If the Dems retake the House, Rep. Dingell (D-Mi) will chair the Energy and Commerce Committee. They handle oil and stuff. Well,  the guys with the oil will love this:

"I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah; I don't take sides for or against Israel," said Dingell on a local TV show. Perhaps he’s on to something. Nothing works in the Middle East anymore, after all; perhaps utter neutrality is our best options. But let’s review the others first.

The US continues to support Israel. This is becoming difficult, since many important nations with well-dressed, urbane spokesmen have decided that Israel should stop its strange policy of firing rockets on UN-run stem-cell research facilites for no apparent reason. These diplomats will tolerate a little wartime madness – we all have our moments, after all – but enough is enough, and now they must go home and sit in the basement and wait for more rocket attacks. If they’re good, they will get a snack.

Strict Neutrality, or Dingellism. This may seem odd to some, given that one side consists of bloodthirsty religious lunatics who relish the indiscriminate killing of civilians, and the other is an Islamic social welfare organization reluctantly pressed into combat. (Any objections to those characterizations, Rep. D? Just curious.) Perhaps the West, in the name of fairness,  could supply Hezbollah with the tools it requires. After all, it is manifestly unjust that Israel has such wizardly munitions on their side, and Hezbollah is forced to use crude devices made from disassembled Iranian baby-milk factory equipment. And it is rather condescending to believe that Hezbollah fires its missiles randomly without caring where they land; if they had access to precision munitions, it is possible they would aim more carefully.

Arming Hezbollah, however, might alarm Iran, and that would warn the French the US is up to its crazy ways again. As the French foreign minister, M. Douste-Blazy (pronounced Vee-shee)  recently said in Beirut:
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“We could never accept a destabilization of Lebanon, which could lead to a destabilization of the region. In the region there is of course a country such as Iran - a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region.”

Of course, he’s right. Without the steady, respected hand of Iran on the Middle Eastern helm, the Syrian regime might be replaced by pragmatic elements of the military unwilling to enjoy the boon of Persian dominance. One can excuse the occasional, inexplicable acts of Iranian mischief; the mullahs no doubt are busy destabilizing Iraq today, for example, but only to achieve a more stable future (Would that our leaders had such foresight!) Granted, their rhetoric is hardly helpful – a New York Times photo of a billboard in Tehran shows the well-fed adamant face of Sheik Nasrallah, a man about whose movement the gentle Democrat from Michigan has no opinion, and the billboard’s English text reads  “Israel must be wiped out the world.” (sic) 

Extreme? Sure. That’s how those loveable nuts talk over there. You’d have to be nuts – or a Jew!  - to take it seriously. But what if the billboard suggests to a third option?

Abandon Israel, and wait for it to collapse. Since the presence of Jews on holy Arab soil is the primary cause for dreaded “instability,” then a Palestine as Judenfrei as Gaza would calm everyone down. Everyone who remained, in any case. It would mean favorable oil terms from new allies. The money spent on foreign aid to Israel could be rebated to the taxpayer in the form of “Fiddler on the Roof” DVDs, which they could study for the myriad ways in which the Jews antagonized the Tsar. (With a new commentary track from Mel Gibson!) Best of all, the United States would be respected again. We would have allies. Respect and allies matter more than what you did to get them, after all.

Give them the Jews and they’ll leave us alone. Lord knows, that always works.  If you don’t want any surprises down the road, toss in Spain now. Call it a signing bonus.

NEWHOUSE 07 26 06:

As invasions go, it lacked punch: 200 troops and five pickup trucks with machine guns. You can find ten times the firepower in a NASCAR parking lot. Still, it was an invasion, and as the Ethiopia-Somali war threatened to enter its second week –

Oh, who cares? Even though Somalia is run by Islamists so extreme they make the Taliban look like lapsed Unitarians,  the progressive peace movement would take notice of the region only if Uncle Satan intervened to help Ethiopia support the UN-recognized government.  And then the Progressives would rally to the Islamist cause. Recent anti-Israel protests remind us again of our era’s peculiar alliance: the most violent, intolerant, militantly religious movement in modern times has the peace movement on its side.

The usual delusions are abundant. The progressives imagine they’re the vanguard shielding the last jot of human rights from the ever-gathering fascist storm. (Forget the executions in Somalia for the crime of watching the World Cup; there’s a rumor Wal-Mart won’t offer the usual new-release discount for DVDs of Al Gore’s eco-doc.) They imagine that conservatives support Israel because they want to convert Jews and usher in the last book in the “Left Behind” series. They have internalized the Palestinian narrative so deeply they blame the “occupation” for rocket attacks coming out of territory no longer occupied.  They’re so convinced of their rectitude that the obscenity of an Israeli flag spattered with swastikas makes perfect sense: why, if they weren’t actually Nazis, the progressives wouldn’t oppose them.   They marched with communists for Worker’s Rights, regardless of whether anyone in communist countries had a job or any rights. And now they march with Hezbollah supporters for Peace and Justice.

And so you have George Galloway, the British politician who was the progressive’s darling when he sparred with Sen. Coleman in some Senate hearings about Oil-for-Food corruption, proclaiming his love and support for Hezbollah’s leader. You have the Dutch Socialist Party leader equating Islamic terrorism to the resistance of the Dutch against the Nazis.  In London, the wooly-minded pawns  marched beneath banners that said “We are all Hizbullah.” Really?  Is that why there’s a rocket launcher at my kid’s day care? Makes sense now.  In Sydney,  the progressives dutifully trotted alongside the city’s Islamic “spiritual leader” under a sign that called Gaza a “holocaust” – a word no doubt chosen at random without knowledge of its historical antecedents.

In Montreal, in Los Angeles, in Boston: city after city hosts merry rallies where Hezbollah sympathizers join earnest Greens and “peace” activists to howl out support for an Iranian-funded army that has taken Lebanon away from its people and strangled its revolution. You’d think they’d root for the people who rose up against the Syrian occupation, no? Wouldn’t that be, well, progressive?

Not if the US is shipping guided munitions to help Israel blow up bad-buy hidey-holes. That trumps all.  Given the Left’s romance with revolution and guerillas, it’ll only be a matter of time before Hezbollah leader Nasrallah appears on T-shirts like Che, and his merry band are lionized as the new Viet Cong. Hezbollah builds schools, you know. Granted, they’re schools where the biology lesson consists of sawing off the heads of infidel frogs. But they build schools!

Imagine rallies in 1939 where brown-shirts taunted Jews, screamed NO BLOOD FOR BEER, blamed Pearl Harbor on the FDR,  and called for the destruction of the French Entity while peace activists applauded.  That’s what we have today. It’s like watching Nazis and Quakers ballroom dance.

This hasn’t infected the mainstream left, but the Democrats have a nasty chancre on their periphery. There’s been a fascinating debate over a Daily Kos blog about whether Israel has a right to exist, and whether the US should be attacked for supporting the Zionist Thingamabob. (To quote the Simpsons’ Rev. Lovejoy: Short answer -   no with a but; long answer, yes with a maybe.) It’s a site many high-profile Democrats have courted. Jimmy Carter posted there, as did John Kerry.

There’ll be Sister Souljah moment when the Democrats have to disavow the progressive base, and the sooner the better.  If only Halliburton had built Hezbollah’s underground bunkers. That would change a few minds. Ah: the real enemy shows its face again.

NEWHOUSE 07 19 06:

You can’t call this the Arab-Israeli war of 06, since the usual belligerents have declined to participate. You could call it World War Three, as Newt Gingrich has suggested; he has a point, but that annoys everyone who wanted the Cold War to be WW3. (Somehow World War Four is less scary if we got another one out of the way without a nuclear swapmeet.) You could call it the Israel-Hezbollah War, but that lets the Syrians and Iranians off the hook.

So let’s just call it Bush’s Fault! At least that’s what Howard Dean proposes. The energetic head of the DNC had this to say:

“If you think what’s going on in the Middle East today would be going on if the Democrats were in control, it wouldn’t, because we would have worked day after day after day to make sure we didn’t get where we are today. We would have had the moral authority that Bill Clinton had when brought together the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

The problem with Moral Authority is its antonym, the Palestinian Authority. Does Dean mean the Oslo accords? President Clinton had been in office less than a year. There‘s a reason they’re not the Little Rock Accords: Norwegian diplomats did all the heavy lifting. (Specifically, suspending disbelief about Arafat’s motives, which can throw your back out if you’re not careful.) Does Dean mean the Camp David negotiations, which ended in the bloody second intifada? Details, details. Moral authority, that’s what counts. Doesn’t stop wars, but it makes the bad guys look extra guilty. Ingrates!

This is not to underestimate President Clinton’s ability to make other diplomats feel good about themselves or produce impressive pieces of paper.  But Mr. Clinton is not running in 2008, and neither Gore nor Kerry had his conspicuous gift for oleaginous empathy. Then again, who knows? Perhaps Al Gore would have Moral Authority gushing out his ear if he’d chosen to leave Saddam in power. No question Hezbollah would be impressed -  perhaps enough to aim the rockets to the left a little, so they landed on the outskirts of the playgrounds.

But the revelatory moment in Dean’s assertion was its touching faith in Talk and Work. President Gore or Kerry would have been working day after day after day on the issue. Non stop! Sleeves rolled up, dinner at the desk: make another pot of coffee, Mabel, this Golan Heights dispute won’t solve itself.  This suggests they believe the difficulties of the Middle East have the weight and consequence of a tariff dispute. This suggests that they don’t understand that the Hezbollah definition of “Disarm” is blowing off the limbs of Israelis. Imagine a typical negotiation:

Fierce-eyed Hezbollah representative: Thank you for the invitation; lovely office. Death to Israel.

Gullible American: Well, that’s just rhetoric; we understand. 

Hezbollah: It is not rhetoric. It is truth. The Zionist entity is a festering infected splinter in the lip of the Caliphate.

(pause)

GA: So you’re saying you want some antibiotics as well? We can do that. But you have to show us you’re ready to coexist with Israel.

Hezbollah: We recognize the right of Israel to exist, but only as a footnote in history books. 

GA: So we agree on principle, and the rest is just a matter of details. Great! We’ll draw up the treaty for the signing ceremony. You’re going to love the pens. They’re Cross. Smoothest pen you’ve ever used.

Hezbollah: I will save it to plunge into the heart of the last Jew to crawl towards the sea.

GA: Do you need your parking validated?

Repeat until the last accords fall apart, then call for new accords.

Howard Dean is not a stupid man; he knows Iran and Syria are the real actors behind this game. But his words placate the netroots people who think that Bush is stumping the country blaming the Hezbollah attacks on Max Cleland. Fine. If Israel eliminates Hezbollah, humiliates the fascists of Syria and lets Lebanon get on with the Cedar Revolution devoid of murder-gang influence, will that be Bush’s doing?

Of course not.  He doesn’t have the Moral Authority, like a Pope. Or Bill Clinton.

(perm link)