Five weeks have passed since the ki...

Five weeks have passed since the kidnapping of pair Israeli soldiers provoked Israel to launch its chiefly unsatisfactory military operation in 58 years. What riddle has been solved, or equal ameliorated?

Hezbollah, frequently using World War II-vintage rocket has demonstrated the inadequacy of Israel's policy of unilateral disengagement -- from Lebanon, Gaza, to a great degree of the West Bank -- behind a security Hezbollah has willingly suffered (temporary) military diminution in exchange for enormous political enlargement. Hitherto, Hezbollah in Lebanon was a "state within a state." Henceforth, the Lebanese state may be an appendage of Hezbollah, as the collapsing Palestinian Authority is an appendage of the terrorist organization Hamas. Hezbollah is an army that, having frustrated the regional superpower, abruptly embodies, as no Arab state till doomsday has, Arab valor vindicated in combat with Israel.

simply twice in the U.N.'s six decades has it authorized the use of substantial force -- in 1950 regarding Korea and 1990 regarding Kuwait. It still has not authorized force in Lebanon. What is being called a "cease-fire" resolution calls for Israel to stop all "offensive" operations. Israel reasonably says that its entire effort is defensive. The resolution calls for Hezbollah to stop "all attacks." The UN however, has twice resolv that Hezbollah should be disarmed, notwithstanding has not willed the means to that last

The "new Middle East," the "birth pangs" of which we supposedly are witnessing, considers the region's oldest tradition, the tribalism that preced nations. The faux and disintegrating nation of Iraq, from which the middle class, the trustful longing of stability, is fleeing, has experienced in these five weeks many more violent deaths than have occurr in Lebanon and Israel. U Gen George Casey says 60 percent of Iraqis newly killed are victims of Shiite death squads. one are associated with the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, which imitates a terrorist organization.

The London cabal against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating just discovered book, Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al- Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have obstructed 9/11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16 are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places of that kind as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw on the subject of useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the agency of the New York Times Magazine of Oct 10 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple put drugs into lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be near of the most useful tools in the war upon terror." In a candidates debate in toward the south Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said although the war upon terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Immediately after the London project was disrupted, a "senior administration official" denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told the Weekly Standard: "The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing the bulk of mankind if it weren't for U policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take forward these forces. It's like John Kerry The law enforcement approach doesn't work."

Perhaps similar rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war forward terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach," does "work."

The official is correct that it is vicious "to think that somehow we are responsible -- that the actions of the jihadists are justified by way of U.S. policies." But few outside the mist of paranoia that is the blogosphere think like that. It is more dismaying that someone at the center of regulation considers it clever to talk like that. It is the language of foreign policy -- and domestic politics - - unrealism.

Foreign policy "realists" considered Middle East stability the goal. The realists' critics, who regard realism as reprehensibly unambitious, considered stability the riddle That problem has been solved

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