Posted on 08/16/2006 7:19:55 AM PDT by presidio9
FIVE weeks have passed since the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers provoked Israel to launch its most unsatisfactory military operation in 58 years. What problem has been solved, or even ameliorated? Hezbollah, often using World War II-vintage rockets, has demonstrated the inadequacy of Israel's policy of unilateral disengagement - from Lebanon, Gaza, much of the West Bank - behind a fence. Hezbollah has willingly suffered (temporary) military diminution in exchange for enormous political enlargement. Hitherto, Hezbollah in Lebanon was a "state within a state." Henceforth, the Lebanese state may be an appendage of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is an army that, having frustrated the regional superpower, suddenly embodies, as no Arab state ever has, Arab valor vindicated in combat with Israel.
The "new Middle East," the "birth pangs" of which we supposedly are witnessing, reflects the region's oldest tradition, the tribalism that preceded nations. The faux and disintegrating nation of Iraq, from which the middle class, the hope of stability, is fleeing, has experienced in these five weeks many more violent deaths than have occurred in Lebanon and Israel. U.S. Gen. George Casey says 60 percent of Iraqis recently killed are victims of Shiite death squads. Some are associated with the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, which resembles a terrorist organization.
The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented 9/11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
F* George Will. Another moderate gone over to the darkside.
More blather from a confirmed Bush-hater. George Will is like that old pair of shoes in the closet, they might still look ok from the outside, but when you try to wear them, you're reminded that they never did fit right, they make your feet hurt, and now, many years later, they STINK.
I think George Will has been hit on the head by one too many foul balls. He misses the entire point about law enforcement versus military responses to terrorism - what can be done against those plotting to attack you. If we are at war, we can go to extraordinary steps against terror cells that we could not do in a law enforcement footing. And we can take actions such as killing an al Qaeda big with a Hellfire in Yemen fired from a UAV - something that is outside the normal realm of law enforcement.
Will should stick to his masturbatory ruminations on sabermetrics.
I imagine that better law enforcement would have helped Israel defeat Hezbollah and throw them out of Lebanon. Yup. Get 'er done!
Mr. Will, your headline should be the first clue that your premise must, by definition, be flawed. I will agree that it is still 4th and 20 and we're out of field goal range, but it was 4th and 30 before all this started.
Will must have drank the same Kool Aid that Huffington and Buchanan drank...they all seem to have dove into deep end that had no water in it...
I can't get past the first three words of the headline.
Will thinks that Ahmandinjad understands Nash's equilibrium.
OH, I thought I was going to read a joke..... oh, it is a joke.
Whew georgie will, I think that bow-tie you wear chokes the blood flow to your cerebellum, that or your bosses at the Wash Compost have been hitting you on the head with a constant stream of foul balls.
Mr. Will's contribution on this point would, it seems to me, be far more useful if he were trying to capture this one comment and divorce it from the rest of Mr. Kerry's fulminations. It is no help that Kerry's clock was right on this point given he's utterly stopped on every other one.
I would like to think that we could accept this point and incorporate it in our own right-minded analysis, not have to bear up with snide backtalk showing that there's this side and that one and we all are instructed to know that 'they' could never be right, even by accident.
Now, I'm pretty sure Kerry wandered onto this point accidentally and only because the debate happened to develop along the right lines. He's given a lot more credit for brains, insight and sensibility than he's ever shown, at least for any stretch of time. So, I'm also pretty sure he'd disavow the comment or at least contradict it, even though it is palpably sensible and could be a valid strategy, down the line.
What it is not is valid right now. If cops were the answer in Iraq, then there wouldn't be so many deadly bombings at, in and near police stations there. Clearly, this is still a war, even if George Will and John Kerry agree the enemy is too amorphous to apply standard military techniques against.
So, a very intelligent man makes a subtle point and, while it would be preferable if every sensible point could be raised at any time, this one is only going to increase the muddle that is this debate, not clarify it.
So I don't thank George Will for his current insights.
Law enforcement is defense. We can't remain on defense or the problem will only grow. The military is the offense. We can't win the game with only defense. The Bush approach (and the correct approach, IMO) is that we have the accelerate change in that region and get change the culture of death in the mideast. Otherwise, we'll be playing this game with defense only for the next 100+ years.
I had trouble with that, too. I'm sooooo sick and tired of Dems screeching 'coulda woulda shoulda.' What a collosal waste of time and hot air. F*in GET 'R DONE already...get Iran out of the picture before we regret it.
I guaranty you that Pakistan would not be pursuing the "law enforcement approach" at all but for the fact that GW Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq with the US military.
The military is needed to put pressure on these terrorist tolerating muslim nations.
George Will - Beltway Fever strikes again!
Who suggested everything should be bombed by an F-16? No one.
Yeah, sometimes the law enforcement appraoch is better, sometimes it's not. What a dumb-@ss.
Precisely. . . These nitpickers have a revelation that law enforcement is the key to success as if there are no law enforcement components involved right now. The FBI is not involved with the global war on terrorism! (/sarc)
Is it me, or did anybody else notice the upsurge in leftist BS posing as 'moderating voices' in today's press? (Obama, Will, and Lamont)
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