So France helped the US broker the ceasefire deal in Lebanon. Great, wonderful, I'm estatic. It'll be good to have the UN in there to keep Hezbollah from reighning rockets down on Israeli civilians. While they're there they might even accomplish something useful wrt breaking some of the hold Hezbollah has on the area. Except that France, the country that can claim the most interst in Lebanon of all the EU countries since it used to be their colong, is sending only another 200 troops to the "lead" the force.

Wow Fance. Way to walk the walk. (They do so excel at talking one wonders if the halls of power inside of France are lined with nice comfy chairs or perhaps just wheelchairs. I'm not sure but I'm leaning towards the latter.) Why those 200 extra troops are going to do just worlds of good. I'm sure France will be right on top of the whole deal with their thumbs to the pulse of the situation.

Yeah. Right. And perhaps China will embrace democracy this afternoon as well.

The reality of the matter is that France, and the EU in general, lack spine. After having WWI and WWII fought back and force across Europe and then suffering through the Cold War they've forgotten that even though it is at best horrible, and usually horriffic, that there is a time when diplomacy must be persued by other means.

Hezbollah is a group of murderers. They get backing from Syria and Iran and rain artillery designed to cause maximum civilian casualties down upon civilian targets and attempt to barter the lives of Israel's soldiers for the freedoom of murderers locked away in Israeli Prisions. As far as I'm concerned what these people deserve is a pair of rounds to the back of their skull. Anyone that would honestly, and earnestly, defend these peoples "right" to shell civilians can have the same. (9mm rounds are cheap like that.)

Disarming Hezbollah is not going to solve this problem. They'll just buy more weapons from Syria and Iran and come back for more. As long as Hezbollah is allowed to exist this problem will continue. Of course as aethetically appealing as an unrestrained war against Hezbollah is it's not likely to solve the problem either. The end result of that is Israel getting into a large and protracted war that would involve at least Lebanon and Syria and has the potential to turn into a general regional conflict with all the arab nations of the ME dog piliing down onto Israel. I'd rather not see a genocide go down on either side and I'd especially like to see Israel not get backed into a corer such that it feels the need to nuke Mecca, Damascus, Riyadh, and Cairo if it can be helped.

The good solution to the problem would be for the moderate muslims of the region to become empowered and motivated such that they, of their own accord, pushed these monsters out from their midst. That way you either wind up with no more terrorists, because the general populace has erradicated the problem themselves, or a clearly defined target upon which to wage conventional war.

Of course this isn't going to happen.

There's lots of reasons why. First is that the people who rule the majority of the ME countries in question fall into one of several categories. Either they're Facist regimes that actively support and nuture the terrorists as you find in Iran and Syria, or they're governments that lack the ability to control the contents of their own borders such as Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, the UAE, and Pakistan, or it's a situation like exists in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, and Pakistan where you have a moderately minded government that has to mind the more extremist tendencies of it's populace. No matter how you cut this it means that the existing governments are not going to be the source of any change in culture in the ME. In fact they may be the casue of, or otherwise enabling, such problems.

Then there are the populace's themselves. Here you have several problems. Depending on where you're at you will find varying degrees of poverty, ignorance, religious fundamentalism, and a general banality of evil. Poverty and Ignorance seem to go hand in hand and unfortunately these two can combine with a weak or hostile government to create a nasty death spiral of hate and terror. Fundamentalism is a big problem though and this is one that the Mullahs of the region could solve independent of the governments if they really wanted to. Islam is a religion of peace they say? Well great then the peaceful types can stand up and start saying it. Until they do they're giving tacit approval to the likes of Al-Sadr, Hezbollah, and company by way of their silence.

The Banality of evil is another big part of this. It isn't the first time in modern history that it has come up either. Look at the very genteel anti-semitism of europe that led pretty much every nation there-of to cheerfully hand over their jews to the Nazi's in order to enable the "Final Solution". Look at the "Silent Majority" that backed the gross civil rights violations that went on suppressing the assorted peace movements of the 60's as well. When you look at these events there is a startling similarity and precedent for the things you see going on in the Middle East today.

These terrorists and murderers get labled as "insurgents", "Freedom Fighters", "oppressed minorities" and other PC terms specifically intended to engender sympathy for them while Israel, who is suffering under a continuous assault of terrorist proproptions and genocidal intent, gets chastised for being "dispraportionate" in it's response? When it's telling civilians to leave because they're about to be in a war zone?!?! And it is somehow Israel's fault when these same murderers and terrorists, use civilians as human shields, stage photo opps, and generally show as much respect for human life as you'd get from a rabid bear? I don't think so. This is the banality of evil that makes the truly vile appear somehow less so, or possibly even justified. (Bet you thought I was wandering off topic there. hehehe. Nope.)

What this means, in my opinion, is that the populaces in question are not going to throw the terrorists out of their own accord. It means that if we want the fighting to end that that resolution is going to have to be enforced from without and that force, of an overwhelming and merciless variety, is going to have to be part of the solution.

One of the primary characteristics the terrorists we are dealing with is that they hide amongst the civilian population. They strike from secret and anonymity and may not ever even reveal their presence. With groups like Al-Queda and Islamic Jyhad the only realistis solution you can have to this is for the intelligence services of the world to re-develop the needed "human assets" to take the war to the shadows and kill these people is as targeted and precise a matter as possible. (As in no firing rockets into appartment buildings. The collateral damage generates too many new terrorists for this to be an ultimately worthwhile venture however aethtetically pleasing it may be.)

Hamas, Hezbollah, and company are an entirely different matter. In both cases these groups have specific geographic attachments of which they are either the defacto government or the actual sovereign rulers thereof. A straightforward total war approach is NOT going to remove them from the populace because while they're in charge they don't necessecarily run around in uniforms using conventional tactics. They use a mixture of Guerilla and terrorist tactics to get the job done. Part of the reason for this is that they do not by any means have the capcity to engage any regular army in a stand up fight.

Against these groups there is a few specific strategies that can be used to neutralize a large amount of their power. 1) Invade and occupy the geography that they're based out of. 2a) Undertake a house to house search of that geography and remove all arms and crush all resistance. Even if you create "new" terrorists in the deal you should wipe out much the existing terrorist infrastructure and destroy the vast majority of their conventional weapons. or 2b) Undertake something similar to the blockhouse method used by the British in the Boer War to force the Boer warriors out into the open. This is very costly and manpower inetnesive to do though and hasn't realy ever been atteempted in an urban setting so there's no gaurantee's that it'd work.

Asking the Middle East Nations to fix their problems though is not going to work. The Middle East Nations ARE the problem. Any solution that is going to work is going to be imposed from without and it's going to be messy. Accept that now and get used to it because the bad guys aren't going to stop for anything other than to reload so that they can keep going.