Chris At Home

The blogosphere is still depressed, but it has turned to new dreams: the ceasefire will fail, the media will recognize obvious propaganda, Hollywood will make a Right turn.

Oh, and Bob and his neighbor will stop fighting on Monday; they have an agreement worked out. I laughed out loud.

• CQ sees trouble in the Lebanese government. The meeting to implement the resolution has been postponed, but they reportedly hadn't expected Israel to accept the agreement. They don't want to put troops in the south and they don't want to disarm Hezbullah. Meanwhile, Hezbullah fired 230 rockets into Israel today and Lebanon says they might act in 72 hours and Syria maintained arms shipments.
  
  This is interesting. Hezbullah won the war, but will not disarm and will not stop attacking Israel. No one except Israel can force either to occur, Hezbullah will not disarm unilaterally without losing its organization. A smart terrorist leader would stop attacks and make noise about disarming, which would force Israel to withdraw, then return to firing rockets and attacking Israeli positions. Israel could not attack Lebanon again unless there was a major provocation...rockets in Tel Aviv, for example.
  
  Luckily, Nasrallah seems to be overplaying his hand, and that might cost him his victory. It won't save the Lebanese Christian and Druze who criticized Hezbullah; they will be the first victims of the ceasefire.
  
  
• Israel is already withdrawing troops:
  

  The intention is for the forces to move back to a line north of the border with Lebanon within about 10 days, or as soon as the Lebanese Army is ready to begin entering south Lebanon. This means that the IDF will not be conducting searches for Hezbollah fighters or arms caches in the areas that it has captured over the last few days, which the army defined as "the heart of the operational campaign" against Hezbollah.
  
  Once the Lebanese Army is fully deployed in the south, together with a beefed-up UNIFIL force, the IDF troops will withdraw completely.
  ...
  Olmert and the defense chiefs also agreed that the IDF will begin withdrawing some of its forces from Lebanon immediately, but will remain in various positions that offer control over surrounding areas until these positions can be handed over to the Lebanese Army and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
  
  As of Sunday night, the IDF had begun removing the first reservist units out of Lebanon. Over the coming days, the remaining forces will be gradually reduced, and in some cases, reservists will be replaced with regular army units.

  
  The Israelis expect the ceasefire to fail:
  

  The officials said the working assumption at the Prime Minister's Office was that Hizbullah would not honor the agreement and that the world would then comprehend Israel's predicament more than ever. At press time, the Lebanese cabinet had not given final approval to the cease-fire.
  
  "When Hizbullah violates the cease-fire, the world will see who the aggressor is and will understand us," a source close to Olmert said. "We will insist that the agreement be implemented. It's a good agreement for Israel and Hizbullah's opposition is proof."

  
  
• Ralph Peters has a list of lessons learned from the war.
  

  Lesson 2: The global media can overturn the verdict of the battlefield.
  
  Too many politicians and generals still don't get it. This new truth about war slapped us in the face during the First Battle of Fallujah. Now, facing a hostile global media, the Israelis are learning it.

  
  
• Toronto loves Hezbullah and dead Israelis. Washington, too. Most of the Left seems to agree.
  

  Left-wing bloggers played an important part in Lamont's victory. Here's the reaction of one of them, John Aravosis, to the red alert ordered here in response to the British arrests: "Do I sound as if I don't believe this alert? Why, yes, that would be correct. I just don't believe it. Read the article. They say the plot had an 'Al Qaeda footprint.' Ooh, are you scared yet?"
  
  What we are looking at here is cognitive dissonance. The mindset of the Left blogosphere is that there's no real terrorist threat out there. We wouldn't have any serious problem if we'd just do something different -- raise the minimum wage or reduce the number without health insurance (the first issue Lamont mentioned on election night), withdraw from Iraq or (as some Left bloggers suggest) sell out Israel.

  
  
• Dan speculates that Hezbullah intentionally put handicapped children in a building, then fired rockets from the roof to bring Israeli fire. My mind cannot believe that such evil exists, so I am hoping he is wrong. This is incredibly evil as well, but it actually happened: photos of the murder of a suspected Palestinian by a mob, then his stomping into the ground. Note the old woman.
  
  Supporting people like this is the alternative to supporting Israel. Absolutely revolting.
  
  
• Another article making a case for actively fighting Islamists which will be ignored by the public at-large:
  

  Now we are in World War IV, as Norman Podhoretz has pointed out, between what Tony Blair aptly calls Reactionary Islam and the rest of us. The first striking thing about this war is that we’ve managed to fall asleep at a relatively late stage of it.
  ...
  The only way to win is to suck the air out of jihad by driving the regimes that support it out of power or out of the terror business.
  
  Isolated jihadis can kill but they have no hope of winning. The whole point of jihad is to gain power, so the jihad will lose steam if the states that back it lose power. The U.S., U.K., France, and Germany, perhaps individually and certainly collectively, have the power to force the key rogue regime — Iran — to end its race for the bomb and support for international aggression.
  
  The current U.N. Security Council process on Iran is a good beginning, but only has a hope of becoming the basis of something real if the U.S. shows the determination to take this campaign several degrees forward. We’ve reached the limits of common-denominator diplomacy; the U.S. has to start laying markers based on what will work, not what will fly.

  
  Another excellent article:
  

  It is, indeed, "five minutes to midnight"—not just for Israel, but for the West. The time is very short now before we will have to confront Iran. The only question is how long we let events spin out of our control, and how badly we let the enemy hit us before we begin fighting back.
  
  We can't avoid this war, because Iran won't let us avoid it.
  ...
  The larger evasion is this: the left senses that a regional war is coming, that Iran is hell-bent on starting it, and that there is no way to avoid it. But all of this runs directly counter to their whole world-view. Rather than questioning that world view, they simply assert that this can't be happening. They have to believe that something, anything—no matter how implausible—will stop it from happening. If we just get everyone together and talk, and we keep tinkering with diplomatic solutions until we find something that works, surely we can find a way to avoid a regional war in the Middle East. Can't we? Please?

  
  Again:
  

  But in the early news reports in Britain the words "Islamist" or "Muslim" were hardly emphasized. Let alone "extremist" or the dread word "fascist." Instead the common code words on television were that the 24 men arrested were "British-born" and "of Pakistani origin."
  
  No mention of their Islamist ideology. Did the BBC think they might turn out to be from Pakistan's embattled Christian minority? I don't think so.
  
  In Europe the truth is so terrible that we are in denial. Perhaps it is understandable. We simply do not wish to face the fact that we really are threatened by a vast fifth column - that there are thousands of European-born people, in Britain, in France, in Holland, in Denmark, everywhere - who wish to destroy us. They are part of a wider war, what Tony Blair rightly calls an "arc of extremism" - Islamist extremism.
  ...
  And it's not just the extremist marchers. Reasonable, conventional armchair critics concentrate on the mistakes of Israel rather than the evil ideology of Hizbullah. They refuse to acknowledge that a small, decent society is now literally under the threat of death from an illegal fascistic military machine built throughout the hills, valleys, towns and villages of southern Lebanon.

  
  
• Israel sees itself as Samson, Muslims see themselves as victims:
  

  "The root of the problem lies in how the residents of the Middle East look at the world and at their situation," Kuperwasser says as he expounds upon his doctrine about Israel's neighbors. "The approach that unites all the extremist elements in the Middle East, and enjoys political clout in the Middle East - because it speaks to the guts of the masses - says they are victims. They are not responsible for their fate. The reason their situation is not good is because someone had it in for them. The perception of Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaida, Iran and Syria, and of many among the Arab public, many of the people on the street, is that these outsiders, the Israelis and the Americans, are responsible for their fate because of their ambition to exploit them. That is a philosophical conception. And therefore Israel is a threat by its very existence, even when it does not shoot. They have a deep sense of victimization."

  
  
• Green helmet guy injured in airstrike? You mean he was hanging around with Hezbullah? I am shocked, utterly shocked.
  
  
• Now I know who to blame for the ceasefire fiasco:
  

  The disagreement between Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice is over the ramifications of U.S. support for Israel's continued offensive against Lebanon. The sources said Mr. Bush believes that Israel's failure to defeat Hezbollah would encourage Iranian adventurism in neighboring Iraq. Ms. Rice has argued that the United States would be isolated both in the Middle East and Europe at a time when the administration seeks to build a consensus against Iran's nuclear weapons program.
  
  Instead, Ms. Rice believes the United States should engage Iran and Syria to pressure Hezbollah to end the war with Israel. Ms. Rice has argued that such an effort would result in a U.S. dialogue with Damascus and Tehran on Middle East stability.

  
  
• Chertoff says there are no American connections to the UK terror plot, which is tough to believe. Want even more evil? Parents planned to take their 6-month old baby on flight, using the baby's milk bottle to hold explosives to destroy the flight. Kill hundreds of people and their own baby...
  
  
• A UK flight to the US returned to London when a cellphone began ringing. A cellphone should not have been onboard and no one accepted ownership.
  
  
• Terrorists are modifying cellphones so that the calls can't be monitored. HotAir blames the NY Times. Arab cellphones buyers are suspected of plan to blow up a bridge.
  
  
• Iran is instigating attacks in Iraq because of attacks on Hezbullah.
  
  
• Newspaper calls for 3rd Intifada after Hezbullah shows Israeli weakness. Saas is proclaiming Israeli victory, unrealistically in my mind. However, I agree that any future attacks must be met with immediate and overwhelming force.
  
  
• British Muslims told to get their shit together, stop whining, stop terrorists. It's a surprise to me too. Here, go read it:
  

  WHEN will the Muslims of Britain stand up to be counted?
  
  When will they declare, loud and clear, with no qualifications or quibbles about Britain's foreign policy, that Islamic terrorism is WRONG?
  
  Most of all, when will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is THEIR problem? THEY own it. And it is THEIR duty to face it and eradicate it.
  
  To stop the denial, endless fudging and constant wailing that somehow it is everyone else's problem and, if Islamic terrorism exists at all, they are somehow the main victims.

  
  
• An interview with John Bolton. I am waiting for a transcript.
  
  
• The Philippine Jihad continues, including beheading a hostage.
  
  
• Fidel is apparently still alive.
  
  
• The Sandmonkey snarks it up in a letter to Nasrallah.
  

  Every Newspaper I read in the middle-east and every arab satalite news channel, especially yours, keeps informing me of how much Israelis you are killing, how few men you are losing and how you are accomplishing what no arab country has accomplished and are winning this war against Israel, and you know how the arab media never lies and always tells the truth. What I don't understand is this: if you are winning, why stop now? I say continue fighting, until, god willing, you destroy the accursed zionist entity and liberate Jersualem. I am sure that your army of 5000 fighters and your 10000 rockets can do it. I have faith in you, especially after all the victories you have achieved, like having the israeli army inside of Lebanon again, right where you want them of course, and having your neighborhood in Beirut destroyed, which saved you all the demolition costs it would've cost you for the Hezbollah Paradise Towers project, which will provide every shia family with a luxury High-rise apartment in a premium Bierut location. It was a fantastic business decision I must say.

  
  In a serious post, he tells who Hezbullah wants released from prison and what the man did to be imprisoned.
  
  
• Ahmadinejad has a friggin' blog. With English translations. Don't expect me to link him. He was on 60 Minutes too and got some nice reviews from the Left.
  
  
• British dhimmitude.
  

Anti-semitic to the core:


Update: Egypt congratulates Hezbullah for fighting with honor. I don't that word means what you think it means. Oh, and he blames the Joooooos.

Blame the IDF for political failures?

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Monday that he intended to assign a "team" to investigate the Israel Defense Forces' conduct of the war in Lebanon and their preparedness before the war.

"As Defense Minister, I intend to appoint a team that will conduct an intensive, comprehensive investigation of all the events leading up to the war and during the war," Peretz said.

It's not going to save your job, or Olmert's.

Update: Interesting comparison of stories on the UK Jihadis. It looks like reporters aren't looking for truth, just to confirm an internalized storyline. Click thru to the Unalienable Right.

Update: 2 Fox News crew were kidnapped in Gaza. No articles available yet, check Fox for details. More details at Michelle's place.