THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ, TENTH THREAD.

ican wrote:

The BA (i.e., Bushadmin) invaded Afghanistan and Iraq to improve what had already become a rotten situation.

First let me qualify that "rotten situation" statement. We invaded Afghanistan because the Teliban gave safe harbor to those who where responsible for 9/11.
I agree!

We invaded Iraq to depose Hussein and put in a government that would be friendly to us and Israel.
I think the evidence I have repeatedly posted here contradicts this statement conclusively. The primary, sufficient reasons we invaded Iraq are stated many times and in many places. Here are the two most compelling such reasons given and the most compelling place in which they were given.
[quote]Wednesday, October 16, 2002, Congress passed a joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq and gave two primary and sufficient reasons for doing so, that were subsequently verified by the USA military:

www.c-span.org/resources/pdf/hjres114.pdf

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;

Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of United States citizens;

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ican wrote:

However, the BA has given us cause to believe the Afghanistani and Iraqi people want democratic governments instead of totalitarian governents.

Some want democratic governments and some do not. Don't make a blanket statement that all do. What a democratic government is to us may be very different to them. We don't believe a government run by religious law is very free. I'm speaking of sharia. But a large number of Shiites seem to want this form of government in Iraq.
The population of Iraq is about 28,000,000. About 8,500,000 Iraqis voted in their last democratic election despite threats of death against these voters by the eitm . True, not all, but more than 60% of the Iraqi eligibile voters voted despite the danger.

In Afghanistan the Teliban don't believe in freedom. The Teliban is making a big comeback. It is widely supported in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In order to appeal to those who want sharia stronger in Afghanstan President Hamid Karzai said he would not object to the reintroduction of the Department of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a religious police force the Teliban had.
But many more other Afghanistanis obviously do believe in freedom.

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ican wrote:

The question before all of us, not just the BA, is what must we do to improve the current rotten situation?

The rotten situation in Iraq will remain rotten as long as our troops are there. Our presence there makes terrorist. Our harsh treatment of the people and our indiscriminate killing makes new terrorist.
I infer you think that USA departure from Afghanistan and Iraq will ultimately make things less rotten in Afghanistan, Iraq, and perhaps the rest of the middle eastern countries.

I think that until they are exterminated, the eitm, who think it moral to murder all those who choose to not to believe what the eitm believe, will remain and continue to rapidly intensify their imminent danger to the welfare of the human race .

The USA will be hated by those who think it moral to murder all those who choose to not to believe what the eitm believe, and we will ultimately be loved by the progeny of those whose lives we save.
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This is a typical example where the military only listens to itself. It refuses to acknowledge what the residents say. If they ignores their needs and destroy their homes and families what do you expect them to do?
I expect the eitm to do exactly what they are doing, and I expect them to continue doing exactly what they are doing whether we remain in or leave the middle east, unless we exterminate the eitm before we leave.

It will remain rotten as long as the Sunnis and Shiites choose to fight one another and not talk. There must be some negotiation, some compromise between the two parties. We need to find a way to get out and at the same time get the Shiites and Sunnis to come together, talk and compromise. Otherwise the killing will continue until both sides become tired of it.
They will become tired of it much quicker if we quickly exterminate the eitm .

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ican wrote:

Do you think the answer is simply to replace the BA? If so, then please say with whom/what shall we replace it and why you think that will help?

YES, that would be a good begining! They can't see what's happening. They see only what they want to see. What to replace them with? Anything, but preferably Democrats. Republicans are so desperate not to make themselves look bad that they will cover up any and every crime they can. There is no accountability in this administration. There is no oversight into this war or how it is being conducted. There is no "Truman Committee" looking for and dealing with the corruption this war has created.
Pseudology! The Bush administration has indicted convicted and incarcerated many Americans for war crimes. It appears that all the Democrats know or care what to do is to hate Bush. That disgusting skill of the Democrats will not solve any problems. That disgusting skill will only make more problems.

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ican wrote:

Do you think the US should do something else? If so, then please say what that something else is and why you think that will help.

As I said above we need to get together with the Sunnis and set a withdrawal timetable. If all we do is to act macho, denigrate those who want to get out then Americans will continue to die, billions of our dollars will be sucked up in the corruption that no one is allowed to oversee or investigate and the quality of our armed forces will continue to deteriorate.
I agree!

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Are things better in Iraq today. A big NO!
Better than what? Better than in the first year we invaded Iraq? NO! Or better than under Saddam's regime? YES!

...
how does anyone think that by continuing what we're doing is going to make things better?
We cannot expect things to get better until we recognize and act on the necessity for exterminating the eitm.

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This is the mess you get when you have an idiot in the White House who thinks sheer raw power can get you anything you want. It didn't work in Vietnam and it won't work in the Middle East.
The USA did not use "sheer raw power" in Vietnam, and the USA is not using "sheer raw power" in Iraq. In both cases we were/are using so-called restraint from what we were/are actually capable of doing. The use of that restraint caused us to lose in Vietnam, and, if it continues, will cause us and humanity to lose in Iraq.

In summary, if the USA sets and rigorously extracts the ultimate price for Iraqis to murder their neighbors, many if not all will look for an alternate more humane solution.

ICAN PREDICTIONS MADE IN JUNE 2006

1,050 Iraqi civilians died violently in June 2006.

950 Iraqi civilians died violently in July 2006.

If you involuntarily allow murderers sanctuary, then you are not an innocent, because you are contributing to the murder of innocents in order to save your own life.

ican711nm wrote:

If you involuntarily allow murderers sanctuary, then you are not an innocent, because you are contributing to the murder of innocents in order to save your own life.

You've forgotten your medication again havent you Ican?

ican wrote:
If you involuntarily allow murderers sanctuary, then you are not an innocent, because you are contributing to the murder of innocents in order to save your own life.


It's interesting to see ican contradict his own philosophy so frequently, but we must forgive him for he knows not what he says.

ICAN PREDICTIONS MADE IN JUNE 2006

1,050 Iraqi civilians died violently in June 2006.

950 Iraqi civilians died violently in July 2006.

WASHINGTON - An initial U.S. military probe supports allegations that American Marines deliberately shot 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

The Marine Corps and Navy prosecutors are now reviewing the evidence to determine whether to recommend criminal charges. That decision may be weeks away, and the lawyers may ask investigators to probe further, two officials said.

They discussed the matter on condition they not be identified because the case ?- among the most sensational of several involving Iraqi civilian deaths ?- has not yet produced charges.

"It's fair to say that the majority of the work has been done," said a third official, Ed Buice, spokesman for the Naval Criminal Investigation Service that is leading the probe. "But it's impossible to predict how much longer the investigation will take. It is very much open and ongoing."

The case is open because prosecutors and officers in the chain of command of the Marines being investigated may consult with the naval investigation service even after any charges are brought.

A decision on whether to press charges ultimately will be made by the commander of the Marines' parent unit, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif. That currently is Lt. Gen. John Sattler, but he is to move to a Pentagon assignment soon. His successor will be Lt. Gen. James Mattis.

Investigators conducted a wide range of interviews with Marines in Iraq and with Iraqis in Haditha, but they failed to obtain permission to exhume the bodies of the 24 who were killed, two officials said. Nonetheless the probe did collect evidence from the Marines and from the scene of the killings.

The case is one of several involving allegations of unjustified killings of Iraqi civilians that have emerged this year, damaging the U.S. image abroad and triggering calls by some Iraqi leaders to end the arrangement under which U.S. troops are immune from prosecution by Iraqi authorities.

The Marines initially reported after the Nov. 19, 2005, killings at Haditha that 15 Iraqi civilians had been killed by a makeshift roadside bomb and in crossfire between Marines and insurgent attackers. Based on accounts from survivors and human rights groups, Time magazine reported in March that the killings were deliberate acts by the Marines.

A criminal investigation was then ordered by the top Marine commander in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer.

A parallel investigation is examining whether officers in the Marines' chain of command tried to cover up the events. That probe, which has not been made public, faults some officers for failing to pursue discrepancies in the initial reports about what happened in Haditha and for not launching an early investigation.

When asked about the matter at a news conference Wednesday, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the cover-up probe's report was 3,000-4,000 pages long and being reviewed by Army Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq.

Regarding the criminal investigation, Pace described it as "ongoing" and said it would remain so until military authorities have reviewed its results as well as the findings and recommendations of the cover-up probe, "to make sure that every single possible cross-thread has been looked at."

Public attention on the Haditha case grew after Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., a former Marine, asserted on May 17 that he had learned from Marine Corps officials that innocent Iraqis had been killed "in cold blood."

Lawyers for Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, one of the Marines under investigation, argued in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court that Murtha falsely accused Wuterich of murder and war crimes. The lawsuit maintains that Pentagon officials "who have briefed or leaked information to Mr. Murtha deliberately provided him with inaccurate and false information" and that the congressman subsequently "has made repeated statements ... that are defamatory."

Murtha said Wednesday he does not blame Wuterich for "lashing out."

"When I spoke up about Haditha, my intention was to draw attention to the horrendous pressure put on our troops in Iraq and to the cover-up of the incident," Murtha said.

Among the other recent cases of alleged deliberate killings of Iraqi civilians, seven Marines and one Navy corpsman have been charged with premeditated murder and other criminal acts in connection with the killing of an Iraqi man in Hamdania on April 26. Also, five soldiers and a former soldier have been charged in the alleged March 12 rape-slaying of an Iraqi teenager and the killings of her relatives in Mahmoudiya.

56 Dead in Iraq Violence
Spike in Attacks on US Troops out of Anger over Israel

It's Iraq, Stupid, concludes the Trib on the basis of a new Gallup poll that shows this subject is the number one concern of about a third of voters.

Two more US troops were killed by guerrillas in al-Anbar province, western Iraq, on Wednesday. 12 have been killed in since Thursday a week ago.. Iraqi guerrilla leaders are said to have found it much easier to recruit insurgents and gain support for direct attack on US troops because of Israel's war on Lebanon. They have been able to do far more mortar attacks on US targets.

The US military confirms that attacks on US military personnel in Iraq are way up recently.

Has Ehud Olmert indirectly killed 12 US Marines and soldiers, and wounded many more, this week? I mean, while thousands of US and British troops were essentially hostage to the good will of millions of Iraqi Shiites all around them, was this really the appropriate time to launch a total war on Lebanese Shiites?

The Associated Press reports that guerrillas fighting the Iraqi civil war killed 52 persons around the country on Wednesday. I count 56 dead in this Reuters report. Nearly 15 persons, some of them quite young, were killed in bombings or mortar strikes on soccer fields in Shiite areas of the capital, while others were wounded. Eleven bodies were found in Suwayra, victims of faith-based killings.

President Jalal Talabani seemed to say Wednesday that Iraq would take over security duties by the end of the year. His spokesman had to come out and say he didn't really mean it. The statement caused a flurry in the Washington press corps, which takes Mam Jalal's title too seriously and doesn't seem to realize that he is sort of like Reagan was and you can't take everything that comes out of his mouth very seriously.

In fact, there is no prospect of Iraqi government military and security forces getting a handle on the situation in most of the country unaided, and they aren't even doing very well with massive aid.

Olmert and Bush
The consequences of an Israeli defeat would be ugly.
WSJ
Tuesday, August 1, 2006 12:01 a.m.

The deaths of dozens of Lebanese civilians in an Israeli airstrike at Qana on Sunday is a tragedy. But tragedies happen in all wars, which is why they shouldn't be fought without good reason and the determination to win. We hope that's the lesson Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Bush Administration are drawing as international criticism reaches its highest point so far in the three-week offensive against Hezbollah.

The initial, muted reaction from most of the major Arab states showed that their leaders were quietly happy that Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons might be dealt a heavy blow. They understand the mullahs' imperial aims, and that Hezbollah's rockets are a foretaste of what they too might expect if Tehran gets a nuclear bomb. But public opinion against Israel in the Muslim world remains strong and hasn't been helped by daily pictures of destroyed Beirut apartment blocks.

It also appears that Israel's bombing campaign hasn't done nearly as much damage to Hezbollah as first thought. Sunday saw more Katyusha rockets (about 150) launched into Israel than any previous day in the war--and Hezbollah is believed to have used up only a fraction of its stockpile. Israeli Defense Forces clearly underestimated Hezbollah's capabilities and overestimated their ability to degrade them from the air.

The question is what now. One temptation for the Bush Administration, which is under fire from most Arab leaders including Iraq's, will be to rein in Israel quickly. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been talking about pushing a cease-fire through the U.N. later this week, although the timetable seems to have been pushed back. One of the ideas is that a multinational force would then help Lebanon's government disarm Hezbollah.

But moving too soon, and with Hezbollah still powerful, risks replaying the disastrous scenario that unfolded in August 1982. That's when civilian casualties related to attacks on PLO strongholds in Beirut led the Reagan Administration to demand a halt to the fighting. The resulting events--insertion of multinational forces, the Marine barracks bombing, and U.S. withdrawal--are still cited by the likes of Osama bin Laden as evidence the civilized world has no stomach for a hard fight.

A premature cease-fire now would allow Hezbollah to claim a victory over Israel and emerge as a stronger regional power. Even a best-case scenario would probably see Israel again fighting Hezbollah--at a time of Hezbollah's choosing and as the dominant force in a future Lebanese government. There could also be trouble for Israel with other neighbors, since Israel would have forfeited the aura of military invincibility that has kept it relatively safe for decades in such a rough neighborhood.

Leaders in Tehran and Damascus would also conclude that employing terrorist proxies works. Iran could roll ahead with its bomb program knowing that Europe and the U.S. can be easily intimidated. Lebanon's fledgling democracy would be another casualty. President Bush's entire vision for the Middle East would suffer a severe setback if the current fighting ends with Hezbollah still a credible military force.

Israel does not deliberately target civilians, much less children. They were hit in Qana because Hezbollah operates near civilians to use them as a shield and to exploit such tragedies as to turn world opinion against Israel. Hezbollah has been the consistent and flagrant violator of international law throughout this conflict--deliberately targeting Israeli civilians with shrapnel-filled missiles, fighting out of uniform, and hiding among Lebanese civilians and helpless U.N. peacekeepers.

If these and other tactics remind you of al Qaeda and the insurgents in Iraq, they should. They are the reality of today's asymmetrical terrorist methods, and their success in Lebanon will only mean the further spread of those methods against others in the Mideast and beyond.

So we hope that, while Ms. Rice pursues diplomatic options, privately Mr. Bush is telling Mr. Olmert that Israel must finish the job he started against Hezbollah--including a ground invasion of southern Lebanon if that's what it takes. American support for Israel's strategy is far from cost-free for Mr. Bush, and Mr. Olmert has to understand that it won't continue if he lacks the will to prevail as rapidly as militarily possible.

There are certainly risks to this strategy, in the loss of more Israeli and Lebanese lives and further global criticism of both the Jewish state and the U.S. But now that the war has been joined, and Israel has pledged not to stop without disarming Hezbollah, a defeat for Israel will mean more danger and far more casualties down the road.

Bin Laden's "Brothers"
The conventional wisdom is that Hezbollah and al Qaeda are rivals, not partners. The conventional wisdom is wrong.
by Thomas Joscelyn
Daily Standard
07/27/2006 4:30:00 PM

THE LATEST ZAWAHIRI TAPE, his tenth in the last year, will leave some al Qaeda watchers perplexed. In it, Zawahiri refers to his "brothers" in Lebanon and Gaza and links their war with Israel to al Qaeda's jihad against the West. "The shells and rockets ripping apart Muslim bodies in Gaza and Lebanon are not only Israeli [weapons], but are supplied by all the countries of the crusader coalition. Therefore, every participant in the crime will pay the price," Zawahiri says. Bin Laden's number two threatens retaliation for what is being done to his "brothers" in southern Lebanon saying, "We cannot just watch these shells as they burn our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon and stand by idly, humiliated."

Zawahiri's statements run counter to the conventional wisdom. It is widely believed in academic circles and some corridors of the U.S. intelligence community that al Qaeda and Hezbollah are ideological rivals competing for the hearts and minds of potential jihadists. In fact, some experts are already arguing that Zawahiri could not possibly be referring to Hezbollah in the tape and that he must mean al Qaeda's operatives or friends in Lebanon and Gaza.

Just this week, Bernard Haykel, an associate professor of Islamic Studies at New York University, summarized the academic view in the New York Times. "Al Qaeda's Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics and profoundly distrusts Shiite groups like Hezbollah," the author of Revival and Reform in Islam tells us. He goes on to argue that jihadist internet chat rooms frequented by al Qaeda are fretting over Hezbollah's success and wondering how to respond. "For al Qaeda," he writes, "it is a time of panic." The group is "unlikely to take a loss of status," caused by Hezbollah's stealing of the headlines, "lying down."

This view has been adopted by some of the more prominent members of the U.S. intelligence community. As Paul Pillar, a former deputy chief of the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA and intelligence officer for the CIA's Near East and South Asia division, wrote in his book Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy:

The limits to bin Ladin's influence, however, are just as important. For one thing, he has very little sway among Shia extremists. Although he and shares some enemies with Iran--the center for Shia radicalism--he and Iran have opposing interests in the fight for Afghanistan, which is important to both of them.

Pillar's assumption is that because Iran was no friend of the Taliban, then al Qaeda and Tehran could not cooperate in any endeavor.

But to accept this view, one must ignore a wealth of evidence.

THE TERRORISTS of Hezbollah and al Qaeda do not behave like textbook automatons. It is never wise to accept al Qaeda's propaganda at face value, but behind Zawahiri's recent statement lies a long-standing relationship between Iran's Hezbollah and al Qaeda. Not only were ideological boundaries insignificant, Tehran's terror proxy has played an instrumental role in al Qaeda's rise.

Consider what two al Qaeda members who joined bin Laden's terrorist coalition through Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad, say on the subject. Testifying at the U.S. Embassy bombings trial, Ali Mohamed and Jamal al Fadl spoke openly about the ties between Iran, Hezbollah and al Qaeda.

Ali Mohamed, a former U.S. Green Beret supply sergeant who admitted to conspiring with al Qaeda in the embassy bombings and various other nefarious activities, explained:

I was aware of certain contacts between al Qaeda and [Egyptian Islamic] al Jihad organization, on one side, and Iran and Hezbollah on the other side. I arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between Mugniyeh, Hezbollah's chief, and bin Laden.

Hezbollah provided explosives training for al Qaeda and al Jihad. Iran supplied Egyptian Jihad with weapons. Iran also used Hezbollah to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks.

Mohamed's mention of a meeting between Hezbollah's terror chieftain, Imad Mugniyeh, and bin Laden is enough to set off alarm bells. Mugniyeh's handiwork includes: the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in 1983, the kidnapping and murder of the CIA's station chief in Lebanon in 1984, the hijacking of TWA flight 847 in 1985, the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, and numerous other attacks.

According to Mohamed, al Qaeda self-consciously modeled itself after Hezbollah. Mugniyeh's group successfully drove the U.S. out of Lebanon in 1984 with a series of attacks, and al Qaeda sought to force the same type of retreat from the Middle East.

Mohamed explained:
I was involved in the Islamic Jihad organization, and the Islamic Jihad organization has a very close link to al Qaeda, the organization, for bin Laden. And the objective of all this, just to attack any Western target in the Middle East, to force the government of the Western countries just
to pull out from the Middle East . . .

Based on the Marine explosion in Beirut in 1984 [sic: 1983] and the American pull-out from Beirut, they will be the same method, to force the United States to pull out from Saudi Arabia.

Jamal al Fadl added additional details. Al Fadl described a meeting between a Sudanese scholar named Ahmed Abdel Rahman Hamadabi, an Iranian Sheikh named Nomani (who was an emissary of the mullahs), and senior leaders of al Qaeda. In broken English, al Fadl answered Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's questions about the meeting:

Q: What happened when Sheikh Nomani came to the guesthouse in Riyadh City? A: In front there they sit down and some of the higher membership, they got meeting and talking with the Sheikh Nomani and Hamadabi.

Q: Was Bin Laden there? A: Yes.

Q: Can you tell us what was discussed at that meeting? A: They [Nomani and Hamadabi] talk about we have to come together and we have to forget the problem between each other and each one he should respect the other because our enemy is one and because there is no reason to fight each other.

Q: Who did they describe the enemy as being? A: They say westerns. [sic] [emphasis added]

This would seem to contradict the Haykel and Pillar construct.

The confluence of interests has not been confined to rhetoric and meetings. Al Fadl told prosecutor Fitzgerald that he knew of several al Qaeda associates who were trained by Hezbollah. One exchange in his testimony was especially provocative:

Q: Did you ever speak to anyone who received any training from anyone who was a Shia Muslim?

A: Yes.

Q: Who did you speak to? A: Abu Talha al Sudani and Saif al Islam el Masry. . . .

Q: What did Saif al Islam El Masry tell you?

A: He say they go to south Lebanon to got training with the Shiites over there.

Q: Did he indicate what Shia group in south Lebanon provided the training?

A: I remember he told me it's called Hezbollah.

Q: What did Abu Talha tell you? A: Abu Talha, he tell me the training is very good, and he bring some tapes with him.

Q: Did Abu Talha tell you what was on the tapes he brought back? A: I saw one of the tapes, and he tell me they train about how to explosives [sic] big buildings. [emphasis added]

Al Fadl then went on to list several other al Qaeda terrorists who received Hezbollah training. One of them was a man named Saif al Adel.

AL ADEL HAS BEEN IMPLICATED in some of al Qaeda's most spectacular attacks, including the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania (which, incidentally, used truck bombs similar to those employed by Hezbollah to destroy "big buildings") and the September 11 attacks. Al Adel is thought to have trained several of the hijackers.

Al Adel's early relationship with Tehran's terror proxy may help explain why he was able to find safehaven in Iran shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan. The Iranian government claims to have "detained" him, along with dozens of other senior al Qaeda leaders--including bin Laden's son Saad.

But this "detention" has not stopped al Adel, who has become one of al Qaeda's senior operations leaders, from ordering up attacks. Al Adel played a key role in orchestrating al Qaeda's May 2003 suicide attacks on three Western housing complexes in Riyadh from Iranian soil.

The testimony provided by Ali Mohamed and Jamal al Fadl was corroborated by the 9/11 Commission. The Commission's final report confirms that al Qaeda operatives received training from Hezbollah in Lebanon in addition to other training provided in Iran. The Commission also left open the possibility that al Qaeda and Hezbollah worked together on the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.

Remarkably, the Commission even left the door open for further investigation into the September 11 attacks. It cited evidence that senior Hezbollah operatives monitored the travels of eight to ten of the "muscle" hijackers prior to the attack. Such provocative threads of evidence led the Commission to report, "We believe this topic requires further investigation by the U.S. government."

Some analysts will continue to dismiss Zawahiri's remarks because they do not conform to the prevailing model for understanding terrorism. But the truth is that there is a long history of collaboration between al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

Preconditions for Peace
Terrorists and their sponsors in the Middle East must reform, or be vanquished.
By Mohamed Eljahmi
National Review Online -

[Eljahmi is a Boston-based Libyan American activist whose brother, Fathi Eljahmi, is imprisoned in Libya for speaking out for political reform. KMJ]

On June 25, Hamas ambushed an Israeli military post outside of Gaza, kidnapping Cpl. Gilad Shalit and demanding the release of terrorists in Israeli prisons. On July 12, Hezbollah followed suit, abducting two Israeli soldiers and killing eight others. Israel, exercising its right to self-defense, has countered with military operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

It is no secret that Iran and Syria use Hezbollah and Hamas as proxies. The kidnapping operations in Israel would not have transpired without a green light from Tehran and Damascus. Further, the rise of Hezbollah and Hamas reflects a growing alliance between autocrats and theocrats. The autocrats want to rule, and the theocrats employ religious means to impose their authority. Both are unified in their opposition to Israel.

Refusal to accept Israel's right to exist is the root of conflict in the Middle East. Arab governments view Israel as a threat, because it is a democratic and modern state. Under genuine peace, secular authocratic regimes like that of Syria will not survive, because citizens will shift their attention inward and demand viable services like education, healthcare, and a social safety net. Such governments, whose budgets are allocated for security and the foreign bank accounts of the elite, cannot perform these basic functions.

The theocrats oppose the existence of Israel because they fear that the spread of secular rule would end their control. In a televised address on July 16, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nassrallah said, "A Hamas and Hezbollah defeat means greater influence for the Zionists and their American masters, the theft of our resources and defacement of our culture and civilization."

As the United States watches the alliance grow; Iran and Syria formally announced their strategic ties in February 2005; it has failed to nurture a democratic counterweight in the Arab street. U.S. support for Arab democrats has been wishy-washy. Diplomacy has failed.

Today, the Assad regime in Syria offers itself as a mediator for a ceasefire. The Syrians feel emboldened because Washington lacks resolve. While a U.N. investigation has implicated Syrian leadership in last year's assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, Assad's meddling in Lebanon and crackdown on liberal dissent continues unabated. Syria understands that paying lip service to Washington's war on terror means its sins at home and abroad will be excused.

In the past, U.S. shuttle diplomacy lent greater focus to appeasing dictators and treating symptoms rather than solving problems. But where the State department once was eager to restrain Israel and find quick fixes, it now claims to seek "sustainable solutions." That State has repeatedly rejected calls for an immediate ceasefire appears to underscore this.

Washington realizes that a quick resolution to the current conflict will only produce cosmetic change. An immediate and unconditional ceasefire; one which fails to disarm Hezbollah; would not solve the crisis, but prolong it. Such a ceasefire would further bolster the Shiite militia's prestige in the Arab street and allow them to regroup. Security for Israel and Lebanon will only be achieved if the Lebanese government exerts full control over Lebanon's territory. A just and lasting peace should not permit perpetrators of violence to save face and live to fight another day.

A permanent solution can be either political or military. A political solution requires a genuine desire to solve problems between the two sides. On the Arab side there are no legitimate and visionary leaders who are willing to take the risk. The Israelis, conversely, have the legitimate leaders; because they were elected by the people and are now expected to serve their people.

The military solution is costly, but it may create the foundation for an eventual political solution. Massive military defeats for militant organizations like Hezbollah would remove significant tools from the hands of Arab rulers. Combine the military solution with genuine pressure on Arab governments to reform, and we can begin to build the basis for peaceful societies. The Arab street will then look inward rather than outward. And local political issues will trump regional ones.

At the moment, Arab rulers are at a crossroad. They can move beyond past failures by choosing a peaceful and realistic political solution. This would require genuine reform at home. The international community and Israel are prepared to extend a sincere hand toward reconciliation, just as soon as there is a real chance for permanent peace. Prosperity would be the result. But so long as terrorist groups and their sponsors continue to thwart the peace process, stability and democracy in the Middle East will remain a distant hope.

Bin Laden's "Brothers"