Garbanzo Toons

Perspective on Israel vs Hezbollah

I don't like reading columns by Carolyn Glick. They're usually depressing. She's spent a lot of space pointing out the weaknesses in Israeli policies that have emboldened the terrorist groups and states surrounding Israel. And she's usually right. I can't remember if she's always been right, but she's been right an awful lot. Reading Carolyn Glick, you wonder if some Israelis have been trying to commit national suicide. I liked reading this column though. She is still writing the truth and analyzing the situation in a clear unapologetic manner. But now that the feces have been flung at the fan by those fanatical folk at Hezbollah, there is hope. Now Israel has been forced to fight rather than dither. The situation has been clarified - fight or die. Israelis, whose vain hopes for a negotiated peace have finally been exposed as fantasy are fighting back with a vengence. When they say "Never again!" they mean it.

As Ms. Glick points out in her column, there are still those on the extreme, insane left who still try to block Israel's campaign to destroy Hezbollah and Hamas, but there are finally enough people in Israel and the West who are getting the message that the terrorists and their sponsors in Syria and Iran cannot be reasoned with. The only way to contain them is to destroy them on the battlefield. And according to Glick, the terrorists have now given Israel, and the United States, and any other country with enough intestinal fortitude to join the battle, the kick in the ass they needed to get the job done.

FINALLY, the campaign in Lebanon is indeed the opening salvo of Iran's war against the free world. But this works both ways.

Iran and Hizbullah believe that the ferocity of the attacks against Israel will deter us all from taking action against Iran's nuclear facilities. But by giving the West the opportunity to fight it first in Lebanon, Teheran is providing the US, Israel and others with critical intelligence about its own installations. The subterranean bunkers in south Lebanon that IDF ground forces are now conquering were built by Iranian Revolutionary Guards units and designed by Iranian engineers — the same forces that conceived and constructed Iran's nuclear installations.

IN 1982, when Israel destroyed the Syrian Soviet-made and trained air force in Lebanon, it was able to provide the US with critical information about the Soviet Air Force and its air defense systems that enabled the US to outstrip both in a manner that all but sealed the fate of the evil empire. Today, by fighting Iran's proxy, Hizbullah, Israel is amassing information that will be critical for planning a successful strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

All the West needs is the will. As Glick points out, Iran is giving us the way.

Thomas Sowell, on the other hand, shows us how this war should not be fought. A lot of writers and political cartoonists have used the WWII analogy and asked, "What if we would have tried the same tactics we are using today against the Nazis and the Japanese?" Sowell, as usual, writes with exceptional clarity with his take on the subject.

What about the great cry of the hour, a cease fire?


It so happens that World War II had the biggest cease fire in history. It was called "the phony war" because, although France was officially at war with Germany, the French did very little fighting for months, while the bulk of the German army was in Poland and France had overwhelming military superiority on the western front.


Famed correspondent William L. Shirer reported on the "unreal" western front, with soldiers "on both sides looking but not shooting." German soldiers bathed in the Rhine and waved to French soldiers on the other side, who waved back.


During this period Hitler offered to negotiate peace with France and England.


Kofi Anan would have loved it.


On November 19, 1939, Shirer's diary reported: "For almost two months now there has been no military action on land, sea, or in the air." On January 1, 1940, he wrote, "this phony kind of war cannot continue long." But it was now exactly four months since war was declared. How is that for a cease fire?


Did this de facto cease fire lead to peace? No. Like other cease fires, it helped the aggressor.


It gave Hitler time to move his divisions from the eastern front, after they had conquered Poland, to the western front, facing France.


Now that military superiority along the Rhine had shifted in favor of the German armies, the war suddenly went from being phony to being devastatingly real.


Hitler attacked and France collapsed in six weeks.

You can't argue with historical fact. Those who try to will either engage in name calling or attempt to rewrite history.

I'm just sitting here, following the news day by day, hoping that the United States will allow Israel the time they need to destroy Hezbollah and Hamas. That is what will bring peace to the Middle East. A few airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities wouldn't hurt either, at least in the long run.

Do we have the nerve? We'd better.

Labels: Carolyn Glick, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Thomas Sowell

posted by Harry @ 8:21 PM