I hope those in State who want Hizballah to be removed from the list of terror groups saw this insightful Joel Himelfarb piece in the Washington Times, "Hezbollah's deadly record" (thanks to Diana West and RB):
In the wake of the March 8 demonstrations in which Hezbollah brought as many as half-a-million people into the streets of Beirut to support Syria, Americans have been inundated with news stories and analyses emphasizing Hezbollah's role as an indigenous political movement and its popularity with Lebanon's Shi'ites.Under pressure from France and the United Nations, the New York Times reported in a front-page story on Thursday, the Bush administration appears to be on the verge of acquiescing to a role for Hezbollah -- one of the world's most deadly terrorist organizations, responsible for torturing and killing hundreds of Americans over the past 22 years -- in Lebanon's future. How can this be, given that President Bush has made the fight against Islamofascist terrorism the defining issue of his presidency? Given the fact that more than 800,000 anti-Syrian and anti-Hezbollah demonstraters mobilized in Beirut yesterday, and given Hezbollah's open contempt for democracy, why is Washington doing this?
In part, this move is an outgrowth of the administration's decision to accommodate the concerns of its European allies by taking a more conciliatory posture toward Iran's nuclear program. The accommodations would include the use of financial incentives such as permiting Iran to join the World Trade Organization in an effort to persuade Iran to change its ways.
Regarding Hezbollah specifically, Washington is responding to a number of domestic Lebanese political realities: Hezbollah holds 13 seats in Lebanon's 128-member parliament, a total it hopes to increase in the May elections. It operates a well-run network of social services in a country where the central government is corrupt and incompetent. Western diplomats, particularly European ones, are hoping that Iran will be persuaded to restrain Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah will become so enmeshed in domestic Lebanese politics that it will lose interest in terrorism.
But throughout its history, no aspect of Hezbollah's work is nearly as important as its terrorist role. Outside of Lebanon, Hezbollah's priority in recent years has been its work in collaboration with Iran and Syria to destroy any possibility of Israeli-Palestinian peace. And Hezbollah's history of killing Americans, collaborating with al Qaeda and setting up terrorist cells in the United States makes it one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world today.
Hezbollah, which receives between $100 million and $200 million a year in assistance from Iran, for the most part does not carry out its own attacks against Israel. Instead, it provides logistical help, such as instruction in bomb making, to Palestinian terrorist organizations. It has actively sought to recruit Israeli Arabs into participating in terrorism, and it helps Iran funnel assistance to Palestinian terrorist groups....
Read it all.
With all of the fingerpointing at leftists, on this forum, in Front Page and other such outlets, I am totally aghast and bewildered that George W. Bush's Homeland Security, State Department, DoJ gets a free pass from self styled "conservatives" and "neo cons"
Not only a free pace, by the same kind of self justifying rationalizations that we find in the Islamists.
In regard to the two previous articles vis a vis Chechnya, I am more than appalled, I am horrified that our President, the "terrorist fighter" George W. Bush, so beloved of so called conservatives and neo cons, only response has been to wag a finger at and threaten Putin for his handling of Chechnya, and the same people have backed Yuschenko in the Ukraine against the pro Russian Yanukovych, and Yuschenko has made multicultural inclusiveness a priority for the ll Million Ukranian Muslims. Can we spell Chechnyan Muslim safe have here as U-k-r-a-n-e.
As regards Hezbollah. They have their own TV/Radio station, production facilites, in fact are a quasi government.
Hezbollahs broadcasting station is Al Manar. I use to watch it daily on Mosaic (www.linktv.org) over DishNetwork. I still watch Mosaic daily, to keep up with the Islamic world and mindset (Iran is quite the trip by the way, two stations IRIB2 and Al Alam, both of which produce the most childish, self pitying, distorting and outlandish hyperbole - they seem to have gotten lessons from Rush Limbaugh and Oreilly).
Mosaic no longer carries Al Manar broadcasts, as both the US and France have declared them terrorist stations. One of their newscasters was (despite her colorful hejabs and jeljabs) quite attractive, but also very malicious.
I was watching the program one day, when they showed footage of a Humvee being blown up by a roadside bomb (the Jihadis now take video footage of their deeds and "martyrdom" operations).
They ran the footage twice (once wasn't enough) and this "sweet thang" then turned back to the camera with a deep satisfied and smug smile on her face, obviously enjoying the carnage of it all.
And that's the bottom line, carnage is their raison d'etre, their reason for existence, without being able to inflict carnage and death or die in "martyrdom" they have no reason to live. It is an addiction worse than heroin, worse than cigarettes, worse than crack cocaine.
With such an addiction, motivated or justified by self righteousness, self pity and megalomanical notions of elitism, and being cultural immune and unaware of self criticism or personal responsibility, even if their demands were met, even if the infidel was forced into submission, their addiction to carnage would manifest itself
by internecine warfare, jihads and resistance against other muslims and factions.
Meanwhile our "Arab Allies" like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt and even Lebanon find breathing space, because the animosity towards the infidel serves as a deflection and distraction, for if these morons were not immolating themselves in their desire to destroy the infidel, they would be turning the same weapons on their own leaders,just like the bombing of Hariri,and the occasional (but never significant) sporadic attacks inside the "magical kingdom" and Egypt.
Islam is mental illness, but Islam is also a religion, and religion itself is a neurological disorder, it is the self appointed elect and elite, against the "other" (those who don't bend their own knee to that specific tribe or clan).
We need to innoculate ourselves against Islam, but so long as the west is also infected with the self righteous virus of theocracy, I think the job is impossible. One can't gather wool out of the bellybutton of the other, without acknowledging that one's own bellybutton is full of wool, or as Jesus said # Luke 6:41
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Ah, from the WT, typical conservative self delusion
The author (and conservatives in general) insert Islamofascist as an adjective making Bush's war on "Terorism" and adjectivial phrase.
No where has Bush said, nor by his very actions, implied or suggested that his was a war on "Islamofascist" terrorism. No where, mind you.
In fact the opposite is true, he coddles, sidles up to, crawls in bed with Islamism.
Wolfowitz, neo con in chief in the Administration, is accused of being a Zionist. Ahem, this doesn't square with his eulogy of Ayatollah al Hakim as an Abraham Lincoln, nor does it square with the Iraqi Interim Constitution, or the Afghan Draft Constitution, both of which make very clearly and in plain words Iraq and Afghanistan Islamic states with shari'a the basis of law and constitution.
Now Bush and Co are indebted to SCIRI, Ayat Allah al Sistani and Iran for pulling their irons out of the fire that they started by invading Iraq. Thanks to SCIRI and Iran we now have the success of the purple finger revolution, which at the end of the day merely creates,solidifies and justifies yet another Iranian style Islamic Republic.
And al Sistani (SCIRI) will of course have a symbiotic and sympathetic relationship with Hezbollah, as Hezbollah is also (like Iran and now Iraq) Shi'ite theocracies aka Islamic Republics.
BTW. I'm tired of hearing that obfuscation about Democracy, because democracy simply means Majority rule, and Iran (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, et al) are by definition democracies, and if you want to add in a thing called vote, do so, it only legitimizes majority (in this case Islamist) rule.