Bush makes the NRO puke

The conservatives over at the National Review have responded to the Bush administration’s shift on Hezbollah the way I thought they might: they puked. While support for democratic movements throughout the Mid-East is laudable and necessary to destroy the U.S. supported tyrannies that have kept the region in stagnation, the quick revolutionary upheaval that Bush now seems to be advocating will not, at least in the short term, lead to more stability or an end to terrorism. Democracy is not a panacea for all ills, especially those that are contained within colonial borders that may not be viable democratic nations. I wish to support those democratic movements in the region that share my secular humanist goals, but I’ve no illusions about the resilience of democracy or the popular weight of those movements that I find troublesome or repellent. How will conservatives and hard-line hegemons within the Bush administration respond to the official recognition of mass movements and parties that undermine stability and U.S. strategic interest? Here are a few highlights from the National Review’s Barbara Newman that could well be indicative:

National Review Online: I did a double take when I saw that Kofi Annan was encouraging serious people to accept Hezbollah. But then the New York Times reported that people in the U.S. administration are thinking similarly. Can they really be serious? Can Hezbollah ever be a legitimate political movement anywhere?

Barbara Newman: I almost lost my breakfast Thursday, which luckily I hadn't eaten yet, when I saw the New York Times page-one report today that Kofi Annan is encouraging the acceptance of Hezbollah as the preponderant power in Lebanon and the United States is thinking of yielding to this and France's pressure to do just that.
. . .

Newman: Those who advocate the position that Hezbollah can be brought into a moderate role by dealing with it politically, have never heard the speeches of its charismatic chief, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah when he calls for death to America. It's like Chamberlain when he went to Munich and had never read Mein Kampf. These people mean what they say.

. . .
NRO: Now, in Lebanon: If Syria gets out, does Hezbollah take over? How can Hezbollah’s power be squashed by the Cedar Revolution — does people power have that kind of power?

Newman: I believe that if Syria pulls out of Lebanon now, which — by the way I don't think will happen — because the Bashar Assad regime would collapse — Hezbollah would be the most powerful entity in Lebanon. It could easily smash the Lebanese army. The tragedy of all this is that the Cedar Revolution, the confluence of such previously vicious enemies, the Christians, the Sunnis, and the Druze, is occurring in a power vacuum. The Taif agreement, which ended the Lebanese civil war, forced all militias to disarm with the exception of Hezbollah. In the last ten years it has grown into a behemoth and we have done nothing about it.
How can we forget the fact that in 1983 a Hezbollah suicide driver crashed a one-thousand-pound bomb into the Marine Barracks in Beirut and killed 241 of our best and brightest? What about the hostages they took and tortured? What about the CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley who they kidnapped and slowly drowned to death by forcing a pipe down his throat and flooding him with water? They made tapes of his agony and sent it to the CIA. I'm told that former CIA Director William Casey almost went crazy when he heard them, and this propelled him to Iran-Contra, to try to free the hostages.

. . .

NRO: Is Hezbollah more of a threat to Americans than al Qaeda at this point?

Newman: A lot of intelligence officers I have spoken to regard Hezbollah as more a threat to Americans than al Qaeda. One FBI station chief I know very well said he's worried about Hezbollah, he's worried about the Hezbollah cells in the United States, and he's worried about Hezbollah members so secretly ensconced here that even operating cells don't know about them.