You owe it to yourself to read Sy Hersh’s latest piece in The New Yorker, in which he reports that the U.S. Government is now covertly funding Sunni extremists — al Qaeda sympathizers at the very least — in an attempt to constrain Shia / Persian power, particularly in Lebanon.
Because this administration sees the rise of Iran as the greatest geopolitical threat, Hersh says, it is now cynically funnelling money to Sunni jihadists — adherents of the same “evil” ideology as bin Laden and his followers.

The criminal stupidity of treating the enemy of our enemy as our friend, when the enemy of our enemy is the enemy that attacked us on 9/11, is nearly impossible to overstate.

Unbelievable:

Early Tuesday, Israel dropped leaflets warning people in southern Lebanon that its forces planned to destroy any moving vehicles in an area south of the Litani River. The leaflets said Israeli forces will assume that moving vehicles in the area are transporting weapons for Hezbollah.That ended traffic in the south, around the city of Tyre. Only pedestrians moved on roads and highways. Although Israel said it would exempt relief convoys, the UN didn’t attempt to move any supplies into the south because of the heavy shelling in the area.

• War intensifies in Lebanon. Israel bombs a bridge in central Beirut, one of the last remaining arteries out of the city. (Video.)
• Senators slam Rumsfeld on Iraq. General won’t downplay the risk of civil war, says, “Violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it.”
• Pat Robertson “converts” to global warmism.
• Republican Senator and presumptive 2008 presidential contender Chuck Hagel calls for withdraw in Iraq to begin within six months.

Andrew Sullivan has endorsed the disturbing logic of Bill Maher’s latest Huffington Post missive, in which the comic paints critics of Israel’s Lebanon campaign, indiscriminately, as anti-Semites. We are all Mel Gibson now, Maher claims:

As I watch so much of the world ask Israel for restraint in a way no other country would (Can you imagine what Bush would do if a terrorist organization took over Canada and was lobbing missiles into Montana, Maine and Illinois?) — and, by the way, does anyone ever ask Hezbollah for restraint. you know, like, please stop firing your rockets aimed PURPOSEFULLY at civilians? – it strikes me that the world IS Mel Gibson. Most of the time, the anti-Semitism is under control, but that demon lives inside and when the moon is full, or there’s been enough alcohol consumed, or Israel is forced to kill people in its own defense, then it comes out.

Let’s parse this carefully. I know I’m rising to Maher’s bait, but I’m sick of this idea that criticizing Israel is de facto Jew-bashing.

The reason the world doesn’t ask Hezbollah for restraint is precisely because they’re a terrorist militia that purposefully targets civilians. These people are not reasonable; they are a vicious anti-Semitic virus, an organization with American blood on its hands that needs to be disarmed and defanged, if not annihilated.

But what is supposed to differentiate a civilized democracy like Israel from the enemy they face is precisely a sense of restraint: an unwillingness to massacre women and children and U.N. peacekeepers in pursuit of its righteous goal of eliminating Hezbollah’s army. (more…)

• GOP Presidential frontrunner John McCain’s 18-year-old son, Jimmy, has enlisted in the Marine Corps.
• Israel’s indiscriminate bombing at Qana kills 27 children. Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon declares: “Everyone who is still in south Lebanon is linked to Hezbollah.”
• The U.N. has given Iran one month to halt its nuclear enrichment programs.
• Hugo Chavez receives Iran’s highest honor. Menaced the Venezuelan leader: “Let’s save the human race, let’s finish off the U.S. empire.”

Political Handicapper Charlie Cook raises a question that’s been on my mind since the opening of a third mideast war front:

In 2002 and 2004, in the first midterm and presidential elections after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the security issue unquestionably helped President Bush and the Republican Party. To many voters, Bush symbolized a steady and determined hand at the helm of the ship of state. And his party also benefited from having long been more trusted than the Democrats on national security.

So, will national security issues again work to the advantage of the GOP this fall, or has that well run dry for the party?

Cook has his own theory. What do you think?

Responding to former National Security Adviser Zbig Brzezinski’s assertion that Israel’s killing of hundreds of Lebanese civilians in the effort to defang Hezbollah will “simply outrage [Israel's foes] and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing,” reader Kadosh writes:

Israel’s fight for existence [is] against the primitives, fanatics and sadists in Hezbollah and Hamas and elsewhere in the Arab/Muslim world who wish to destroy it. Anyone on the Left who cannot see this is either bad, a useful idiot for Islamic terrorists, anti-Semitic or all three. There is no other explanation for morally condemning Israel’s war on Hezbollah.

Brzezinski

Steve Clemons over at The Washington Note quotes former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski offering up strong opinions on the Lebanon/Israel crisis:

I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in effect — maybe not in intent — the killing of hostages. The killing of hostages.

Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you’re killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You’ll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing.