War!

by Michael J. Totten
I’m sorry to be gone and (mostly) unable to blog at a horrible time like this, when a city I love and used to live in is under attack by an ally of my country. I’m scrambling to keep up with what’s going on while trying to do my temporary full-time and all-consuming job, which ends in a week. Meanwhile I try, as much as is possible, to console some of my friends while their country burns, while fighter jets scream over head, while columns of filthy black smoke blot out the sun.
Israel has a right – nay, a moral obligation – to defend itself and rescue the kidnapped. But what kind of down-the-rabbit-hole war is this, where the guilty parties – the Baath regime in Syria and the Jihad regime in Iran – sleep warm in their beds while Beirut, a libertine city they hate, takes the punishment for them?
The dictators in the region have always been happy to fight the Israelis to the last Palestinian. Now it looks like they’re happy to fight the Israelis to the last Lebanese, too. And why not? Lebanon is a relatively liberal and almost half Christian sort-of democracy. Can’t have any of that in the region if you’re a totalitarian mullah. It suits Tehran just fine if the Jews slug it out with such people.
Bashar al-Assad promised to make Lebanon burn if his Syrian occupation soldiers were forced out of the country. No doubt he is ecstatic at this latest turn of events. His principal enemies are killing each other instead of teaming up against him like they would in a better and more intelligent world.
Israel and Lebanon are the two freest countries in the Middle East. They are the only countries, aside from tortured Iraq, that hold unrigged elections for parliaments and heads of state. The tyrants to their east have pulled quite a coup, haven’t they? The two countries friendliest to America and to liberal Western values are now shooting each other. (The Lebanese army, which has cooperated with Israel in the past behind the scenes, is now firing anti-aircraft guns at Israeli planes.)
It’s a catastrophe for Lebanon, which is now under siege because Iran took it hostage. It’s a catastrophe for Israel, which could have, and should have, worked toward a peace process with the Lebanese. Lebanese are (were?) far and away the most likely of all Arabs to sign a genuine treaty at some point down the road. And it’s a catastrophe for the United States. We have few friends in the region already, none of whom get along well with each other as it is.
The Middle East was in a holding pattern until two days ago. No one knew what would happen next, what the next big thing would be. Now we know. The democracies suffer and bleed and turn on each other while their enemies, our enemies, sit back and watch. The Baath regime and the Jihad regime rest easy knowing that Israel is too cautious or gutless to take the fight to the source and chooses to hit the country of the Cedar Revolution instead.