August 16, 2006

The Next Israeli-Hezbollah War Will Be Much Worse

Donald Sensing analyzes the Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire and says it's just a prelude to a more violent and dangerous war in the near future. I agree with him. While I have always supported Israel and its right to defend itself against terrorists and the neighboring regimes that tacity or actively support them, I think Israel played this one entirely wrong...

Everyone knows that Hezbollah is the creation of Iran and everyone knows it is the beneficiary of Syrian support - without which Iran would find it difficult to sustain Hezbollah. Syria is the link in the chain that leads from the mad mullahs of Tehran to the Islamofacist terror group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. From the day Hezbollah crossed the border and abducted the Israeli soldiers and then began raining rockets down on civilian sections of northern Israel, the Israeli government should have targeted not the Hezbollah rocket-firers and terrorist killers hiding in the weeds and the hills of southern Lebanon, but the vital link in the chain that supports them.

While some Israeli firepower should have been directed at Hezbollah and at supressing the rocket fire, most of Israel's focus and firepower should have been aimed squarely at the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Trying to hit Hezbollah rocket launchers was a game for suckers. Hezbollah - it means "Party of God" - cynically located many of its rocket launchers in civilian areas, then blamed Israel for "massacres" when, inevitably, civilians died as Israel struck legitimate targets. Instead of playing Hezbollah's game, Israel should have launched a sustained bombing campaign targeting Syria's military, it's industry facilities its and transportation and communications infrastructure, and not relented until Syria's ability to resupply Hezbollah was eliminated.

They're going to have to do it someday. Now would have been better than later. Later, Hezbollah might be firing nuclear-tipped rockets it got from Iran via Syria.

Update: ACK is running a poll to see if people agree with my assessment or not. Please go vote for me. Unless you think the above is "batcrap crazy talk."