Lord, Give Me the Patience of Dick Cheney [UPDATED]
My son and I walked to our local Chinese restaurant this afternoon for a lunch of steamed dumplings and Shanghai pan-fried noodles. And lukewarm tea.
What was my point…?
Oh yes! A couple sitting at a table across the restaurant spoke in a voice unmuffled by shame or embarrassment, without fear of contradiction, that Dick Cheney always talked as if he were trying to drum up a war. I didn’t say anything; it’s a free-ish country (even in Chinese restaurants), and I embarrass my son enough as it is. But I thought: stop talking, Dickie-baby, and start drumming. Calling Keith Moon, Charlie Watts, Levon Helm, Mo Tucker, Max Roach, and Buddy Rich.
The UN chief warned Saturday that arms smuggling from Syria could threaten the cease-fire in Lebanon and urged full compliance with a UN resolution that ended the summer war between Hezbollah and Israel.
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Noting allegations that the arms embargo on Hizbullah was not being enforced, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Friday with Lebanese security chiefs during his two-day visit to Lebanon to discuss ways of enhancing the Lebanese army’s monitoring capabilities of the along border with Syria, one of Hizbullah’s principal patrons.
The leading Lebanese daily An-Nahar reported Saturday that Ban told the Lebanese security chiefs that Israel had provided him with “evidence and pictures” of trucks crossing from Syria to Lebanon and unloading weapons.
Lebanese leaders have rejected Israeli claims that weapons smuggling continues.
Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, who is opposed to Hizbullah and Syrian influence, said at a news conference with Ban in Beirut on Friday that the Lebanese government was trying to improve its monitoring capabilities but stressed that “not one single case of arms smuggling across the border” with Syria has been recorded.
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But Hizbullah has boasted that it replenished its stockpile of rockets after the war.
How? Does Amazon deliver Katyushas to Bekaa now?
Not even Ban can sweeten the armpit that is Lebanon. The Second Lebanon War, as the Israelis recently decided to call it, was immoral only insofar as the Israelis fought not to win it. Killing Lebanese, and allowing your own citizens to be killed, is pointless—therefore profoundly immoral—if you do so without the only justification for war: victory. A stalemate with Hezbollah is worthless; only by defeating them, as Israel will surely be called upon to do sooner rather than later, can Israel make right what is now wrong.
Sow, reap, yadda-yadda.
“Egypt had to support the tunnels (from Egyptian territory into the Gaza Strip) during the (second) intifada because they were the Palestinians’ only oxygen line, especially when the Rafah crossing was closed for extended periods,” wrote Dr. Abd al-Munam al-Mashat in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat, but added that “the situation has changed. Now the tunnels pose a problem for the Egyptians, especially in light of the increasing concern about terrorist attacks on their territory.”
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“Egypt will strike with an iron fist anyone who threatens its national security,” warned former Egyptian ambassador to Israel Mohammed Basyouni…. We are opposed to the tunnels because they are not a lawful way to cross the frontier.”