah, a Shiite militia in the service of Persian Iran, is a threat not just to Lebanon but to them as well. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have openly criticized Hezbollah for starting a war on what is essentially Iran's timetable (to distract attention from Iran's pending referral to the Security Council for sanctions over its nuclear program). They are far more worried about Iran and its proxies than about Israel. They are therefore eager to see Hezbollah disarmed and defanged.

Fine. Everyone agrees it must be done. But who to do it? No one. The Lebanese are too weak. The Europeans don't invade anyone. After its bitter experience of 20 years ago, the United States has a Lebanon allergy. And Israel could not act out of the blue because it would immediately have been branded the aggressor and forced to retreat."

Hizbullah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, spoke for the first Thursday since the beginning of the week, saying Hizbullah's entire infrastructure and leadership hierarchy were still intact and functional.



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mideast.jpost.com

""I can confirm without exaggerating or using psychological warfare, that we have not been harmed," he said, referring to the strike.

"Hizbullah has so far stood fast, absorbed the strike and has retaken the initiative and made the surprises that it had promised, and there are more surprises," he said, warning that a Hizbullah defeat would be "a defeat for the entire Islamic nation.""

Ben Stein lets us chimes in.
the MSM are painting hezbollah as a political group that builds homes and gives money to the poor. Sure, they have a militant wing but they do good things. Watching CNN we get a warm fuzzy feeling when we think of hezbollah.


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American spectator

"Hezbollah are the most vicious killers imaginable. They killed 283 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. They kicked a helpless Navy man, Robert Stetham, to death on a hijacked airliner. They have killed and mailed U.S. embassy people wherever they could. They blew up a Jewish community center filled with children in Buenos Aires."

Birds of a feather....

John Kerry said....

""They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.""

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said......

""The Zionists think that they are victims of Hitler, but they act like Hitler and behave worse than Genghis Khan.""

LIBERTY

""[T]he argument that those who have declared war on the war policy are really defending America is the worst possible defense...because it violates the very foundation of our liberties, the social contract on which all our liberties depend... [W]e live under rules for adjudicating our differences both in peacetime and in war. Before all the laws that make us who we are is the primary fact that we are nation of laws. Breaking the law does not protect the law. Breaking national security laws betrays the nation; it does not defend it. The government leakers who provided The [New York] Times with the information that won its reporter a Pulitzer prize, are conducting a war against the very system the Times is claiming to defend. This is an unacceptable way to dissent from national policy, and no excuse can be offered for it... Liberals are not defending our constitutional liberties when they betray the contract on which those liberties are based." —David Horowitz "

Kean leads!!
Quinnipiac University poll :
Can a republican with ethics actually win an election for the US Senate in New Jersey?
Kean: 40%

Menendez: 38%



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Quinnipiac

"As more New Jersey voters focus on the Senate race, the gap has closed between the rookie Senator, Robert Menendez, and the challenger who carries one of the great names in state Republican politics, State Sen. Tom Kean," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
"

Gingrich says it's World War III
Why is it so hard to see the truth. It is written in their constitutions to destroy Israel and it is written in their papers of the war to destroy the west and restore the Caliphate. We are attacked all over the world and yet we sit with our heads in the sand refusing to see what is.



from the Seattle times

"Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the Administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III.

He lists wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, this week's bomb attacks in India, North Korean nuclear threats, terrorist arrests and investigations in Florida, Canada and Britain, and violence in Israel and Lebanon as evidence of World War III. He said Bush needs to deliver a speech to Congress and "connect all the dots" for Americans.

He said the reluctance to put those pieces together and see one global conflict is hurting America's interests. He said people, including some in the Bush Administration, who urge a restrained response from Israel are wrong "because they haven't crossed the bridge of realizing this is a war."

"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away:"