As Noah pointed out yesterday, Syria is now being credibly accused of shipping Scud missiles with a range of more than 430 miles to Hezbollah, placing Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and the Dimona nuclear power plant inside the kill zone. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri has been forced under duress to visit Damascus and make amends with his father’s assassins, as has Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, effectively terminating whatever independence Lebanon scratched out for itself in 2005. At the same time, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad contemptuously taunts the president of the United States, whom he clearly perceives as a pushover. “American officials bigger than you,” he said of President Obama’s attempts to talk him out of developing nuclear weapons, “more bullying than you, couldn’t do a damn thing, let alone you.”
Yet the Obama administration still seems to think engagement with Syria and the suggestion of possible sanctions against Iran may keep the Middle East from boiling over.
President George W. Bush lost a lot of credibility when the civil war and insurgency in Iraq made a hash of his policy there. It was eventually obvious to just about everyone that something different needed to happen, and fast. Replacing the top brass in the field with General David Petraeus and his like-minded war critics just barely saved Iraq and American interests from total disaster. The president himself never fully recovered.
If Obama’s squishy policies are misguided, as I think they are, it’s less obvious. The Middle East isn’t on fire as it was circa 2005. But it should be apparent that, at some point, all the pressure that’s building up will have to go somewhere. When and how is anyone’s guess, but there’s little chance it’s just going to dissipate or be slowly released during peace talks.
The Iranian-led resistance bloc is becoming better armed and more belligerent by the month. And the next round of conflict could tear up as many as six regions at the same time if everyone pulls out the stops. A missile war sparked between Hezbollah and Israel, for instance, could easily spread to Gaza, Syria, Iran, and even Iraq.
Even if it’s only half as bad as all that, we should still brace ourselves for more mayhem and bloodshed than we saw during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Israelis may show a lot less restraint if skyscrapers in Tel Aviv are exploding. Iran might even fire off some of its own if the leadership thinks Israel lacks the resources or strength to fight on too many fronts. The United States could be drawn in kicking and screaming, but resistance-bloc leaders have every reason to believe it won’t happen, that the U.S. is more likely to zip flex cuffs on Jerusalem.
I’m speculating, of course. The future is forever unknowable, and none of this is inevitable. An unexpected event — such as the overthrow of Ali Khamenei in Tehran — could change everything. A real-world conflict would take on a life of its own anyway that no one could predict or control.
What is clear, however, is that Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah are hurtling ever closer to the brink. They’re acting as though they’re figuratively following Vladimir Lenin’s advice: “Probe with a bayonet. If you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.”
I doubt most residents of South Lebanon believe in their bones that they won the war against Israel in 2006. I’ve been down there several times since. Entire neighborhoods were utterly pulverized. Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, though, has touted his own “divine victory” so many times he may have convinced himself. Even if he knows he lost the last round, he has dug in with a much more formidable arsenal for the next one. As scholar Jonathan Spyer wrote not long ago, Hezbollah is “in a state of rude health. It is brushing aside local foes, marching through the institutions, as tactically agile as it is strategically deluded.”
It is also utterly unhinged ideologically. Let’s not forget what Christopher Hitchens saw at a rally last year in the suburbs south of Beirut commemorating its slain commander Imad Mugniyeh. “A huge poster of a nuclear mushroom cloud surmounts the scene,” he wrote, “with the inscription OH ZIONISTS, IF YOU WANT THIS TYPE OF WAR THEN SO BE IT!”
The Israelis may well decide they’d rather fight a bad war now than a worse one later. Their enemies can afford to lose wars because Israel isn’t out to destroy their countries. No Israeli believes Syria or Iran shouldn’t exist. Israel, meanwhile, can barely afford to lose small wars. And the resistance bloc is boldly threatening and preparing for one of the most ambitious and destructive wars yet.
There’s only so much President Obama can do about this, but he’s lucky, even so, in a small way. The Middle East isn’t burning right now as it was during the Bush years. He can change course without having to pay a butcher’s bill first if he starts thinking seriously about deterrence as well as engagement. Let the resistance bloc see glints of steel once in a while instead of just mush — and not only for the sake of the people who live there. Our own national interests are at stake, and so is his political hide. Iran’s leaders would savor few things more than a second Democratic president’s scalp.
The irony here is that Obama is vulnerable to the same kind of mocking “street theater” that ’60s radicals used with great effect in their attempts to diminish what they believed were the self-satisfied and smug individuals and institutions of their era. (This meme is carried on with somewhat less success by such stalwarts as Al Franken.)
Now, the mantle of self-importance, self-righteous and hyper self-inflated falls on Obama’s shoulders. Proof is not only found in his fatuous rhetoric but also his thin-skin—being ridiculed is simply one thrust that he seems temperamentally unable to parry.
This time, the fun may lie with the Republicans.
If McCain can keep his nerve, he’ll win.
excellent post.
“If McCain can keep his nerve, he’ll win.”
The odds are in John McCain’s favor. He should easily win by a minimum of five percentage points. And yes, he merely needs to keep his nerve. The charges of racism will likely increase as the Anointed One’s poll numbers continue to drop.
I would just add that McCain would be keeping his “vision” It is ironic that everything Obama claimed to be, we can see in McCain. Independent, bi-partisan, a leader, strong values, clear thinking, able to change strategy. If you ruffle one of Obama’s feathers, his campaign retaliates with “you must be a racist, old, forgetful alte cocker” Not going to work.
After making a lot of initial mistakes, this is truly McCain’s election surge, and I believe he can take it to a Nov victory.
I want to see McCain and his surrogates hit Obama hard on his unwillingness to meet McCain — or reporters, for that matter — in an open, uncontrolled forum. He won’t do town halls, he won’t do unmoderated debates, he won’t even do press conferences, for God’s sake!
Lindsey Graham is completely right, the Obama camp is trying to run out the clock. McCain needs to emphasize that if Obama is afraid of John McCain, how is he going to deal with Ahmadinejad?
David Gergen said that he from is from the south and that everyone in the south knows that when McCain’s use of “The One” is code word for uppity. Is this true or is this guy so in the tank that he is delusional?
micheal — wow that sounds delusional to me. “We are the ONES we have been waiting for????” — that would kind of make him the ONE no (or at least ONE of the ONES)? And actually one would think that BO is the opposite of “uppity” in any event — he seems to go out of his way to attempt to please everyone — if he thinks it will help him further his career.
Though Oprah was unlikely the first, the very dramatically introduced Obama as “the one” around the time she first began appearing for him publicly.
Obviously Oprah is a racist and thinks Obama’s uppity. Very sad. I’d kind of thought it came from THE MATRIX, in which Keanu Reeves was frequently referred to as the Uppity.
Senator Obama has used his entire political life using racial politics. There is no question that he has and will continue to use race throughout this presidential campaign.
McCain has obviously scored a couple on this. The Celeb ad got BHO to make an unforced error in his response.
I’m hoping the timing of the Celeb ad was especially shrewd. We’re on the eve 75K cheering Obamabots in Denver. The ad hopefully has inoculated people against those images and the accompanying press adoration.
I’m hoping against hope that the post-Denver bounce will be small, and as short lived as the world tour bounce.
rk is right. If the opposition isn’t complaining about your campaign ads, you’re not doing it right. It’s when McCain’s ads score points that the Obama Defender Group gets its panties in a wad.
We should really take advice on Republican campaign ads from Democrats and the liberal MSM?
Rk,
I completely agree. The timing on the ads were amazing. I am surprised that Obama just didn’t laugh it off, and move on to the issues. He could have said, “yeah, that is a funny ad, but I do want to talk about issues”
It just shows how defensive Obama feels about his inexperience. Since the McCain camp’s concept of celebrity has now settled in, the convention is going to play right into their hand.
Such a great move.
Er – the One, also Neo, which is of course an anagram for One, which must mean that NeoConservatives are uppity conservatives, at least in the South among science fiction fans. Considering what a huge movie THE MATRIX was at the time that Neo-Conservatives were taking over the universe and enforcing their dual loyalties, maybe we have to conclude, sadly, that the dastardly McCain Campaign has been trying to tie Obama subliminally to NeoConservatives.
Maybe Gergen just meant that in the South any criticism of any person of high melanin with reference to being “the one” is an uppity-ism. “Aren’t you the one?” Maybe. I’m only Southern Californian, so I don’t know how Southernish that sounds. Where is Flannery O’Connor now that we need her?
I am from the South, and that theory is so stupid. The Left ran with this messianic concept, and it has just fallen apart completely. Where to lay the blame? Self-introspection? Maybe a 1 year Senator can not effect the levels of the oceans. Nope, of course The Left points to the backwards hicks of the South, and finds coded racism in the humorous criticism of their own false messianism. It is a really sad sight. Blame the other is not an American trademark. Unless you are in the “Deep Left”
Jonas is correct. David Rodham Hussein Gergen is grasping at straws. If anything, Republicans are portrayed by the Democrats and the media as the “other” — as Jew-loving plutocrats secretly controlled by a triumvirate consisting of the Club for Growth, the oil companies and Mossad via Karl “Satan” Rove.
I say go, John, go! I’ve been waiting for him to take off the gloves and it’s a beautiful thing to see.
CFB,
great post! love the Triumvirate.
I would add that McCain is taking the cover off the wizard of Oz, or the Wizard of BO.
If Obama were to now suddenly drop out of the campaign and become a registered Republican, citing the continued rising ocean levels as his reason for doing so, notwithstanding his clear directive to them pesky waves to desist, forthwith, would that make him sort of like an American Shabtai Tzvi? Nah, too Jewish, and very Neocon in its level of demonstrated manipulative control over the American people. Just askin though.
I wonder whether Obama isn’t using McCain as a surrogate for all those who do question his inexperience and whether he is risky. He can’t call us racists, but he insinuates that we are if we agree with anything McCain says. The first time he used the “he’s inexperienced…and did I mention that he’s black” line, I felt that he was trying to intimidate me. There is something very calculated about this. I think it’s more than just thin skin.
Jennifer,
the Chosen One? Tut tut. He is the Anointed One. He hasn’t yet been chosen by the Deomocrat convention to be their representative in the primary elections. Not that you’d know that from his preening antics. He has been anointed by the media, his Obamaton acolytes and himself. They have proclaimed him the Messiah sent to cleanse the world of its ills, and he’s bought into his own hype.
The Anointed One.
who is going to save the world 1st? Obama or Pelosi.