ASCENDANT ENEMIES

From the Washington Times, more evidence that a major showdown with the enemies of liberty and religious sanity—as articulated in the West—is in the making. There is nothing wrong with noting the reality on the ground, and preparing for the inevitable. A common sense defense and retaliation strategy does not make one a baby-killing hawk, any more than battening down the hatch and boarding up those windows in preparation against an identified hurricane barreling into one's path makes one a thrillseeker.

Islam proves itself every day across this planet as nothing more than a totalitarian ideology which delights in its function as a thrill-kill machine, and somebody on this planet must take a stand against it. Unfortunately, all the US and Israel seem to be capable of doing is painting ourselves into a corner from which there is no escape,

MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT, the quick, brutal display of raw military power by Hezbollah in the past six days is a window into the grim future of Lebanon and the broader Middle East: a future in which Iran and Syria are ascendant and have lost much of their fear of the United States and Israel. It sends a message to President Bush, who arrives in Israel Wednesday to commemorate that nation's 60th birthday: that Tehran and Damascus can project power whenever they want in places like Lebanon, and the United States and it's allies can't do anything about it.

At least 44 people were killed and another 128 wounded in the fighting—the worst outbreak of sectarian violence inside Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war. Although domestic Lebanese issues played a role in the violence, they are inseparable from the larger geopolitical issues. Ever since the Feb. 14, 2005, assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which eventually forced Damascus to remove its occupation troops, Syrian President Bashar Assad has wanted to reclaim power in Lebanon. So, on Friday, after several days of street clashes between pro-government forces and opposition forces, all-out warfare broke out between street gangs loyal to Hezbollah and gangs funded by Saudi Arabia and loyal to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a Sunni Muslim. In less than seven hours of fighting, Hezbollah forces routed the pro-government side, occupied much of Western Beirut, and plastered walls with pictures of the Syrian dictator. Government security forces, equipped and trained by the United States but paralyzed by sectarian differences, stayed out of the fighting.

Lebanese newspapers are filled with pictures of bound, blindfolded members of the defeated loyalist forces who were captured by the Hezbollah side and masked Hezbollah gunmen swaggering through Beirut, boasting how they had forced members of the losing side to beg for their lives. After capturing West Beirut, Hezbollah relinquished the area to the Lebanese Army—for now. Hezbollah (and by extension, its backers in Tehran and Damascus) have demonstrated that they and not the Lebanese government control Lebanon. Do not be surprised if very soon, an emboldened Hezbollah steps up its harassment of the United Nations peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon, laying the groundwork for another battle with Israel.

PREMATURE TURKEY DAY IN AMERICA

Pelosi is pushing this resolution business for Armenian votes in her district, not out of some beckoning sense of right and wrong.

I'm sorry, but any other notion of fairness in motive is just too much of a stretch for the contemporary American politician. The Democrats tried to vote down the Iraq war and failed as soon as the rubber met the pavement. Yes, dear, life is more complicated than simply pulling one's thumb out of one's oriface of choice. So they now attempt to circumvent an action just beginning to succeed, even according to the Washington Post, by tanking its relationship with shaky ally Turkey, negligible hosts to the strategic geographical supply complex this unfortunate but now necessary war requires in a volatile region seething with intent to destroy not only its perceived non-Muslim enemies, but its own rival factions within Islam itself, thus threatening to ignite the powderkeg of the whole Middle East and beyond.

Of course, Turkey's official behavior on this issue of the Armenian genocide is ridiculous, but very predictable, given its longstanding official stance of denial. Pelosi, however, ignoring many other genocides much worse—has encouraged in thought and deed the effort to sabotage the current government. As one Democratic strategist has stated:

Any success in Iraq now is, of course, a threat to us.

The US can probably set up camp again with extra expense and reduced forces in Iraq to help resettle in nearby Bulgaria, a country that has fought back against its Turkish neighbors in the past, or simply move more fully into the north of Iraq. Neither of these options are without pitfalls. Bulgaria is northwest of Turkey, further still from Iraq, and north Iraq may prove problematic with the Kurds themselves, ungrateful as all Muslim peoples tend to be. And I haven't even hinted at what Turkey and Iran, not to mention huge swarths of Iraqis want to do to the Kurds.



But as much as I hate this war for a myriad of reasons, it is also as clear as the predictable Turk action on this congressional motion, that if US forces abruptly withdraw from Iraq, Iran will quickly act to conquer it, and there will be a million dead on the ground before the cock can crow. Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Syria, each with their own agendas, will then invade from all sides to fight iran.

Speculation on WWIII with cease in face of an obvious shuffling of the military deck chairs around the globe as oil supplies are disrupted, and then one can expect to see whoever in in the White House to begin bombing the hell out of something and everything.

Turkey, whose squalid past should certainly be open to censure, is one issue. But what really needs scrutiny is the driving force behind the Armenian genocide of 1915-18 (and the earlier one of 1894-96), which was not Turkish nationalism but Muslim supremacism, rooted in the scripture and traditions of Islam. As dhimmis striving to get out from under Muslim rule, the Armenian Christians committed the ultimate transgression in Muslim eyes—yet in covering this persnickety issue the media never mentions Islam at all. Nor has Congress, for all of its grandstanding, done so either.

Want to end a war, Nancy? Well, thanks for the Turkey shoot, but I don't think your aim is true.