I don't know, "Prospero's temptation" isn't nearly as good as "and a pony" in my book!

To think that the only thing standing between the current situation and the demolition of Hezbollah is "Israel's will" and America's forebearance in allowing for liberal application of willpower is seriously foolish.

No more foolish than the idea that a bunch of blue helmeted soldiers from Latvia and Honduras are going to roll in in their APCs and politely ask Hezbollah to hand over their rockets.

The President appears to be the most fervent believer in the power of will (he appears to believe it is the only ingredient in triumphing, if you will).
And I honestly think that he believes he is demonstrating great resolve and will as he complains about the travel his job demands of him in his own private 747. Astonishing, really.
There seem to be people who support him that also believe he is taking on danger as the most protected man in the entire world sends the sons and daughters of people he generally does not associate with off to war. Sending people off to war is sadly a necessary part of his very important job, but it is obscene to conflate the danger he is sending others into with his own, or to imagine that it takes some impressive will or resolve on his part to do so.

I find it rather amusing that we've got a new Middle East crisis and Neocon cheerleaders like Krauthammer still think their suggestions can be taken seriously.

If nothing else, given they were wrong about basically everything in Iraq, our misadventure there has surely proven that these dopes are singularly incapable of asking the right questions, and yet they remain assured that they have solutions to the world's great geopolitical problems. Someone needs to put them out of their misery; someone needs to laugh in their faces.

Keep it up, Mr Yglesias.

Israel Lobby Watch

UN sounds alarm as killing threatens Iraq govt (Reuters)  

And Krauthammer and his Lobby want us to start another two wars. Make no mistake Israel is scared to death not of Hamas or Hizbollah, not scared of Iran's nukes....The Shiite Cresent..that is what terrifies Israel...all that S. Iraq Oil..70 bucks a barrel pure profit flowing into a newly radicalized Shiite Crescent..all those Shia working the rigs in Bahrain, and the wells in the oil rich provinces of Saudi Arabia.

The Necons and the Lobby who gave us the Greatest Strategic Disaster in our history is desperate, armed, delusional and ncredibly dangerous

Gregg Palast:

Did the Jews do it? I mean, after killing Jesus, did the Elders of Zion manipulate the government of the United States into invading Babylon as part of a scheme to abet the expansion of Greater Israel?

I do have to admit that the "Ariel" part fits.

I have never read Green Lantern (or any comic books really) but it seemed that in your description, the Green Lantern's ring was limited to producing green stuff. So if the solution to some problem was, say, a pepperoni pizza, then Green Lantern would be out of luck no matter how strong his will. He could make some green energy thingy that looked a little like a pepperoni pizza--he could make it really big or make it spin really fast--but it would not have any of the pertinent properties that would make a pepperoni pizza the solution to the problem. I think that this is at least as big a problem as the fact (also true) that our powers are limited by things other than our strength of will.

But I agree with the main point as I understand it. There is just way too much magical thinking going on among the punditry.

I realize that things will always get heated when the Middle East comes up, but it is not appropriate to describe a group of people one disagrees with as being non-sentient even when the majority of us agree they are wrong.

At risk of being branded a geek, Matt is partially wrong: the power ring, with enough willpower, can create things that are not green (the only problem being the color yellow as he mentioned). The green stuff also can have properties that would normally go with a different color (the pepperoni might be green but would have all the other charcteristics of pepperoni). The power rings truly are quite worthy of being the weapons for the Green Lanterns who are supposed to be "utterly honest and born with fear."

"launch a joint international/Lebanese intervention that has both the liegitmacy and the power to crush Hezbollah's military wing."

Ah, hold on there, cowboy!

It would be an interesting but bloody exercise to see just how MANY UN/Lebanese troops you would need to "crush Hizballah's military wing."

First, Hizballah has the support of the majority Shia in Lebanon.

Second, quite a few Lebanese Army members are Shia (I don't know the exact percentage.)

Third, Hizballah is a very deep cover insurgency and guerrilla movement with quite a few weapons and access to more.

The most likely result of ANY attempt to "crush Hizballah" by ANYBODY - Israelis, Lebanese, US, OR UN - will be:

1) Resumption of the Lebanese civil war (which means everybody gets embroiled in that - we are afraid of that in Iraq, why do we risk it in Lebanon?)

2) At the very least, a guerrilla war by Hizballah against the other forces which may well last years, plunge the country into more violence, and result in even more civilian casualties.

3) Even if Hizballah lost all its rockets and heavy weapons, they will still exist as a group in some strength, probably still have the support of many Lebanese Shia - as well as the support of Syria and/or Iran - and would simply go underground and wait out the resulting occupation and resurface later.

Just as in Irag, it is my opinion that THERE IS NO MILITARY SOLUTION to Hizballah.

I await criticism from competent military or counterinsurgency experts saying I'm wrong.

Not that I ever agree with Zionista, but the point of the link to Greg Palast's article (yes, Zionista, I've read it on his site before) was that the Israelis aren't responsible for everything - such as Iraq - compared to the oil companies and the like.

And I agree with that, for the most part. I generally agree with Palast's arguments when he produces his reasons.

Where I might part company is whether the Israelis reasons for supporting something like the invasion of Iraq OVERLAP those of the oil companies - and the possibly separate reasons of the neocons - if not being the same reasons.

In other words, if three different parties want to attack Iraq - or Iran or Lebanon - for three different sets of reasons, that doesn't make any of the three "correct". Neither does it absolve them from being "conspirators" in making it happen.

Israel Lobby Watch

Do I understand you correctly then? It is your position that the Arabs do not hold the US responsible for Israel's actions and that there will be no appreiciable blowback from Iraq.

Since I have no reason to believe you to be other than fully sentient, I assume that the answer to those questions is NO.

In Break With Bush, Iraqi Leader Assails Israel 

Brief snip:

From a former US ambassador to an Arab country writing to Ray Close, the former CIA bureau chief in Saudi Arabia, who kindly sent this to me.

First, the US is in a weaker position to influence the outcome of this crisis than any time in the last three decades. Our influence in the region couldn't be lower. Our identification with Israel couldn't be higher. And our ability to work with Arab moderates and have them defuse the situation seems nonexistent. Does anyone really believe that Hezbullah or Hamas are going to listen to the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia

Israel Lobby Watch

On reconsideration, Charles Krauthammer is sentient.  He is as Matt Yglesias put it, "moronic", but he isn't a pet rock.

 I stand corrected again

Or the ring could create a literal bakery, oven and all, through which all the elements of a pepperoni pizza were assembled by green wraiths and greenly cooked into an honest to god real full colour pepperoni pizza. All the green lantern would need would be his will power and the necessary real ingredients.

Now I feel like an idiot. That's a great point and I'm embarrassed for not thinking of it. At the risk of sounding like a geek... oh wait I am a geek... it reminds me of the standard trick for creating a new compiler that does not require proprietary code. Say it's a C compiler. You write your new compiler in C and compile it in the old compiler. But that executable still has proprietary code from the old compiler's code generator. So you use that compiler to compile your code again. Now you have an executable with no proprietary code. GNU has this in its C compiler make file for instance.

So, yeah, provided you can develop the green manufacturing process for your non-green item, you can get it. I suppose you can call up the green plans and team of engineers for anything even if you don't know how it works ahead of time.

Note: US and Israeli foreign policy bears little resemblance to this process.

“…the most protected man in the entire world sends the sons and daughters of people he generally does not associate with off to war…but it is obscene to conflate the danger he is sending others into with his own…” – theCoach

I will neither forgive nor forget that he said: “bring ‘em on”, knowing he would not be around when they showed up!

He had his own chance to show some will and some spine, but he passed on that opportunity many years ago. It’s not the “will” of anyone but himself which is suspect. He has shown, throughout his entire life, a lack of determination, discipline, and resolve to complete anything successfully – the very essence of being a willful person. What he does is wishful thinking, which requires no effort, and he calls it will, of which he is not capable.

I don't think the Shia are a majority of the Lebanese population. A very large minority (40%?) aren't even Muslims.

The problem with defeating the Iraqi insurgency is that the government there does not have legitimacy and the Iraqi population as a whole never has supported the U.S. invasion and occupation. This would not be a problem in Lebanon if the Lebanese government assembles sufficent support from the non-Hezbollah factions in Lebanon for this exercise. Annan and Blair are right that you can put down a group like Hezbollah with a peacekeeping force once the requisite legitimacy in the country is secured. I admit that securing this legitmiacy will not be easy but that is what diplomacy is for.

There can be no political solution while Hezbollah can defy the political process in Lebanon.

"This would not be a problem in Lebanon if the Lebanese government assembles sufficent support from the non-Hezbollah factions in Lebanon for this exercise."

This is where the theory founders.

Because assembling that support from everybody but the Shia puts the Shia on the defensive, since they have the most to lose from trying to disarm or "crush" Hizballah.

All that does is restart the Lebanese civil war.

And a "peace keeping force" would have to be overwhelming to put down a Hizballah supported by the Shia. At the usual 10-to-1 ration, it would require a minimum of 50,000 troops to do that - probably more. I don't think the UN can come up with that - and the Israelis and the US would not be accepted as part of the force by anybody in Lebanon - not after the last civil war and the US participation.

So unless somebody can come up with 50-100,000 troops willing to come into the middle of a probable civil war, any military solution is a nonstarter.

Finally, even if you do get Hizballah to disarm, they can just go underground and wait for any peacekeeping force to leave, then resurface.

The only political solution which can be long-lasting is to remove the motivations for Hizballah to exist - which means no Lebanese prisoners in Israel, and serious progress in resolving the Palestinian issue.

And neither of those is likely to happen as long as Israel has no pressure on them from the international community to do so.

The Europeans are talking about 80,000 troops even if the Russians do not help. If the Russians provide 10,000 troops (with the West footing the bill) and the Lebanese army provides 10,000 (which the world powers can arm) we will have a 20-1 ratio which should be able to manage the situation provided the non-Hezbollah factions go along with it (a difficult diplomatic task I know).

We have kept tens of thousands of troops in the Balkans since the late 1990's and we can keep them in Lebanon until a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East has delivered the results required. We do not have to destory Hezbollah for all time. We need to credibly establish that Israel can make the required without worrying that some faction will decide that it is not good enough even if the agreement says it is.

The Israelis will not buy a peace deal unless we can credibly deliver peace (nor should they). That means that we must be able to destroy Hezbollah's ability to operate independently of the Lebanese government. Since an intervention is the only thing that will do that (aside from $15/bbl oil bankrupting their supporters which I wish we could do but is unlikely given Chinese industrialization) it is the only meaningful option.

How do you negotiate a peace deal if the other side cannot control its own actions?

Belay your shame, Valdron; the nobility of comix has been rescued in our post-modern world. Take the jet-fuel of comix, stereotyping, as an example. Comix got a bad rap when Walter Lippman devined that stereotyping was a dumbing down of speech. But a philosopher of science, Hilary Putnam, challenged that idea, and showed that in fact the stereotype is a very complex and sophisticated form of language (visual language included), and its function was language economy, i.e. say more with less. Putnam's idea was picked up by authors such as Umberto Eco and Roland Barthes, but to my knowledge no one has written a comprehensive theory of the stereotype yet.

I find this discussion of the Green Lantern marvel ous. (oops, it was DC - it would take an expert like Howard to pun that one out)

Neoboho

A few months before Edward Said succumbed to leukemia, he wrote in an essay published in al Ahram: "The neocons are not really smart."

It really struck my interest, given the popular conception that these people are so intelligent. I wrote to Said and urged him to address that statement in a full essay, citing the popular perception as a reason to do so. Little did I know he was dying at the time. I spend a lot of thought-time trying to imagine what his essay would say.

But looking at the obvious, the huge wrongness of their strategy to achieve their stated goals, I wonder about the intellectual poverty of neocons electing to throw in their cards with the emergent New Right of the Reagan era. Was this the original sin?

Neoboho

The neocons are utopians. Long ago I read a book by a French priest that discussed the horrors utopian ideologues have visited upon the world - the French revolutionaries, the Leninists, the Maoists, the Nazis, for that matter Bin Laden. They all believe their end justifies any means and their means usually is to destroy the existing civilization because only totally wiping it out will make way for their utopia. That's why Newt and the rest of the WWIII crowd seriously believe that a world war is a good thing.

I question the European numbers. Where are they going to get that many troops, given the issues they had putting large numbers into Iraq and the involvement of NATO in Afghanistan at the moment? The Balkans are still an issue as well.

According to Wikipedia the EUFOR force in the Balkans amounts to 7,000 troops at the moment and the maximum number of troops on the ground in K-FOR was some 50,000 which included maybe 3,000 Russian troops. The bulk of the forces were British, about 19,000, nearly three times as many as the US supplied.

They were also not facing a well established insurgency but the military arm of Yugoslavia which had already surrendered. The other side of the fight was benefiting from their presence as well, so there was little motivation from either side to conduct an insurgency against the peace keeping forces. I'm not sure that situation would prevail in Lebanon.

After the strains of Iraq and the ongoing problems in Afghanistan, I doubt Britain is in a position to supply that level of peace keeping force and I suspect the same is true of Germany.

While the idea of there being enough peacekeepers in the region to suppress Hizballah operations for the necessary time to secure some sort of peace agreement sounds like a good idea, I remain skeptical of its implementation - or whether there would be support from the US or Israel for its implementation, given their probable larger objectives.

You're proving the subthread isn't DeCeased?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Sorry, don't agree. Maybe I am naive, but I believe the Neocons genuinely think they can transform the world for the better - I agree with Bluebell's post regarding utopianism, and would put the Neocon vision in the same category.

A couple of things - included among the Neocon's most fervent admirors are David Horowitz and Christopher Hitchens. Former Trotskyites, who believed back when in another utopian vision. I would regard then as having transferred from one utopian pipedream to another.

Also, Fukuyama's extended essay in the NYT last year. Didn't step away from what he believed would represent a better world, but basically conceded the Neocon methods would not bring this about.

The likes of Bill Kristol, who cling to the Neocon regime-change lunacy, are delusional (in Kristol's case, I wonder if he is hoping desparately to live up to daddy's expectations). And anyone who continues to take their policy prescriptions seriously is delusional too.