“There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children than armed men.”
(Jan Egeland, UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs)

Mr. Egeland is commenting on the fact that out of the more than 700 Lebanese civilians who have been killed in the Israeli-Islamist War, half have been children. The Qana tragedy, where Hizbullah terrorists deliberately sighted their rocket launchers next to a building bursting with Lebanese children and oldsters knowing that Israeli retaliation would in all likelihood result in massive civilian casualties, cost the lives of more than 3 dozen youngsters alone. And Hizbullah’s actions are at the heart of what has become the number one question for armies that fight terrorist groups like Hizbullah, Hamas, or al-Qaeda.

Who bears responsibility for a civilian’s death when one side puts a bullseye on an innocents back simply to gain a propaganda advantage by his death?

There seems to be no interest by the international community to discuss this question. The reason is simple. Since it is western armies faced with this paradox and most of the world is made up of non-western states, it is to everyone else’s advantage to pretend, as this gentleman does, that there is an absolutist position on the death of civilians; it is always wrong:

It’s been awhile so it seems again it’s time for a helpful reminder that noncombatant immunity isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law.

In other words: You’re not allowed to kill civilians.

Killing civilians is against the law. Killing civilians makes you a criminal.

Yes, but …

No buts about it. You’re not allowed to kill civilians.

And, also: You’re not allowed to kill civilians.

This is neither new nor controversial, yet putting the matter in such stark terms always seems to upset people.

On the one hand, this isn’t surprising since the killing of civilians has become a scarcely remarkable, dog-bites-man commonplace. Yet it’s still surprising that anyone could find this elementary notion upsetting: You’re not allowed to kill civilians. If you’re one of those people who finds this upsetting, bear in mind what it is that you’re upset about. Apparently someone you feel ought to be immune from criticism has been killing civilians and you feel I’m criticizing them by pointing out—in the most abstract terms, without any mention of particulars—that this is something that no one is allowed to do.

To be fair, the writer does mention that there may be extenuating circumstances where the killing of civilians is unavoidable. But that doesn’t address his moral condemnation for violating his simplistic mantra. The fact of the matter is, that there is a clear moral mandate to condemn the cynical use of civilians by Hizbullah and what’s more, place the blame for civilian deaths squarely and confidently in the bloody hands of the terrorists.

James Lewis brilliantly explains:

We have lost elementary moral distinctions over the last century. As a culture, we pretend we cannot tell the difference between accidental shootings by police in pursuit of killers, and deliberate killing by those intent on destroying innocents. This is not, as the Left likes to boast, a reflection of our higher morality. It is a loss of elementary moral discrimination. We are much less moral than our ancestors of a hundred or two hundred years ago.

One role of the New Media must be to restore that common sense morality which says that hiding behind women and children in war is murder, plain and simple. The onus for murder is on the terrorist, not the cop.

There is a solution: It is for the media and the United Nations to rediscover the elementary moral distinctions of the original Geneva Conventions. Killing innocents is murder. Drawing enemy fire on children is evil. It’s not hard.

Why then is there no outrage against Hizbullah except in the narrow ideological confines of conservative western thought and a few liberal outriders going against the grain of the lockstep left?

It is more comfortable to pretend that the old verities regarding war are somehow still operational in a real world sense. An unarmed 10 year old boy leaning out a window in Anbar directing fire against American positions in Iraq presents a wrenching moral choice for the officer in command of the action. What guides that American officer is usually contained in the Rules of Engagement. Sometimes it’s how he was trained. But it is always what is inside the officer himself – his own personal code of morality and honor. Whether the boy is targeted or not, whether his death can be justified or not is really not the point. The child is a civilian in a combat zone and according to a strict reading of the laws of war and dictates of humanity, killing him is wrong.

Or is it? This situation, hypothetical as it is, brings us all into a new moral country as do the actions of Hizbullah with their brazen use of civilians as a combination human shield and fodder for press releases. Have you heard of any gathering of the great philosophical and ethical minds of our time to address these questions? Has there been any Security Council meetings to examine the implications of not only what Hizbullah is doing but what Israel (and to a lesser degree the United States) is forced to do in response?

Has there been any effort whatsoever on the part of the naysayers, the carpers, the condemners, to look beyond their spiteful, absolutist moral positions and delve into these dilemmas? I am not looking for an ethical or moral justification for dead civilians as much as I’m seeking a moral framework that takes these tactics into account. There is none. The American officer in Iraq or the Israeli Air Force Chief of Staff targeting Qana are all alone with their agony. And I firmly believe that this need not be the case.

Again, James Lewis:

European warfare came out of a tradition of chivalry. The military uniform marks combatants from bystanders. The British Redcoats were brilliantly visible, as were Napoleon’s armies. The idea of disguising oneself in the face of musket and even cannot fire was treated with contempt. Far more, the idea of drawing enemy fire while hiding among women and children was simply criminal. The British Navy would have hung its own sailors for such crimes. European soldiers were ready to die rather than be contemptible.

The Geneva Conventions came out of this tradition. Wars were terrible, and became much worse as they become industrialized. But they still reflected some of the values of chivalry.

[snip]

For the Nazis, savagery and murder became a matter of ideology and policy. SS men sent to murder Jews and other civilians were told to reject any feelings of compassion. The Nazis explicitly rejected Christian values, a point that is constantly lost to the Left. On the hard-hearted Left, during the Lenin-Stalin period, explicit orders were constantly given to kill peasants who resisted Moscow’s orders to give up their land and huddle in communal farms.

Thus the Roman and later Christian doctrine of Just War was steadily diluted as the 20th century wore on. Israel has a similar doctrine of “purity of arms,” and has recently revised its ethics code for the protection of civilians in guerilla warfare—- war in which civilians are used to shield the warriors, and innocent deaths are desired for their propaganda value. The media, consisting of nostalgic Lefties and old Mao-worshippers, fall for the double standards every day.

I would disagree slightly with James in that the media doesn’t so much “fall” for Hizbullah’s ruse as much as they and the left pretend, as do Islamists the world over, that the outrage is solely confined to “civilian deaths” and not to those who cause them.

Michelle Malkin:

The truth about Muslim outrage over Qana is that it’s not really about the tragic deaths at Qana—just like the cartoon jihad was not really about the cartoons.

Remember: Muslim outrage over the Danish cartoons was stoked and manufactured amid attempts to bully Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. Iran blamed Israel for the cartoons:

[snip]

What better way to distract from Hezbollah’s atrocities and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s annihilation plans than to start screaming about Israel’s “war crimes” and Western crimes against humanity. John Hinderaker at Power Line points to prefab jihadi banners demonizing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. EU Referendum looks at morbid photo posing. Bob Owens wonders where all the men were.

But never mind all that, right? The Muslim world is united again. And some short-sighted Westerners are allowing themselves to be duped.

With everyone pretending together – the media, the left, the enemies of Israel and the United States – it becomes relatively easy to gin up outrage not only in the streets of Arabia but also the salons of the Upper East Side and the offices of network news executives. Hence is opinion manufactured and liberal outrage assuaged.

All of this fails to take in Lewis’ main point – that the traditions in the west of wrestling with moral questions regarding war has been deliberately abandoned. Any new moral truths or clarity that would emerge from such a debate or discussion would threaten the left’s ability to use civilian deaths exactly as Hizbullah does; to beat their political opponents over the head.

It’s a shame, really. The very people who would ordinarily be at the center of helping the west in creating any new moral paradigms for fighting and winning the War on Terror are letting her down in her hour of greatest need. The 500 year old liberal intellectual traditions of moral and ethical debate have been tossed into the gutter and replaced with an unyielding, anti-intellectual absolutism that will brook no opposition to its cherished tenets and comfortable, old shoe verities.

We may yet pay dearly for their prideful ignorance before all is said and done.

UPDATE

Allah comes through with a round up of the growing pushback against the out of control condemnation by most of the non western world against Israel for Qana. Will it matter? Hard to tell from just reading the internet but my guess would be we definitely have not heard the last of Qana and that the purveyors of the storyline that says Israel is at fault will be hardpressed to defend themselves over the next few days.

I had a fascinating discussion with Doug Hanson this morning about Russia, Iran, and the War on Terror on The Rick Moran Show. Doug is national security correspondent for The American Thinker and just got back from that part of the world which made his comments not only interesting but timely as well.

You can access the interview here.

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Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

This morning, we’ll be talking about the “Second Miracle at Qana” including the Israeli bombing halt and how that could aid Hizbullah. We’ll also look at the cynical use by Hizbullah of civilians as human shields.

In the 7:30 AM central time hour, we’ll talk to The American Thinker national security correspondent Douglas Hanson about Russia, Iran, and the War on Terror. Here are two recent articles by Doug that give some excellent background to what we’ll be discussing:

Putin, Iran and the Caucasus
Putin as the New Gorbachev

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Following the tragic loss of 60 civilians in Qana as a result of an Israeli air strike on Hizbullah rocket launching positions, Prime Minister Olmert has declared a 48 hour halt to “aerial activity” over Lebanon:

Israel agreed to a 48-hour suspension of aerial activity over southern Lebanon after it bombed a Lebanese village on Sunday and a number of children died, a US official said.

The attack marred US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s weeklong mission to halt the fighting between Israel and Hizbullah.

The suspension of over-flights was announced by US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli. He said Israel has reserved the right to attack targets if it learns that attacks are being prepared against them.

It’s probable that the Israeli government announced this de facto bombing halt at the urging of US Secretary of State Condi Rice who just completed a round of talks with Olmert. Her trip back to Lebanon, however, has been cancelled by Prime Minister Siniora:

Saniora said Lebanon would be open only to an immediate cease-fire. “There is no place at this sad moment for any discussions other than an immediate and unconditional cease-fire as well as international investigation of the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now,” he told reporters Sunday.

The halt will be a godsend to Hizbullah who brought the bombing of Qana – the ancient city where it is said Christ performed the miracle of turning water into wine – on the civilians of that tragic town by using the streets and buildings as cover for their rocket launchers:

This morning, July 30, 2006, the IAF attacked missile launch sites in the area of the village of Qana, an area from which hundreds of missiles were launched towards the city of Nahariya and the communities in the western Galilee.

The IDF will defend the citizens of Israel from attacks by the Hizbullah and the responsibility for any civilian casualties rests with the Hizbullah who have turned the suburbs of Lebanon into a war front by firing missiles from within civilian areas.

Residents in this region and specifically the residents of Qana were warned several days in advance to leave the village. Eighteen Israeli civilians have been killed and over 400 have been wounded by these rocket attacks which have disrupted the lives of tens of thousands of Israeli citizens.

The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians, but this is the result of Hizbullah terrorist organization’s contemptible use of Lebanese civilians as human shields.

In addition to the statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has some eye opening video that clearly shows rockets being launched from between buildings in Qana.

In other words, the malicious bastards in Hizbullah, knowing that the rocket launches would draw immediate retaliation by the IAF, positioned their equipment so that maximum damage to civilian structures would ensue.

And it appears that this kind of cynicism is going to be rewarded as the nation’s of the world (including the United States) as well as the world press, and most of the left (who have been cheering on Hizbullah anyway) have gotten their way and Israel will now stop short of their stated goals of altering the situation on their northern border and trying to disarm Hizbullah.

For Hizbullah, it is a second Miracle at Qana.

The Hizbullah Hallelujah Chorus in the media and on the left has spent the last 24 hours ecstatically rolling in the blood of the civilians killed in Qana, dropping condemnatory bombs on the Israelis while being unable to display one iota of moral discrimination about the conflict. James Lewis at The American Thinker brilliantly elucidates this point:

We have lost elementary moral distinctions over the last century. As a culture, we pretend we cannot tell the difference between accidental shootings by police in pursuit of killers, and deliberate killing by those intent on destroying innocents. This is not, as the Left likes to boast, a reflection of our higher morality. It is a loss of elementary moral discrimination. We are much less moral than our ancestors of a hundred or two hundred years ago.

One role of the New Media must be to restore that common sense morality which says that hiding behind women and children in war is murder, plain and simple. The onus for murder is on the terrorist, not the cop.

There is a solution: It is for the media and the United Nations to rediscover the elementary moral distinctions of the original Geneva Conventions. Killing innocents is murder. Drawing enemy fire on children is evil. It’s not hard.

Any recognition of Mr. Lewis’ argument will come too late for Israel who will be enjoined from restarting the bombing probably by the United States who sees the diplomatic writing on the wall. It is simply unsustainable to furnish any more support for Israel’s bombing campaign against Hizbullah and their rocket launching sites. Indeed, judging by the reaction by the world community, it would be a dead certainty that Hizbullah would move their military activities even closer to residences in order to maximize civilian casualties.

I hope otherwise but world public opinion is so outraged at this point that it appears that unless Israel is willing to go it alone, the war may be over. Does George Bush have it within himself to continue to commit the US to standing with Israel against Hizbullah? I would hope that he would but at this point, I wouldn’t be too harsh on him if he urged Olmert to fold his cards and trust that the international community can summon the strength to force Hizbullah to accede to UN Resolution 1559 that mandates their disarming.

One final point: The unexplained gap of 8 hours between the time the building where 56 civilians lost their lives and its collapse will go mostly unnoticed in the media. It doesn’t fit the narrative of bloodthirsty Jews killing innocent babies for no reason. Also unnoticed will be the definitive proof that shows Hizbullah carrying out combat operations smack in the middle of suburban Beirut, giving the lie to idiotic imbeciles like Mitch Prothero of Slate.com who said that Hizbullah using civilians as human shields was a “myth.”

Israel is in a box. If they stop now, Hizbullah is a clear winner despite being pulverized by both the Israeli army and air force. Their simple survival will be spun by the media and the left as a great victory against those horrid Jews. But if they continue the war following this 48 hour bombing halt, they may have to do it without the support of the United States as Bush is coming under increasing domestic and international pressure to rein in the Israelis and force them agree to a cease fire while they are still short of their military goals.

Bush is going to earn his salary this week.

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey believes Hizbullah will honor the unilateral cease fire by the Israelis in the breach:

A suspension puts more pressure on Hezbollah than it does Israel. The world has screamed for a cease-fire, and Israel has conditionally agreed, at least for a short period. If Hezbollah quits firing over the border, the Israelis may extend it, allowing the conflict to settle. However, no one really believes that Hezbollah will honor this—after all, they started the war, and they obviously believe this plays to their benefit. Once they launch another rocket, all bets are off, and Israel will get at least another two weeks before the ADD-addled global diplomats again forget that Hezbollah started the war.

I predict that the suspension will not last; Hezbollah will continue its operations, providing yet another point of clarity in this conflict.

Okay, Captain, pass me some of that kool aid. I’ll take a sip…

Any rockets launched by Hizbullah in this cease fire period will be blamed on Israel because, although it wasn’t specifically mentioned, the cessation of air attacks will not preclude the IDF from attacking Hez positions in southern Lebanon on the ground.

But let’s explore your thesis further. Any “point in clarity” with regards to this conflict will not be recognized by the overwhelming majority of nations (including the EU) as well as most of the media and certainly the left in this country. For them, there is no moral clarity to be gleaned. Israel is at fault. Israel is using “disproportionate” force to protect themselves. Israel is bombing Lebanese civilians deliberately (“Hizbullah? Hiding among civilians?” It’s a myth.)

In short, those most in need of moral clarity are wearing blinders in the first place. It is left to you and me and those of us who recognize that Israel’s fight is our fight to delineate any moral distinctions to be had in this war.

Tomorrow morning on The Rick Moran Show, I’ll be interviewing Douglas Hanson in the 7:30 AM central hour. Doug has recently returned from the Caucasus (Georgia) and is an expert on terrorism. We’ll discuss Russia’s role in the GWOT as well as the sad state that Russian democracy has reached under President Putin.

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Give me an H!
Give me an I!
Give me a Z!
Give me a B!
Give me a U!
Give me an L!
Give me an L!
Give me an A!
Give me an H!

Wuzzat spell? HIZBULLAH! Louder! HIZBULLAH! I Can’t Hear You! HIZZZZZZBULLAH!
(Billmon of Whiskey Bar)

The Hizbullah cheerleading competition on the left has become a fierce battle between those who have become doe-eyed worshippers of the terrorist leader Nasty Nasrallah (currently in hiding from his rabid and overly demonstrative fans in the IDF) and his cadre of happy-go-lucky rocketeers and those who simply want to see Israel destroyed.

For the judges of the contest, this presents something of a dilemma. Do they deduct points for virulent hatred directed against Jews that blinds contestants to the finer points of cheerleading? Or do they penalize participants for their utter stupidity in cheering on their own potential beheaders thus demonstrating a third grader’s understanding of Pep Squad etiquette and self preservation instincts?

A close call, that. In desperation, the judges were forced to go to the videotape.

Billmon:

It seems more likely that the Israeli cabinet’s decision not to endorse the IDF’s plan for a major invasion was the proverbial blink in this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation. I don’t even know if Olmert still has hopes of carving out a notional two-kilometer-wide DMZ along the border. I mean, it’s easy enough to say such a buffer zone exists, but if the Israelis really want one they’re going to have to fight Hizbullah for every inch of it. And as I said, it’s pretty clear the Israelis don’t have much of an appetite for that kind of fighting.

At this point, and until they show me otherwise, I have to assume the Israelis now would be very happy just to get back to the status quo ante.

There remains, however, the little problem of the steady steam (100 a day, give or take) of rockets falling on northern Israel, plus Hizbullah’s still-unused long-range “Tel Aviv” rockets. Yesterday’s strike on Afula (east and about 30 miles south of Haifa) was a reminder from Sheikh Nasrallah that he still has a few rungs left on his escalation ladder, and that the IDF hasn’t been any more successful at missile “plinking” than the U.S. Air Force was in Gulf War I.

The judges deducted 5 points immediately for Billmon’s disconnect from reality. One judge protested that in this kind of competition, the deduction was unfair because the same could be said for every single contestant, the competition being confined to leftist twits with no more grasp of strategy than a marmoset. However this judge summed it up nicely:

Only a true fool like this dolt (who is worshipped by the ‘progressive’ left) could look at a military operation and say that, because in less than three weeks Hezbollah can still fire off some completely ineffective rocket barrages that have no military impact whatsoever, and because they managed to kill a couple of dozen Israeli soldiers, that the action has been a ‘debacle’ for Israel. Last time I checked, Olmert was still in Israel, and Nasrallah was hiding behind his puppetmasters in Damascus. I guess the fact that he hasn’t been scared all the way to Tehran means that’s a defeat for Israel, too.

On the other hand, Billmon scored well in “Anti-Israeli Fundamentals” and in “Overall Appeal” to Hizbullah sympathizers. And while the judges felt his laughable ignorance of what was actually happening on the battlefield should be cause for a major deduction, Billmon made up for that negative by projecting typical leftist admiration for the tactics of terrorists. Slight deduction for not smiling enough and for the inadvertent showing his panties on the “basket toss.”

Next up, The Next Hurrah:

Hezbollah right now is operating in bunkers. All the news that comes out comes when one or another IDF soldier admits that they’re discovering Hezbollah to have well-disciplined, courageous fighters—which sends a more powerful message than all the Shock and Awe! you can muster. Meanwhile, Israel is very publicly bombing the sh*t out of Lebanon, yet it’s winning no apparent advantage from the bombing. The same, I suspect, will happen with this. Oh, I’m sure there’s pro-Hezbollah astroturf out there. But mostly, there’s just effective propaganda, winning the hearts and minds of other Arabs. Whereas Israel is conducting a very public campaign, but it appears to be dropping nothing but duds.

There was an immediate uproar from the judges following the viewing of this segment of the videotape. One judge asked if he could award a score lower than “zero” just for having to view such a nauseating routine. Another said it wasn’t so bad if you pretended “emptywheel,” the Captain of the squad, was mentally challenged and unable to differentiate between good and evil, right and wrong, friend and foe.

In the end, the judges awarded hefty style points for the way that the contestants marched in lockstep with other lefties as well as extra credit for adding inadvertent humor to the routine. Minor deduction for poorly disguising their obvious anti-semtism as well as turning too many handsprings in logic.

Finally, Cecilia Lucas (Common Dreams):

But I am making progress, seeking and finding new information, clearing some of the smoke. I am coming to terms with something that I’ve tried to deny, something I’ve been taught to deny. And so I have written a love poem. For Hizbullah. Like love that inspires poems often is, this love is not all rosy and sweet. It is complicated, tortured, frustrated, somewhat inappropriate, certainly scandalous, sometimes hesitant. It is irrational and overly rational. But still, it is love. A dear friend told me today, “Nobody ever really learns something without feeling something.” So, to Hizbullah, I offer this poem.

I Don’t Want to Love You, But I Do

You were born out of death to a life in a cage
Where bombs are not the only reason people die
Fed by the violence of hunger and homelessness
Raised by colonialism
Your heart and your will still grew strong

You scare me
Not just because they tell me to be scared
Not just because they repeat, repeat, repeat
The story of 1983
Begging me to understand
Americans are worth more than Lebanese

Why do they never tell me about Jihad al Bina
That you have created so much
Saved so many lives
Improved so many more…

After picking their jaws up off the floor, the judges went to work. Two judges wanted the contestant thrown out of the competition for making a mockery of the event. It simply wasn’t possible that Cecilia’s rank anti-Semitism and spectacularly ignorant views on Hizbullah could be taken seriously. It had to be parody. Or at the very least, a sick attempt to win the judges favor by being “too creative.”

Another judge pointed out that the contestant’s not disguising her disgusting Jew hatred was also cause for her being dismissed from the competition. It went against the tactics of the other contestants on the left who chose to hide their anti-Semitism by wishing for a Hizbullah victory all the while claiming they supported the existence of the Jewish state (most of the time).

But the majority of the judges decided to rate her team’s performance anyway. She actually got excellent marks for some of the routine, like when she performed her “Deadman” and the way in which she “attacked the crowd.”

But Cecelia received major deductions for sloppy thinking and a disconcerting lack of moral clarity. She received her biggest deduction for writing bad poetry, an unforgivable faux pas common among the left but largely absent from this particular competition. Slight deductions for a horrible costume (difficult to do jumps and splits in a burkha) and for rhetorically stumbling all over the place like a drunken sailor.

Who won? Perhaps I should open the comments up and let my readers vote. Have at it! And may the best leftist loon win…

A scientific survey done by the Beirut Center for Research and Information is something of an eye opener. The survey was conducted by Lebanese statistician Abdo Saad between July 24 and July 26 according to confessional and regional distribution, including the opinion of refugees. 800 adults were queried on a variety of topics including the performance of the government during the crisis as well as attitudes toward Hizbullah’s actions that started the war and how the terrorist group is viewed in general by the population:

The answers to the first question showed a relatively high level of support for Hizbullah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers, contrasting the positions of some local political forces’ condemnation of the operation. Such support was based on a belief that Israel and the US intended to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559 by force, regardless of whether Hizbullah carried out the July 12 raid.

Moreover, the results show the majority of Lebanese believe the only way to liberate Lebanese detainees in Israeli prisons is through the capture of Israeli soldiers and a prisoner swap, as was the case in 2000.

The survey showed near-identical numbers as an earlier survey, published by As-Safir on March 2. That survey showed 70.9 percent support for Hizbullah operations to capture Israeli soldiers.

This despite the heavy consequences being paid by Lebanese civilians for the Hizbullah incursion into Israel. Support for the kidnapping of the Israelis has even increased since March in the Christian community, thanks in part to Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun’s Memorandum of Understanding with Hizbullah agreed to last February that supported Hizbullah efforts to get Lebanese nationals released from Israeli prisons.

Support in the Druze community has fallen slightly from 49% in March to 40% now. This could reflect Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s uncompromising condemnation of Hizbullah’s actions on July 12 and their incursion into Israel.

There is also strong support for Hizbullah’s terror tactics:

The survey showed 87 percent support for Hizbullah’s retaliatory attacks on northern Israel. Such a high level of support must be attributed to Hizbullah’s political and military performance, in addition to a national consensus identifying Israel as Lebanon’s main enemy.

The survey suggests that Hizbullah’s military performance has bolstered confidence in the resistance’s abilities as 63 percent of respondents expected a Hizbullah victory over Israel.

Hizbullah, an extremely media savvy terrorist group, will likely find a willing audience for the post war spinning of their lopsided military defeat into some kind of glorious victory.

Support for the US as an “honest broker” has dropped considerably:

The survey showed that a large majority of Lebanese do not consider the US to be an honest mediator (89.5 percent). A similar survey conducted by the Beirut Center for Research and Information published in As-Safir on January 31 showed 38.2 percent support for the US role in Lebanon. This drop is due to the close political cooperation between the US and Israel.

I imagine most Lebanese are extremely upset that the United States refuses to call upon Israel to stop bombing them. If I were in their position, I’d probably feel the same way.

Finally, there is mixed news for the government of Prime Minister Siniora:

Meanwhile, the majority of respondents were unsatisfied with their government’s performance on the diplomatic level (64.3 percent) and relief efforts (54 percent).

However, the rates varied according to sect, as 82.1 percent of Shiites polled and 64.8 percent of Sunnis polled said they were dissatisfied with the government, while 50.1 percent of Druze polled and 61.9 percent of Christians polled said the government had done a good job with humanitarian relief.

One might note that the bombing has fallen heaviest on the Shias and economically damaged the middle class Sunnis the most while the Druze (who are concentrated outside of Beirut) and the Christians (whose enclaves have barely been touched by the war) demonstrate support for the government.

Clearly, the people want Siniora to press Lebanon’s case more forcefully in the international arena and do a better job in dealing with the massive humanitarian crisis (more than 700,000 displaced people) that threatens to overwhelm Siniora’s shaky government.

What is most troubling is the apparent identification of Hizbullah as a force defending Lebanon. This is a change from before the war when most Druze and Christians saw Hizbullah as a danger to the Lebanese state. This attitude can only be bad news for Prime Minister Sinora (and the US and Israel) who will be facing a popular political figure in Nasrallah after the war who has been emboldened by public support for his militia.

It’s going to make disarming the terrorists that much harder.

On the surface, it looks like an important breakthrough in the diplomatic dance going on to stop the war between the Israelis and Hizbullah. The terrorists have apparently agreed to disarm and allow an international force into southern Lebanon:

Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, have joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said.

The agreement — reached after a heated six-hour Cabinet meeting — was the first time that Hezbollah has signed onto a proposal for ending the crisis that includes the deploying of international forces.

Ah yes! Those all important “reservations.”

Hezbollah signed on to the joint proposal “in principle” on the understanding that more discussions will be held between it and other political factions after the U.N. Security Council decides on the composition and mandate of an international force on the border, according to Hezbollah and government officials. The radical Shiite Muslim movement would maintain its heavily armed militia in the south during the talks.

[snip]

After a prisoner exchange, “we will discuss between us Lebanese how to proceed toward a reinforced international presence along the border,” Hamadeh said. He acknowledged that disarming Hezbollah would have to be part of the discussion, saying: “We would discuss that as part of the system of national defense, but between us Lebanese.”

The proposal also demands a Security Council commitment to place the disputed Shebaa Farms area under U.N. supervision until Syria, Israel and Lebanon can work out a settlement on whose territory it should be. Ghaleb Abu-Zeinab of Hezbollah’s political bureau said this was key because the tiny pocket of orchards—where the Israeli and Lebanese borders meet the occupied Golan Heights—is the militia’s only territorial dispute with Israel.

With that issue settled, he suggested, Hezbollah could consider some form of disarmament and cooperation with the Lebanese army and international peacekeepers.

To sum up, Hizbullah will “discuss” the issue of disarming if:

1. Israel agrees to an immediate cease fire.

2. Israel agrees to a prisoner exchange involving terrorists who have murdered Israeli citizens including cold blooded killer Samir Qantar.

3, The UN internationalizes the Shebaa Farms and then hands the disputed territory to Lebanon.

4. The Lebanese government discusses “reinforcing the international presence” (UNIFIL) in the south while allowing Hizbullah back into positions they have abandoned during the war.

5. Pigs can fly.

Watch now as diplomats the world over praise Hizbullah’s “flexibility” when in reality, the terrorists want to return to a status quo ante-bellum; everything exactly as it was before the war with the bonus of the disputed Shebaa Farms falling into Hizbullah’s hands like a ripe plum. They will still have their guns going into “negotiations” with the Lebanese government to disarm – presumably the same negotiations that have been going on for more than a year. The big difference being that Nasty Nasrallah and his thugs will have garnered enormous prestige as a result of their standing toe to toe with Israel on the battlefield and besting them at the conference table.

Also, recall that Hizbullah has yet to abide by UN Resolution 1559 which called for their forces to pull back from the southern border as well as disarming. Why in God’s name should anyone with half a brain trust these brutes to abide by any agreement put into place following their latest aggression against Israel?

I disagree with Ed Morrissey’s take on this:

First, Hassan Nasrallah has retreated to the shelter of his patrons, first in Damascus and then rumored to be hiding in the Iranian embassy. Second, his admission of setbacks to his troops indicate that he was already in some serious trouble with his fellow terrorists. This new offer makes it appear that a leadership change has occurred in Hezbollah—and Nasrallah may wind up fleeing Lebanon altogether.

I don’t think that Nasrallah’s popularity depends very much on any gains or losses by the military wing of Hizbullah. The fact that they have stood up in open combat with the Israelis is, pathetically speaking, enough to make him a hero on the Arab street and raise his prestige even further amongst the Lebanese Shia population. And the Lebanese government, caught between an ascendant Hizbullah and the punishing attacks by the Israelis, have pretty much been forced to give Nasrallah a veto over any peace proposals anyway.

As Ed rightly points out, it is unlikely that the Israelis will accept the cease fire proposal anyway which means that Nasrallah has lost nothing domestically and gained enormously on the international stage as he will now be touted as something of a statesman. And in the end, unless something unforeseen occurs, Hizbullah will still have its guns, still be the most organized and effective fighting force in Lebanon, and still hold the upper hand over the government in any peace negotiations with Israel or the international community.

Well, it’s a start anyway.

President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have bowed to international pressure and called for a mutual cease fire between Israel and Hizbullah. I’m sure if both men had their druthers, they would have continued commiserating on the sidelines with the suffering of Lebanese civilians all the while urging the Israelis to move faster in their campaign to systematically take the terrorists apart. But the time has arrived where the law of diminishing returns for this strategy has been reached and at least the appearance of peace overtures be given.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced agreement today to seek a United Nations resolution next week that would send a multinational force to southern Lebanon and end hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Blair at the White House, Bush said he is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice back to the Middle East from a conference in Malaysia to try to obtain agreement from the governments of Lebanon and Israel on the U.S.-British plan.

Blair, appearing with Bush at the news conference, said a meeting at the United Nations is being moved forward to Monday to work on the “international stabilization force” for southern Lebanon.

Bush and Blair said their plan, which calls for the disarming of Hezbollah in accordance with a 2004 U.N. Security Council resolution, will ensure a durable peace, rather than a temporary cease-fire.

And the way the two men have carefully crafted their appeal, they are still giving Israel some time to further the destruction of Hizbullah – although it is apparent that there is also a clock at work now that will tick down to a point where Israel must stop.

Bush said the United States and Britain seek a new Security Council resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter, which deals with threats to international peace and provides for the use of military force under U.N. auspices. He said the resolution would set out “a clear framework for cessation of hostilities on an urgent basis” and would mandate the multinational force.

He declined to specify which countries should be included in the multinational force or who should lead it, saying these issues would be addressed at the meeting Monday. Bush also would not say whether Hezbollah’s agreement to accept the force should be a “precondition” for deploying it. But he noted that “Hezbollah is not a state,” and he said the key is to get the governments of Lebanon and Israel to agree to the force, which he said would “serve as a complement” to the Lebanese army and would “help the Lebanese army succeed.”

Bush said the approach he and Blair agreed upon would make possible “the end of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, the return of Israeli soldiers taken hostage by the terrorists, the suspension of Israel’s operations in Lebanon and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.”

All of this will take time to organize – especially the multinational force. My own estimate, based on Israel’s timetable for destroying Hizbullah, is 3-4 weeks. I can’t believe the President would have agreed to this move unless it allowed Israel the freedom to carry out their military plans to their completion.

And then there will be the insoluble problem of what countries will send troops that will make up the MNF. Unless Hizbullah agrees to give up its guns peaceably, the MNF will be engaged in combat and suffer casualties. There are only a handful of nations that would be willing to send its troops into harms way under an international command structure where the rules of engagement are bound to be extraordinarily restrictive.

No numbers were mentioned at the press conference for the MNF but if Hizbullah has at least 20,000 fighters, one would think that any UN force would have to at least be double that number in order to carry out the additional mandates planned under the cease fire proposal:

Bush said the top priorities of the U.S.-British plan for Lebanon are “providing immediate humanitarian relief, achieving an end to the violence, ensuring the return of displaced persons and assisting with reconstruction.” He added, “Our goal is to achieve a lasting peace, which requires that a free, democratic and independent Lebanese government be empowered to exercise full authority over its territory. We want a Lebanon free of militias and foreign interference, and a Lebanon that governs its own destiny” as called for in U.N. Security Council Resolutions.

“We agree that a multinational force must be dispatched to Lebanon quickly to augment a Lebanese army as it moves to the south of that country,” Bush said. He said the multinational force would “help speed delivery of humanitarian relief, facilitate the return of displaced persons, and support the Lebanese government as it asserts full sovereignty over its territory and guards its borders.”

That’s a heavy load for a group that will be expected to “augment” the Lebanese army. In reality, it will be the MNF that will do most of the heavy lifting in any combat situation with Hizbullah. The Lebanese army could not be counted on to fight the terrorists given their questionable loyalties as well as fitness for combat.

The real question is will Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora be able to get Hizbullah to accept any deal that involves their disarmament. Conventional wisdom says no, that Siniora is not in charge anyway. If that is the case, there is little any international force can do to make them give up their guns and the MNF would be operating in a combat zone.

Then there is the question if there would be any international force at all if Hizbullah refuses to disarm. If that happens, Israel would have little choice but to occupy their buffer zone in Lebanon and endure years of guerrilla attacks at the hands of Hizbullah terrorists. There just isn’t the international will to take on Hizbullah except in the United States and perhaps Great Britain. And it is doubtful that either of those two countries would contribute the numbers of men to an MNF that would make the force viable.

The key here is that Hizbullah would have to agree to give up there guns before there is a cease fire. I expect the UN to water down that part of the proposal since Hizbullah will not agree in advance to such a deal. This means that the US will probably be placed in a position of having to pressure Israel to accept a cease fire without that very important goal being reached. Will Olmert go along? He will probably have little choice.

The MNF won’t be there forever. And once they leave, a fully armed Hizbullah will be free to move back into the positions they had to abandon. So in the end, everyone will ask, “What was it we were fighting about?”

Evidently not satisfied with simply being made into an internet verb, noted child molesting humor mongerer and thorn in the side of human decency Deb Frisch is back – with a vengeance.

Employing poorly disguised sock puppets, Frisch (a woman defended by some on the left despite her unhinged attacks on Jeff Goldstein and his two year old son) commented at Ace’s site thusly:

Do you think Jeff sux Satchel’s dick or just plays with it?

Of course, she didn’t use her true name. But the IP address on the comment – as well as the IP address on similar comments made at Goldstein’ site - traces back to Eugene, Oregon where Frisch currently resides. The comments left at Jeff’s site are so sickening that I’ve decided not to publish them here. Patterico has a screenshot of them if you feel the need to see depravity in the flesh.

That’s not all. According to Patterico, the IP address is eerily similar to one used by Deb Frisch herself in comments left at Aces, Goldstein’s, and Patterico’s websites in the past.

Patterico sums up the evidence:

Frisch previously left comments on my site, Ace’s site, and Jeff’s site using a slightly different Qwest IP address that traced back to Eugene, Oregon. That previous Frisch IP address was Qwest IP address 71.34.252.228, which also traces to Eugene, Oregon.

I long ago deleted the content of comment she left on my site, under the moniker “WW” (”Word Warrior”); it’s still linked here. I preserved the original text in a Notepad file.

Ace confirms that Frisch previously posted comments under her own name on his site, under that same Qwest IP address. And Jeff tells me she had previously used two Qwest IP’s on his site. One was the same as was left on my site: 71.34.252.228. The other was 71.32.126.27. That is also a Qwest IP address that traces to Eugene, Oregon, the city where Frisch lives.

In the meantime, Jeff Goldstein has felt compelled to stop posting until he can resolve his problems – “once and for all” – either through the legal system or, my recommendation, by using law enforcement if indeed any laws have been broken.

Couple this with the ongoing drama involving Seixon, Larry Johnson, Jason Leopold, and God knows who else and you have an extraordinarily disturbing picture. And I would say to my friends on the sane left who I know visit here from time to time and are kind enough to disagree with me rationally that the time has come for larger lefty blogs to stand up and be placed in the decency column by using some of that vitriol they hurl at the right and at the President with such practiced ease and send some of it in the direction of the guttersnipes, the bullies, and the dirty necked galoots who are making the internet a sewer and a place of dread.

I don’t like the direction that the blogosphere is going at all. All the great hopes for this new communications medium engendered in the lead up to and following the 2004 election are being subsumed in an avalanche of filth and threats that have gone far beyond bad jokes, inappropriate humor, or simple flame wars. It is no longer enough to “fisk” a post by a rival blogger. Now you must destroy the blogger himself, lay him low with withering personal invective of a kind that borders on threats to his person or even more disturbing, to his family.

I mentioned in my Seixon post that these tactics are a kind of hardball politics not seen on the internet before but not unfamiliar to those who have been involved in politics on the national level. Whispering campaigns of a vile nature carried out against opponents, the call in the middle of the night, siccing friendly reporters on rivals by rumormongering, digging up dirt on people’s personal lives, even veiled threats have all been part of The Big Game in Washington for decades. Somehow, you would think that the citizen journalists who inhabit the blogosphere could have immunized themselves from that kind of nastiness.

Alas, the stakes are considered so high by most that the old saw “The ends justifies the means” becomes a battle cry for those who seek the brass ring of power and the prestige that comes to those invited into the outer rings of the Councils of State. It is the politics of Court transmogrified to 20th century America. It is a game played for keeps. The victims are those who see politics as something less than life or death. And in that kind of contest, those most determined to prevail generally do.

Unless the blogosphere as one rises up in righteous anger and condemns without equivocation, without qualification, and without regard to ideology or party affiliation those who seek to sully this medium with the poisonous tactics of bullying, or threatening, or crossing over from the virtual world into the physical world in order to carry out vendettas against opponents, we will become a sideshow, a gaggle of carping, sniping, irrelevancies who deserved to be laughed at rather than taken seriously for our ideas or beliefs.

It’s not to late to take a stand. And I urge everyone that reads this to take that stand with me.