Where are the Middle-Eastern Conflicts Going

Niall Ferguson OpEd. His analysis of the Israeli/Hezbollah situation seems reasonable. Though the part of the article that makes the strongest statement is in regards to Islamic sectarian violence.

Yet the biggest ethnic conflict in the Middle East today is not between Jews and Arabs. It is between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. With every passing day, the character of violence in Iraq shifts from that of an anti-American insurgency to that of a sectarian civil war. More than 100 civilians a day were killed in Iraq last month, according to the United Nations, bringing the civilian death toll this year to a staggering 14,000-plus. A rising proportion of those being killed are victims of sectarian violence. For Israel, spiraling Sunni-Shiite conflict is a dark cloud with a silver lining. The worse it gets, the harder it will be for Israel's enemies to make common cause. (Fact: Syria is 74% Sunni; Iran is 89% Shiite.) But for the United States, such conflict, emanating from a country supposedly liberated by American arms, must surely be a cause for concern.

Iraq isn't stabilizing. That should be abundantly clear. The majority of the provinces are reaching stability, but the bad ones are getting slowly worse. Reports of insurgent attacks against the American military appear to be slowly getting smaller, though this is likely due to their being overshadowed by news about large death rates due to sectarian violence. Concern is more than justified in this case.

A stable Iraq would be a boon for the US. The democracy stabilizing and moving forward as a catalyst for change in other Middle-Eastern states would be beneficial for everyone. But that doesn't appear to be what is happening. There appears to be little ethnic strife, though that could be partly due to the vagueness of the reports on who is killing whom.

Max Boot has an OpEd that states that Israel should really be going forward against Syria as well as Hezbollah.

The real problem is that Israel's response has been all too proportional. So far it has only gone after Hamas and Hezbollah. (Some collateral damage is inevitable because these groups hide among civilians.) Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is showing superhuman restraint by not, at the very least, "accidentally" bombing the Syrian and Iranian embassies in Beirut, which serve as Hezbollah liaison offices.

It's hard to know what accounts for this Israeli restraint, for which, of course, it gets no thanks. It may just be a matter of time before the gloves come off. Or Olmert may be afraid of upsetting the regional status quo. The American neocon agenda of regime change is not one that finds favor with most Israelis (ironic, considering how often the rest of the world has denounced neocons as Mossad agents). The Israeli attitude toward neighboring dictators is "better the devil you know." That may make sense with Jordan and Egypt, which have made peace with Israel, but not with Syria, which serves as a vital conduit between Tehran and Hamas and Hezbollah.

He also points out that the present situation is due to American inaction. Though I find this a bit harsh.

The U.S. should have done more to stop Syria from supporting not only the terrorists targeting Israel but those targeting U.S. troops in Iraq. Syrian strongman Bashar Assad appeared to be down for the count when a U.N. investigation found evidence linking his regime to the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. But Bush let him get up off the mat. Senior U.S. officials keep proclaiming that Syria's support for terrorism is unacceptable, but by not doing more to stop it, they have tacitly accepted it.

The same is true of Iran. The mullahs continue to develop nuclear weapons and smuggle explosives into Iraq, and our only response has been talk and more talk. Perhaps this is a prelude to eventual military action, but in the meantime the administration should have done more to aid internal foes of the mullahocracy. It has taken until no —five years into the Bush presidency - for the U.S. to commit any serious money ($66 million) for Iranian democracy promotion, and the State Department has blocked efforts on Capitol Hill to spend even more.

I find the statement highlighted as being of limited value. I'd like to know what exactly the US could have done in addition to restrain Syrian support for terrorism. Seeing that they are already a fairly isolated country and knowing that military action was off the table, I find any other actions to be moot. Trade sanctions or other punitive actions would have merely irritated the Syrians and produced no changes.

As for the Iranian democracy promotion funding, I'm skeptical as to how effective it really is. The control of the population by the theocrats in Iran has been quite strong. Control of media access by the people has been limited and the counter propaganda I'm betting has been very strong. I don't doubt that the propaganda is effective to a minor extent in building discourse against the Mullahs, but I am skeptical that it could or will ever have a strong effect for change.

VD Hanson also comments that its time for Israel to move. He provides this perspective as to who is sponsoring the present attacks against Israel and why.

We can answer these absurdities by summing up the war very briefly. Iran and Syria feel the noose tightening around their necks - especially the ring of democracies in nearby Afghanistan , Iraq , Turkey , and perhaps Lebanon . Even the toothless U.N. finally is forced to focus on Iranian nukes and Syrian murder plots. And neither Syria can overturn the Lebanese government nor can Iran the Iraqi democracy. Instead, both are afraid that their rhetoric may soon earn some hard bombing, since their "air defenses" are hardly defenses at all.

So they tell Hamas and Hezbollah to tap their missile caches, kidnap a few soldiers, and generally try to turn the worldÂ’s attention to the collateral damage inflicted on "refugees" by a stirred-up Zionist enemy.

For their part, the terrorist killers hope to kidnap, ransom, and send off missiles, and then, when caught and hit, play the usual victim card of racism, colonialism, Zionism, and about every other -ism that they think will win a bailout from some guilt-ridden, terrorist-frightened, Jew-hating, or otherwise oil-hungry Western nation.

The only difference from the usual scripted Middle East war is that this time, privately at least, most of the West, and perhaps some in the Arab world as well, want Israel to wipe out Hezbollah, and perhaps hit Syria or Iran . The terrorists and their sponsors know this, and rage accordingly when their military impotence is revealed to a global audience - especially after no reprieve is forthcoming to save their "pride" and "honor."

Hanson's analysis finally comes to pointing out that Israel should act and finish the conflict by crushing Hezbollah.

What should the United States do? If it really cares about human life and future peace, then we should talk ad nauseam about "restraint" and "proportionality" while privately assuring Israel the leeway to smash both Hamas and Hezbollah - and humiliate Syria and Iran, who may well come off very poorly from their longed-for but bizarre war.

Only then will Israel restore some semblance of deterrence and strengthen nascent democratic movements in both Lebanon and even the West Bank . This is the truth that everyone from London to Cairo knows, but dares not speak. So for now, let us pray that the brave pilots and ground commanders of the IDF can teach these primordial tribesmen a lesson that they will not soon forget - and thus do civilization’s dirty work on the other side of the proverbial Rhine.

In this regard, it is time to stop the silly slurs that American policy in the Middle East is either in shambles or culpable for the present war. In fact, if we keep our cool, the Bush doctrine is working. Both Afghans and Iraqis each day fight and kill Islamist terrorists; neither was doing so before 9/11. Syria and Iran have never been more isolated; neither was isolated when Bill Clinton praised the "democracy" in Tehran or when an American secretary of State sat on the tarmac in Damascus for hours to pay homage to Syria's gangsters. Israel is at last being given an opportunity to unload on jihadists; that was impossible during the Arafat fraud that grew out of the Oslo debacle. Europe is waking up to the dangers of radical Islamism; in the past, it bragged of its aid and arms sales to terrorist governments from the West Bank to Baghdad .

I'm not quite as enthusiastic about the Bush doctrines success at this time. Hanson's point about the terrorists may be true, but the problem of sectarian violence is still to be solved. I agree that the IDF should just stomp Hezbollah and get it over with. The sooner the better. By killing the Hezbollah terrorists with limited restraint they will likely save more lives in the long run. I am wondering why they have been so restrained to this point.

It is odd that so much of the world, and in fact Arab nations, want to see Hezbollah gone. It's definitely not the script that has been used for many years.