August 14, 2006, morning.  Cease fire? We'll see. Hezbollah's avowed goal is the destruction of Israel. Israel's stated goal is to be left alone. Which side is more likely to abide by the terms of the cease fire? Hezbollah seems to already be hedging on disarming south of the Litana River. We'll see.

August 10, 2006, evening.  We are at war. American civilians have a very superficial understanding of the profound difference between fighting a war and catching criminals. These are two very different activities. Law enforcement officers investigate criminals. Intelligence professionals investigate our enemies. Law enforcement officers conduct investigations and gather information with the goal of convicting those they arrest in a court of law. Intelligence operatives investigate and analyze information with the goal of gaining an advantage over an adversary. Law enforcement officials are seeking convictions. Intelligence professionals are dedicated to defeating an enemy. They defeat their enemies by killing them or degrading their ability to wield power or wage war. While an intelligence operation may result in the apprehension, trial and conviction of an adversary, that is often not the planned goal. It is rarely the first priority. Priority number one is to defeat one's adversary.

Law enforcement organizations are very oriented towards preserving evidence and the rights of the accused so that after they have enough evidence to get a conviction, they can arrest the bad guys and prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Law enforcement sources and methods are pretty well known.

Intelligence operations are designed to gather useful information about an adversary so that you can use that information against them. The rights of an enemy are not much of an issue. If they are agents of a foreign government, they have none, except those provided when their governments are signatories to the Geneva Conventions. If their governments are not signatories, or if they are stateless terrorists, they have no legal rights. They have only the privileges we give them. Intelligence sources and methods are very sensitive. If an enemy becomes aware of an intelligence source, they will shut it off. That gives the enemy the advantage, not a desirable outcome.

Our government has made some mistakes. The biggest one so far in the Global War on Terrorism is to not call for a new Geneva Convention to come to a consensus with the rest of the world the most humane way to deal with captured stateless terrorists. They are not mere criminals. They are not conventional soldiers. The Conventions do not address them, so we have no agreed-upon way of handling them. Since no treaty nor convention addresses their status, individuals and nations have been making things up to address the issue. Conjuring up rights out of nothingness is arrogant and unhelpful. It is an emotional response to a legal problem.

August 10, 2006, morning.  I am alarmed. We are a shift towards a policy of appeasement in the Middle East. We have a presidential administration that invented the phrase Global War on Terror. This same administration has been supporting a cease fire plan bi-laterally developed with France (France??). Of course, France is now listening to the Arab League, so they have waffled and want a complete Israeli withdrawal now. Imagine that, France waffling. Who’d’ve thunk it? So will we go with France now that they surrendered to the Arab street? What, indeed, is the point of negotiating a cease fire with Hezbollah? There was already a diplomatic solution in place. Hezbollah disregarded it, attacked Israel and killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Does anyone with half a brain think that Hezbollah will honor a new cease fire or that any peacekeeping force sent by the UN will actually disarm them? Israel started off this war by half-stepping and talking cease fire, but then they noticed that they were not overwhelming their enemy, and they changed tactics. I hope the Bush administration quickly realizes there is no point in negotiating with terrorists.

Remember, we are losing the Global War on Terror, and Iran is winning.

August 8, 2006, evening.  

A positively frightening view of the Global War on Terror can be found at National Review Online.

While looking at NRO, you may want to check out another article on Iran. It also cautions us about their expanding influence.

Is it deja vu all over again? Have we gone to sleep as Europe did before WW II?

Are we at war with Iran, and we just haven't realized it yet?

August 7, 2006, morning.  The entire world has grown impatient. That whole Lebanon thing should be over by now. It's been weeks, and still no resolution. An d Americans are concluding that Iraq has dragged on far too long, and so many lives have been lost. This whole Global War on Terror thing has grown so boring. It really is time to change the channel. A large number of people, many of them in the Senate and in the House, really do want to cut and run, not because it's the right thing to do, but their constituents are tired of nation building. They want to move on to some new reality show. Insurgencies are so last year.

We have lost perspective. Our losses in Iraq are on par with the War of 1812. Compared to Korea (33,651 lives lost) or Vietnam (47,369), our losses are miniscule. Of course, to the families who have lost loved ones either in war or in peacetime, each loss is a great tragedy. But we are involved in a World War, and we had better start exhibiting some patience, or we will find ourselves losing instead of winning, and we will be fighting on our soil rather than in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

August 2, 2006, evening.  What is the United States doing? Why is its support for Israel weakening? Why should be expect Israel's reaction to a terrorist attack to be significantly different from ours? al-Qaeda attacked us on September 11. They were sponsored and harbored by Afghanistan, then ruled by the Taliban. We destroyed the Taliban and its government and ran al-Qaeda out of the country.

I must agree with the OpinionJournal article that I am paraphrasing.

Israel has been attacked by Hezbollah. Lebanon is a state that sponsors Hezbollah terrorists. There is an entire country within a country thing going on there, with Hezbollah essentially owning South Lebanon. Why do we insist that Israel allow the government of Lebanon to survive? We did not allow the Taliban to survive. Why do we hold Israel to a different standard than we hold ourselves? The UN called for a cease fire in Afghanistan before the Taliban were completely crushed. We did not heed it. Why should Israel? Why are we encouraging them to accept a cease fire before Hezbollah is destroyed?

Look at the way the media (Lenin would have called them useful idiots) are broadcasting images of poor, poor Lebanese victims of the Israeli war machine. There is the token image of the Israeli victim, but the overwhelming majority of tear-jerking photos and video footage depict the suffering of the Lebanese.

Lost in all this anti-war propaganda is the fact that Israel is defending itself, counter-attacking a terrorist enemy that continues to lob hundreds of missiles indiscriminately against Israeli civilian targets.

Israel is certainly killing Lebanese civilians. That is what Hezbollah wants to happen. They make sure that when they launch Katyusha or other rockets, that there are lots of civilians around, then they try to hide in areas with heavy civilian populations. The useful idiots of the western press dance when Hezbollah terrorists pull their strings.

But why are we asking Israel to tie its hands?

We are losing the propaganda war in this struggle, and we are losing it badly.

Inquiring minds...

July 24, 2006, morning.  How very predictable. We are now bombarded by story after story, picture after picture, of injured Lebanese children. Syria is calling for a cease fire, and Saudi Arabia is asking Bush to press for a cease fire. It didn't take long for the anti-war press to produce tear-jerker stories of the terrible cost of war, and what ogres the Israelis are for conducting their aggression against innocent children. I fail to recall the outrage at the constant rocket attacks of Hamas and Hezbollah for months preceding the kidnappings that broke the camel's back. 

I certainly feel sorry for the children, but put the blame where it belongs. Blame the terrorists for firing rockets from Gaza and southern Lebanon, from territories Israel gave back, asking only to be left in peace. Blame the weak Lebanese government and military for not doing anything to stop the attacks on Israel. If I were in Israel's position, I would create a 30 mile buffer zone along the border inside Lebanon. I would mine it and tell the Lebanese that I would shoot anything that moves inside that zone. Then I would tell the UN to put together a peacekeeping force, an actual effective force, that could take over and start patrolling the DMZ. I would also tell the UN that if their force allows rocket attacks to resume, I would kick out the force, put mines back in the area, and would make the DMZ permanent. I would give Gaza 30 days to expel their terrorists. After that, I would offer the residents a choice: live peacefully or leave. The UN would be invited to this party too. Collective punishment? Absolutely. But remember to put the blame where it belongs.

July 18, 2006. Israel currently stands for "I Said Really Adamantly, Eat Lead". What is it with the Palestinians, anyway? They attack Israel relentlessly, blow up Israeli civilians, cheer loudly when they kill women and children, and how does Israel respond? They move their own settlers out and give the Palestinians land to build their own country. All the Palestinians have to do is act civilized. Well, the response of the Palestinian majority party, Hamas, has been to send terrorists to kill and kidnap Israeli soldiers. Now the Iranian supported Hezbollah has done the same thing and is launching hundreds of rockets into Israel to kill more civilians. The Israelis don't do the New Testament, and they are not turning the other cheek. To be fair, the Arab League and several Arab countries are actually blaming Hezbollah, but I don't expect that to last long. As Tom Lehrer said, "Everybody hates the Jews." Kofi Annan has already called for the condemnation of Israel. Expect the rest of the UN to follow.