Let there be peace in the Mideast -- but not just yet(good synopsis)

Y es, Israel's response to the Hezbollah and Hamas provocations is disproportionate. So what? Wouldn't any Israeli response be disproportionate, given both the asymmetric nature of the terror war and the Jewish state's military might? And just what would a proportionate Israeli response look like?

How is a sovereign state supposed to react when terrorist groups enter its territory and kill and kidnap its soldiers?

How is a nation supposed to react when a terrorist organization that controls a neighboring state's territory fires rockets randomly into its population centers?

Would more United Nations resolutions give much comfort, since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 has required the disarming of Hezbollah in Lebanon since 2004?

Would such grand phrases as "land for peace" have much meaning, since Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in August 2005, dismantling Israeli military bases and expelling thousands of Israeli settlers -- only to see this independent Palestinian territory become a staging area for rocket attacks and the killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers? Or after Israel pulled out of Lebanon in May 2000 -- only to see southern Lebanon become a staging area for missile attacks and the killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers?

Would an immediate cease-fire do anything to enhance Israel's security, since Israelis have learned during the past weeks that Hezbollah missiles provided by Iran and Syria can reach deep into Israel?

Would immediate negotiations -- a new peace process, a new round of shuttle diplomacy, another Camp David or Oslo -- hold much promise, since Israel would be negotiating with enemies who all believe Israel should be wiped off the map?

Would there be much to discuss with an Iran that is pursuing the nuclear capacity to make that vicious wish a reality, an Iran whose president regularly calls into question the Holocaust and the state that grew out of its ashes?

Would a new force of international peacekeepers in southern Lebanon prove a panacea, since the force of U.N. peacekeepers already there -- the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, established in 1978 -- has been worthless in stopping Hezbollah incursions into Israel?

Not until Israel has done all it practically can to wipe out Hezbollah. Not until Iran and Syria understand their proxy attacks have failed utterly.

When will that time come? Sometime after Israel destroys the Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon -- its headquarters, weapons stockpiles and supply networks -- and before Israeli military operations there reach a point of diminishing returns in terms of international and Lebanese opinion. Not a moment sooner, not a moment later.

Meanwhile, Israel should kill all the terrorists and smash all the terrorist weaponry it can. Yes, it will be ugly, because Hezbollah has made victims of innocent Lebanese by hiding its missiles in civilian homes. But what choice does Israel have? Can it sit back and learn to live with a group whose leader calls it a "cancerous body" to be "uprooted" and whose weaponry is more potent and sophisticated than anyone anticipated even a few weeks ago?

Israel didn't start this, but Israel can finish it, and the United States should continue to do nothing to get in its way. Israel's enemies -- Hezbollah, Hamas and their sponsors in Iran and Syria -- are our enemies. Israel's fight against terrorists and their benefactors is our fight. It's time to let Israel fight. Then, it will be time for cease-fires, negotiations and peacekeepers.

A spokesman for Iran's Hezbollah, a group with links to the Lebanese group, told Reuters it was ready to hit Israeli and U.S. interests worldwide. "We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year," Mojtaba Bigdeli said. "They have been trained and they can become fully armed. We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardize Israel and America's interests."

Hezbollah, it seems, realizes that Israel's fight -- the fight forced on Israel -- is our fight, too.

David Reinhard, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8152 or davidreinhard@news.oregonian.com.

The link below will take Freepers to David Reinhard's great editorial re the traitors at the NY Slimes:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1657984/posts

Who died and left you president of the United States? (NYT)
Oregonian ^ | 6-29-06 | David Reinhard, Associate Editor

Posted on 06/29/2006 1:54:16 PM PDT by veronica

Dear Bill Keller:

Remember me? We met in the elevator here at The Oregonian recently. Your decision to expose a secret program to track terrorist funding got me to thinking I had better write and apologize. I don't think I was sufficiently deferential on our brief ride together. I treated you like the executive editor of The New York Times who used to work for The Oregonian. I had no idea I was riding with the man who decides what classified programs will be made public during a war on terror. I had no idea the American people had elected you president and commander in chief.

Yes, I'm being sarcastic. What's that they say -- sarcasm is anger's ugly cousin? I'm angry, Bill.

I get angry when a few unauthorized individuals take it upon themselves to undermine an anti-terror program that even your own paper deems legal and successful. I get angry when the same people decide to blow the lid on a secret program designed to keep Islamic terrorists from killing Americans en masse.

"The disclosure of this program," President Bush said Monday, "is disgraceful."

Strong words, but not strong enough, Bill.

Your decision was contemptible, but your Sunday letter explaining the Times' decision only undermined your case for disclosure.

"It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press . . .," you wrote. "[T]he people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy. . . . They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish."

Too true, but the issue here is your judgment. It would be one thing if you ran this story because the program was illegal, abusive or feckless. Yet your paper established nothing of the kind. In the end, your patronizing and lame letter offered only press-convention bromides ("a matter of public interest").

"Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff -- but it's the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements," you write, after providing a tutorial on how the government only wants the press to publish the official line and the press believes "citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news."

But this is a false and self-serving choice. The issue is your decision to publish classified information that can only aid our enemies. The founders didn't give the media or unnamed sources a license to expose secret national security operations in wartime. They set up a Congress to pass laws against disclosing state secrets and an executive branch to conduct secret operations so the new nation could actually defend itself from enemies, foreign and domestic.

Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff -- but it's the kind of elementary stuff that can get lost in the heat of strong disagreements. And get more people killed in the United States or Iraq.

Not to worry, you tell us, terrorists already know we track their funding, and disclosure won't undercut the program. (Contradictory claims, but what the heck.) You at the Times know better. You know better than government officials who said disclosing the program's methods and means would jeopardize a successful enterprise. You know better than the 9/11 Commission chairmen who urged you not to run the story. Better than Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were briefed on the program. Better than the Supreme Court, which has held since 1976 that bank records are not constitutionally protected. Better than Congress, which established the administrative subpoenas used in this program.

Maybe you do. But whether you do or not, there's no accountability. If you're wrong and we fail to stop a terror plot and people die because of your story, who's going to know, much less hold you accountable? No, the government will be blamed -- oh, happy day, maybe Bush's White House! -- for not connecting dots or crippling terror networks. The Times might even run the kind of editorial it ran on Sept. 24, 2001. Remember? The one that said "much more is needed" to track terror loot, including "greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities"?

Keep up the good work -- for al-Qaida.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.