Obama Stares Down Hezbollah
- 05.11.2008 - 2:19 PMYesterday Barack Obama released a statement about the crisis in Lebanon that surely must be cause for celebration in Tehran, Damascus, and Bint Jbeil. First of all, there is the alternate-reality feel to it:
This effort to undermine Lebanon’s elected government needs to stop, and all those who have influence with Hezbollah must press them to stand down immediately.
Does Obama understand that the people who “have influence with Hezbollah” happen to be the same people on whose behalf Hezbollah is rampaging through Lebanon?
Then there is the absurd prescription:
It’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment.
So that’s the problem in Lebanon? Economics and the electoral system? As Lee Smith points out in a scathing post,
Obama’s language is derived from those corners of the left that claim Hezbollah is only interested in winning the Shia a larger share of the political process. Never mind the guns, it’s essentially a social welfare movement, with schools and clinics! — and its own foreign policy, intelligence services and terror apparatus, used at the regional, international and now domestic level. But the solution, says, Obama, channeling the man he fired for talking to Hamas, is diplomacy.
In the Lebanon crisis, Obama is rhetorically cornered. Since his only prescription for the Middle East is diplomatic engagement, every disease gets re-diagnosed as something curable through talking.
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May 11th, 2008 at 3:18 PM
so not just hamas, but hezbollah should support obama. an idiot as a US president can be a very useful idiot.
obama has no clue about the ME and so are his advisers. be afraid. be very afraid.
oao
http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/
May 11th, 2008 at 3:51 PM
He sounds as if Michelle has been showing him the Red Queen every night and she’s getting ready to rule all 57 states.
May 11th, 2008 at 4:13 PM
[…] liberal cognitive egocentrism: define the problem in terms for which we liberals have a solution. Obama Stares Down Hezbollah NOAH POLLAK - 05.11.2008 - 2:19 PM Yesterday Barack Obama released a statement about the crisis in […]
May 11th, 2008 at 4:16 PM
Every player in the region (aside from the IDF) has done nothing but talk to Hezbollah. Neither the IDF’s plan nor Obama’s plan have been even remotely effective. That will not change, and this should be obvious.
There are two options:
1) Tolerate Hezbollah
2) Punish Syria and/or Iran
Pick one.
May 11th, 2008 at 4:33 PM
The BS is strong in this one.
-Yoda
May 11th, 2008 at 4:55 PM
#4 Michael Totten
The Israelis, at least, know they are better off with a secular, Alawite government in Damascus than the probable alternative, a Sunni nationalist or Islamist government. After all, the Golan front has been calm for decades. Nor do the Israelis want to occupy Damascus, which they could take in a matter of days. The US has a concern about infiltration across the Syrian border, but it would have to get very bad to motivate more than a raid or two.
Hezbollah miscalculated in 2006, but apparently they prefer a free hand plus veto power in Lebanon to trying to ruling directly over the Druze, Christians, and Sunni. Hence their evacuation after they rattled the government’s cage. Other than Syria, which made money from smuggling and no doubt can do so again, no other power wants the hassle of controlling Lebanon.
If you shoot at a king, you must kill him. No one is disposed, right now, to kill the Assad régime or Hezbollah unless forced to do so. If Hezbollah and Syria refrain from doing anything too stupid, Mr. Totten’s alternative (1) will prevail for now.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:06 PM
Grumpy Old Man: If you shoot at a king, you must kill him.
I tend to agree with that advice, but Qadaffi (or however is name is spelled in English this week) was successfully knee-capped in Libya.
If Hezbollah and Syria refrain from doing anything too stupid, Mr. Totten’s alternative (1) will prevail for now.
Undoubtedly.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:31 PM
Michael Totten wrote:
Every player in the region (aside from the IDF) has done nothing but talk to Hezbollah.
What’s worse, the French and the Americans. who supported the government, have been completely ineffective during Hezbollah”s slow motion coup d’état. The only real democracy in the regon has been sabotaged by a gang of thugs, while the world sat back and did nothing.
It is obvious that Obama,s proposals for dealing with this situation are absurd. They are not much more absurd than the (non ) reaction of the West and moderate Arab governments to this tragedy.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:35 PM
Michael Totten wrote:
Every player in the region (aside from the IDF) has done nothing but talk to Hezbollah.
What’s worse, the French and the Americans. who supported the government, have been completely ineffective during Hezbollah”s slow motion coup d’état. The only real democracy in the region has been sabotaged by a gang of thugs, while the world sat back and did nothing.
It is obvious that Obama,s proposals for dealing with this situation are absurd. They are not much more absurd than the (non ) reaction of the West and moderate Arab governments to this tragedy.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:42 PM
This is my biggest fear of an Obama presidency. He’s a lightweight generally speaking and is hopelessly naive regarding foreign policy. This is something we can’t afford what with the Middle East being as volatile as it is right now and the increasing influence of Iran and its proxies. And let’s not forget we still need Iraq to continue in its current positive trend.