Lola/Hezbollah

The folks at Junkyard Blog are nothing if not creative. Recall the tune from the old Kinks' song "Lola" and sing along to "Fauxla", a parody of the faked photos from Lebanon run by Reuters and other MSM outlets. Here are a couple of stanzas to get you started:

MSM stringers down in old Beirut
Nasrallah had some photos that he wanted them to shoot
Called 'em on his Motorola:
"We've a narrative to control-lah"
But the bloggers were a-watching all the clone-stamped smoke
Little Green Footballs said j'accuse! like Zola
Just like Emile Zola.

Oh Reuters, Reuters I can't understand
Why you keep on showing us the Green-Helmet Man
Taking bodies in and out of his mortuary van
While your cameras roll-ah
Doin' it for Hezbollah
And how many times have we seen the same scene
Where the same old woman-you know the one I mean
Pretends her home is now a hole-a.
Acts like she can't be console-a.

Clever, isn't it? Sing the rest at the link.

Media Miscellany

1. Cal Thomas calls for us to get serious in the war against Islamo-fascism. He says it's time we broke out of the legalistic civil rights mindset that has constrained us for the last forty years.

The British are still shocked that people who are born in their country, go to their schools, have British accents and eat fish and chips would kill their fellow Brits. They do so because their allegiance is not to Britain, or to the Queen, but rather to their perverted view of God and the instructions from the hate preachers telling them to go bag some Jews, Christians, Westerners and other "infidels."

Health officials respond to plagues by isolation and eradication. Their objective is not only to control the spread of a disease, but also to kill it so it won't infect others. If that is an effective method for combating a plague, why is it not also a good strategy for combating the islamofascist plague?

This isn't about "civil rights" and constitutional protection. These people use our Constitution to protect themselves so they can kill us. And this is decidedly not a game. It is life and death. We want to live and they want us dead.

The war against Islamo-fascism is centuries old and yet completely new. The rules that western states have devised to maximize justice for their citizens so that people could live in safety may no longer work in an age in which the enemy's chief grievance is that you do not share his religion, his chief goal is to kill you and his chief blessing is to die in the attempt.

2. Are we safer now than before 9/11? Of all the nonsensical questions that keep getting asked by media types this has to rank near the top. How can anyone answer it? What would count as evidence one way or another? How could anyone possibly know? As long as there are people out there who wish to kill us, and have the means to do so, then we are not safe. Period.

3. A CNN talking head was discussing the need to eliminate poverty and joblessness among European Muslims in order to eliminate terrorism. Poverty, she averred, breeds hopelessness and hopelessness breeds alienation and alienation breeds terrorism. Unfortunately for this thesis the plotters were all middle class and all had jobs. One pundit noted that some of them lived in nicer homes than did most of the policeman who arrested them. Too many liberals seem locked in the Marxist categories popular during the sixties, and are just unable to grasp that terrorism is not about economics, or land, or American foreign policy. It's about religion and the Islamist desire to conquer the whole world for Islam.

Gervais Refutes Darwinism, Sort of

I'm reluctant to link to this "talk" by comic Ricky Gervais because it's irreverent, vulgar, and it makes fun of beliefs which I have some sympathy for. Even so, it is funny so I'm crossing my fingers and letting you know about it. We have to be able to laugh at ourselves, after all.

Be forewarned that Gervais' language is R-rated.

Will the Cease-Fire Last?

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters explains why he thinks the cease-fire in Lebanon is doomed to be short-lived. He quotes the Times of London:

Today was supposed to be the day when the much-maligned army of Lebanon took control of its borders and policed the UN ceasefire. Instead, its military commanders were left humiliated and its troops stranded as Hezbollah told them not to try to disarm its fighters.

The first infantry units were preparing to head south yesterday when Hezbollah demonstrated who exercised the real control by announcing that it had no intention of surrendering a single weapon. General Michel Sleiman, the commander-in-chief of the Lebanese Army, and his lieutenants had been invited to join in Cabinet meetings to finalise plans to deploy their 15,000-strong force in a buffer zone south of the Litani river. However, they ended up being lectured by Hezbollah's two Cabinet ministers in the coalition Government on what the army could and could not do.

Ed adds this:

This national humiliation will not soon be forgotten by the Lebanese. If Hezbollah gained some sympathy and support during the Israeli invasion that they themselves provoked, it has dissipated in this mutinous reaction. The scales have fallen from the eyes of the political class in Beirut, and they see the danger to their existence standing baldly in front of them. Hezbollah has stripped them of their legitimacy, and now their theft of southern Lebanon has become crystal clear.

There's more at the link.

Islamic Justice

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expresses dismay in his 60 minute interview with Mike Wallace that so many Americans are in prison. Perhaps his surprise is that we don't just execute them like they do in Iran. Consider the following example of Iranian justice.

I can't vouch for this series of photos sent to me by a friend. No documentation accompanied the e-mail which contained them. I will simply tell you what the e-mail claimed which is that the boy in the photos is 8 years old and is being publically punished in Iran for having stolen bread in a market. The punishment consists of crushing his arm. You are cautioned that these photos are very disturbing and may be very difficult to look at. I run them here for the same reason that I think it important that we saw pictures of what the Nazis did to Jews and others in the extermination camps, or that we see the pictures of Negro slaves with scars covering their backs where they were lashed, or that we see pictures of what happens to a fetus in an abortion. Nevertheless, you may prefer to pass them by.

Whether the claims accompanying the e-mail are genuine or not what is being done to this child is barbaric, and the adults responsible for it are primitive savages. Is this the fruit of the religion which has declared war on all other faiths? Are these the sort of people this religion produces? Is this the sort of world that lies in store for our children and grandchildren if we shrink from the threat that these people pose to our civilization? And Ahmadenijad has the chutzpah to chide us for our prison population?

The Moon

Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee, in their book Rare Earth, note that not only does our earth possess physical properties that may well make it unique in all the universe, our moon is quite special as well. It's not only rare in terms of its size relative to its planet, but it is absolutely essential in a number of ways to the existence of higher life forms on earth.

A large moon with strong gravitational pull is necessary to keep the earth's axial angle stable. If the earth's axis wobbled, as it would if it had no large moon to offset the gravitational tugs of other planets, the earth would experience enormous climatic variations which would make the evolution of higher life forms quite improbable. Moreover, the moon at its formation, pulled away from the earth many of the noxious gases that formed the early atmosphere. If the moon did not exist, for example, the earth would have retained an atmosphere high in CO2 causing a runaway greenhouse effect which would make the earth as uninhabitable as Venus.

A large moon also causes significant lunar tides which enrich the seas with nutrients and help make them more than vast biological deserts. The gravitational influence of our moon also slows the rate of earth's rotation allowing the atmosphere to be placid enough to permit life to emerge on the earth. Finally, a large moon protects the earth from meteorites from elsewhere in the solar system by drawing many of them toward itself.

Guillermo Gonzalez notes in Privileged Planet that the size of the moon is precisely what it needs to be to permit a total eclipse of the sun which allows for the study of the sun's atmosphere. This single fact has been responsible for much of the advance of scientific knowledge over the centuries. The precise fit of moon and sun during a total eclipse allowed early geometric calculations of the size and distance of celestial objects. It also allowed scientists to determine the nature of the sun's composition which has enabled them to determine much about the size and composition of other stars in our galaxy and other galaxies in the universe, including the fact that those celestial objects are rapidly receding from us and that the universe is expanding. This knowledge has enabled us to infer an initial Big Bang origin to the universe, and much else.

All of this simply because the moon is the size it is and the distance it is from the earth.

The moon was believed to be formed in a collision with a Mars-size object which impacted the earth early in its development. This collision probably melted the earth's crust and allowed surface iron to sink toward the core of the planet. This enabled the earth to develop a protective magnetic field and, by removing much of the iron from the surface where it would have bound up any oxygen in the vicinity, it permitted the atmosphere to become oxygenated.

If the material that formed the moon had taken a reverse orbit after this primordial impact, it would have decayed and fallen back to earth. If the impact had occured at a later stage in the earth's development the earth would have been too massive to allow as much material to be ejected, and the resulting moon would have been smaller and less effective.

Remarkably, in other words, this impact had to occur at just the right time, at just the right angle, with just the right force, by an impactor of just the right size and momentum, at just the right spot for a moon of just the right size to form.

What amazing coincidences nature and chance are capable of!

With Bobby and Gene in the Sixties

Readers of a certain vintage will appreciate Michael Novak's somewhat melancholy reflections on his association with Bobby Kennedy and Gene McCarthy back in the late sixties.

He closes with a thought with which probably every believer can identify:

In those days, I was fascinated by the overlap, in actions at least if not in words, of many people I knew, some of who were believers and some unbelievers. The latter seemed to me, in action, far more Christian or Jewish than they would admit to being. (They certainly were not nihilist nor even amoral, and not relativist nor morally indifferent.) And the Christians seemed to me to live in a deeper, darker night than they much speak about, closer in many ways to unbelief than to belief-at least so far as feelings go. There are many days when the believer, trying to become conscious of God's presence within, feels nothing at all, sees nothing at all.

Sometimes it is easier to act as a particular way of life demands than to say one believes in it. And it may be a quite noble way of life, indeed.

Let God sort us all out, I used to think (and still do). He sees it all more clearly.

C.S. Lewis notes in Surprised By Joy that believers (and others) often make two mistakes: They first make a state of mind their goal and then secondly attempt to produce it. He might have said that the surest way to miss a feeling of the presence of God in one's life is to seek it directly. If we set out to muster a certain spiritual feeling we usually wind up frustrated and disappointed. As in so many other areas of life, perhaps, the best course is to act as we should and not concern ourselves with feelings. We have all eternity to experience the sense of God's presence.

The Incredible Shrinking Deficit

Amity Shlaes has written a helpful column on the shrinking deficit and the causes thereof at Bloomberg.com. She writes:

If a deficit falls in the forest, does anyone hear it? And if no one hears it, did the deficit really fall? That's the question that administration officials must be asking themselves after the report that the Congressional Budget Office issued earlier this month. The CBO announced that the federal deficit is indeed falling, or narrowing, the more precise verb for the phenomenon.

This year, the new report says, the deficit will be $260 billion, or $111 billion less than the CBO estimated in March. For 2006, the government deficit will be 2 percent of gross domestic product, down from the old baseline prediction for 2006 of 2.6 percent. On Aug. 17, when the more extensive annual Update of the Budget and Economic Outlook appears, that 2 percent figure is likely to show up more definitively. But neither the budgeteers' news nor the prospect of a confirmation of it is generating much discussion.

This is surprising. The Economic Report of the President shows the federal deficit for 2004 was 3.6 percent. A narrowing of more than 1 1/2 percentage points in such a short time is itself a story.

The U.S. deficit is worth comparing, for starters, with the data for European nations. In the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, European leaders set a deficit goal of 3 percent of GDP. EU member countries have had trouble meeting that target since.

A shortfall of 2 percent of GDP is also news in the U.S. context. Sure, there was the surplus in the second half of the 1990s. But 2 percent is below the average for the federal deficit between 1980 and 1995.

The 2 percent figure stands out when you compare it with the deficit level in other periods of war. In 1944, as the U.S. poured its energy into winning World War II, the federal deficit widened to 22.7 percent of GDP. In 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, the deficit was 2.9 percent of GDP.

Much of the narrowing of the deficit in the 1990s -- and even the surplus of the late 1990s -- came because of reductions in military spending following the end of the Cold War. This was the short-lived peace dividend. The late 1990s boom also played a role: It brought in hundreds of billions more than forecast.

Also interesting is what caused the change between spring 2006 and summer 2006. Thrift on the part of lawmakers, needless to say, isn't the cause, though one reason the deficit narrowed is that the government hasn't been able to spend all the cash it had allocated for projects this year.

Unexpected tax revenue also contributed to the narrowing. Some of this money is payroll taxes. With employment so high, more workers are paying into Social Security and Medicare than predicted.

Yet another source of cash is income taxes. Over the years, the tax distribution tables shifted so that higher earners paid a much larger share of income taxes. Their payments are less predictable than those of lower earners, who don't exercise options, receive bonuses or have as much discretion in choosing when to realize a capital gain.

Extra corporate taxes also flowed in and are 27 percent higher than in the year-earlier period. Overall, the data suggest that tax revenue as a share of the economy for 2006 will be 18.4 percent of GDP, above the average for the past 30 years.

All this good news doesn't preclude budgetary bankruptcy in the future. Only structural change that includes both an overhaul of Social Security and reversal of the Bush administration's Medicare drug plan can do that....

....Yet such details obscure the larger meaning of the deficit change. The new data supply evidence that President George W. Bush is right: lowering tax rates doesn't cause deficits, and can even diminish them. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is forging through a whole forest of difficulties right now -- the war, higher energy prices, a cooling housing market.

This is all to the good, of course, but the problem is that even if the deficit is just barely above zero percent of GDP the shortfall must be financed somehow and consequently the national debt continues to grow and the interest we must pay on that debt burgeons. Cutting taxes is a good step because it increases revenue, as Shlaes points out, but what we need now is for congress to cut spending so that we can achieve a revenue surplus and begin paying down the debt. Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the White House seem to be bothered by debt.

Preppie Rap

Rap: It's not just for gangsta's anymore. Go to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, click on the video and go to the Tea Party. It's pretty funny.

Bush Derangement Syndrome

There is an incredible statistic contained in the latest Fox News Opinion/Dynamics Poll. When asked (question #10) whether or not the respondent wished the president to succeed, 51% of Democrats answered "no" and 9% weren't sure. This is truly astonishing.

By implication at least 51% of Democrats want the president to fail with his management of the economy, with social security reform, with the war in Iraq, and in the war on terror. Fifty-one percent of Democrats, evidently, would rather see this country mired in abject economic misery, see Iraq spiral into total chaos, and have terrorists committing mass murder in our cities than have President Bush succeed in preventing these calamities.

These people, the majority of Democrats, are either terribly deranged or so unimaginably stupid that they didn't understand the full significance of their response to this question.

More on Rev. Boyd

An article by Mark Tooley appears in the Weekly Standard about pastor Greg Boyd, author of The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church, and pastor of 4000 member Woodland Hills Church in suburban St. Paul.

We took a look at the controversy surrounding Pastor Boyd at the end of last month, but the Standard article introduces a couple of additional items that place Rev. Boyd's credibility in question. Mr. Tooley writes that:

Boyd is blunt in his critique of America. "Our country was founded pretty much as most nations were founded--thru barbaric violence," he recently told a radio interviewer. "It was a conquering kind and 10 to 20 million Native Americans were killed [which was followed by] the enslavement of African Americans."

Now I don't know how many Native Americans were killed by European colonists and later by Americans, but I'm quite sure it wasn't even close to 10 million. Wikipedia puts the figure of Native Americans killed by whites at around 16,000 (A similar number of whites were killed by Native Americans). It's simply irresponsible for Boyd to just throw around numbers like the ones he uses in order to tarnish the reputations of our predecessors when he has no idea what the actual figures are.

Tooley also notes that:

In Myth of a Christian Nation, [Boyd] says that the "horrendous" abuse by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib led to the Iraqi terrorist beheading of John [sic] Berg. "You can begin to understand why, given our passionate convictions and given their passionate convictions, this bloody tit-for-tat game is almost inevitable," he writes, attributing both passions to "tribal" loyalties.

This is of course ridiculous. Firstly, the man's name was Nicholas, not John. Secondly, despite what Zarqawi said, to believe that he beheaded Berg because of the abuses of Abu Ghraib is risible. Zarqawi beheaded a lot of people who weren't even Americans. What was their connection to Abu Ghraib? Abu Ghraib was just an excuse for him to do what he wanted to do and would have done anyway. Thirdly, to implicitly equate humiliating treatment of terrorist suspects at Abu Ghraib with the butchering of an innocent man, as Boyd does, calling them tit-for-tat, is moral imbecility.

Greg Boyd may be a very effective preacher, but he should take his own advice and keep his politics out of his ministry. He'd save himself a lot of embarrassment.

The Correlation of Forces

Strategy Page has a helpful analysis of what Marxists might refer to as the "correlation of forces" in Lebanon. It's a little dated now that it seems that there will be a cease-fire, but it's interesting nonetheless:

Hizbollah has no incentive to broadcast the extent of its injuries in the current war. The losses have been substantial. For example, Syrians have noted an enormous exodus of Lebanese Shia into Syria. Some 10-15 percent of Lebanon's Shia appear to have fled the areas of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, for refuge in Syria. They are not just getting away from Israeli bombs, but the rising possibility of another round of civil war with Lebanese Sunnis, Druze and Christians. Hizbollah is a terrorist organization, and for nearly two decades, other Lebanese have been on the receiving end of that terror. There are payback issues in play. Before Hizbollah attacked Israel, these issues were being worked out, but the deal involved Hizbollah disarming and giving up control of southern Lebanon. The Hizbollah militants didn't go for this, partly because they feared retaliation from Lebanese families they had terrorized (via murder, kidnappings or worse) over the last two decades. Better that all of Lebanon should suffer, than a few hundred Hizbollah thugs should pay for their crimes. The Lebanese know this, the Israelis know this, the international media ignores it. But it's these grudges that will destroy Hizbollah in the end. The Shia fleeing to Syria fear their fellow Lebanese more than they fear the Israelis.

Hizbollah doesn't have a large "army." Only a few thousand trained and trustworthy gunmen. About 20 percent of these have been killed or wounded so far. About half of the 70,000 man army is Shia, a consequence of depending on Syria to help form and train the army. That's one reason why most Lebanese don't trust their own army, and why the Israelis don't accept the Lebanese offer to send 15,000 of their soldiers into southern Lebanon to take over from Hizbollah. While the Shia Lebanese soldiers aren't all Hizbollah members, those that are Shia know that Hizbollah can reach their family members. Hizbollah is a terrorist organization, and good at that sort of thing.

While no Lebanese want another round of civil war, if it did happen, it would be everyone against the Hizbollah led Shia. The result would be up to half the Shia population exiled in Syria, and Shia power in Lebanon broken for a long, long time. The Shia sect (Alawites) that runs Syria wouldn't mind a few hundred thousand Shia refugees in their midst, as Shia are only about ten percent of Syria's population. The Sunni Arabs who are the majority of Syrians might mind. Iran would come through with lots of money to make it all better, and keep the Shia in charge of Syria.

Israeli troops advancing into southern Lebanon are finding a lot of late model Russian weapons. Especially abundant are recently manufactured Russian anti-tank missiles. Three post-Cold War Russian missile systems have been found in large numbers. These include the 9M111 Fagot, which has a 25 pound missile fired from a 24 pound launch unit for up to 2,000 meters. Then there is the 9M133 Kornet, a replacement for the 9M111. This is laser guided missile with a range of 5,000 meters. The launcher has a thermal sight for use at night or in fog. The missile's warhead can penetrate 1200 mm of armor, which means that the front and side armor of the Israeli Merkava tank are vulnerable. The missile weighs 18 pounds and the launcher 42 pounds. Then there is the 9M131 Metis 2, which is a 30 pound missile, with a 1,500 meter range. It is fired from a 35 pound control unit, that has a thermal sight. Missiles and launch units have been found in bombed out buildings. The 9M131 can be fired from inside buildings. The missiles are used to take long range shots at Israeli infantry, as Hizbollah knows that, up close, their gunmen tend to lose quickly, and with heavy casualties, to the better trained Israelis. Russia has been selling these new missile systems to Syria and Iran, and this is the first real combat test of these systems. A few Israeli tanks have been hit, but most of the missiles have been fired at Israeli infantry, causing over a hundred casualties. Israel won't release details of these operations until after the war is over, but has admitted that most of their casualties in southern Lebanon have come from these Russian missiles.

Israel is moving sufficient troops, to the Lebanese border, to clear an area about 20 kilometers north of the border. This would severely limit the ability of Hizbollah to fire 122mm rockets into Israel. The Israelis would systematically clear civilians and Hizbollah fighters out of the area. Hizbollah has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in assets (buildings, vehicles and equipment). The Israelis are holding off on the "20 Kilometer Zone" operation to see if the UN can work out a ceasefire deal. That would have to include a force of "trustworthy" (Western) peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon. There would have to be peacekeepers who could, like the Israelis, fight Hizbollah, and not be intimidated, or bribed by Hizbollah, as has been the case with the current UN peacekeeper force. Hizbollah refuses to accept this more robust force, and Israel will accept nothing less.

Although Israel has lost about fifty soldiers killed so far, this is a much lower loss rate than in previous wars. Better technology, weapons and medical care have all combined to reduce the casualty rate.

Israel is on the front lines of a war whose battle zone covers the globe. Right now the conflict is raging most obviously in the Middle East, but, as Thursday's revelations indicate, the Islamists are eager to extend the fight to Europe and the United States as well. Let us hope that Israel can eliminate Hezbollah and make at least that theater a little safer for civilized people to dwell in.

If Materialism is True

Materialism is the philosophical view that matter is all there is and that everything can therefore ultimately be reduced to, and explained in terms of, material entities. Terry Mirl offers six predictions based on materialism which, assuming that view were true, should eventually be confirmed. If, after a suitable period of time, these predictions have not come to pass, the lack of confirmation should be taken as an indication, Mirl claims, that materialism is false.

His six predictions are quite provocative. If you read them, ask yourself what you think the likelihood is of any of them ever being fulfilled and what the implications of that might be. You can find them at Uncommon Descent.

Have we Got a Deal For You!

Paul Nowak sums up the Israeli position after the recent passage of the U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolution:

Sex Slaves

Andrew Sullivan has a You Tube video of a comedian who has an interesting, and funny, take on the Muslim view of heavenly rewards for terrorists. Go here and click on the video.

Thoughts of a Lebanese Christian

These remarks by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian, delivered at the Duke University Counter Terrorism Speak-Out on October 15, 2004, are well-worth our attention today:

I'm proud and honoured to stand here today, as a Lebanese speaking for Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. As someone who was raised in an Arabic country, I want to give you a glimpse into the heart of the Arabic world.

I was raised in Lebanon, where I was taught that the Jews were evil, Israel was the devil, and the only time we will have peace in the Middle East is when we kill all the Jews and drive them into the sea.

When the Moslems and Palestinians declared Jihad on the Christians in 1975, they started massacring the Christians, city after city. I ended up living in a bomb shelter underground from age 10 to 17, without electricity, eating grass to live, and crawling under sniper bullets to a spring to get water.

It was Israel who came to help the Christians in Lebanon. My mother was wounded by a Moslem's shell, and was taken into an Israeli hospital for treatment. When we entered the emergency room, I was shocked at what I saw. There were hundreds of people wounded, Moslems, Palestinians, Christians, Lebanese, and Israeli soldiers lying on the floor. The doctors treated everyone according to their injury. They treated my mother before they treated the Israeli soldier lying next to her. They didn't see religion, they didn't see political affiliation, they saw people in need and they helped.

For the first time in my life I experienced a human quality that I know my culture would not have shown to their enemy. I experienced the values of the Israelis, who were able to love their enemy in their most trying moments. I spent 22 days at that hospital. Those days changed my life and the way I believe information, the way I listen to the radio or to television. I realized I was sold a fabricated lie by my government, about the Jews and Israel, that was so far from reality. I knew for fact that, if I was a Jew standing in an Arab hospital, I would be lynched and thrown over to the grounds, as shouts of joy of Allah Akbar, God is great, would echo through the hospital and the surrounding streets.

I became friends with the families of the Israeli wounded soldiers: one in particular Rina, her only child was wounded in his eyes.

One day I was visiting with her, and the Israeli army band came to play national songs to lift the spirits of the wounded soldiers. As they surrounded his bed playing a song about Jerusalem, Rina and I started crying. I felt out of place and started walking out of the room, and this mother holds my hand and pulls me back in without even looking at me. She holds me crying and says: "It is not your fault." We just stood there crying, holding each other's hands.

What a contrast between her, a mother looking at her deformed 19 year old only child, and still able to love me, the enemy, and between a Moslem mother who sends her son to blow himself up to smithereens just to kill a few Jews or Christians.

The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It's barbarism versus civilization. It's democracy versus dictatorship. It's goodness versus evil.

Once upon a time, there was a special place in the lowest depths of hell for anyone who would intentionally murder a child. Now, the intentional murder of Israeli children is legitimized as Palestinian "armed struggle."

However, once such behaviour is legitimized against Israel, it is legitimized everywhere in the world, constrained by nothing more than the subjective belief of people who would wrap themselves in dynamite and nails for the purpose of killing children in the name of God.

Because the Palestinians have been encouraged to believe that murdering innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic for advancing their cause, the whole world now suffers from a plague of terrorism, from Nairobi to New York, from Moscow to Madrid, from Bali to Beslan.

They blame suicide bombing on "desperation of occupation." Let me tell you the truth. The first major terror bombing committed by Arabs against the Jewish state occurred ten weeks before Israel even became independent.

On Sunday morning, February 22, 1948, in anticipation of Israel's independence, a triple truck bomb was detonated by Arab terrorists on Ben Yehuda Street, in what was then the Jewish section of Jerusalem. Fifty-four people were killed, and hundreds were wounded. Thus, it is obvious that Arab terrorism is caused not by the "desperation" of "occupation" but by the VERY THOUGHT of a Jewish state.

So many times in history in the last 100 years, citizens have stood by and done nothing, allowing evil to prevail. As America stood up against and defeated communism, now it is time to stand up against the terror of religious bigotry and intolerance. It's time to all stand up and support and defend the state of Israel, which is the front line of the war against terrorism.

HT to Andrew Sullivan.

No Way to Win a War

Ed Morrissey is mildly optimistic about the U.N. cease-fire resolution unanimously approved by the Security Council this evening. I hope he's right that the resolution works to Israel's advantage, but I have my doubts. Israel has lost a lot of momentum by their on-again off-again incursion into Lebanon. If the Lebanese army fails to disarm Hezbollah and take control of the south as the resolution calls for, and of course it will, it will be enormously difficult for Israel to recover the political will and the military heart to do what they should have done several days ago - drive Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon.

Unless Nasrallah offers another clear provocation, which he'd be foolish to do, world opinion will be solidly against any future attempt by Israel to defeat Hezbollah no matter how much they flaunt the U.N. resolution. A once in a decade opportunity has been squandered by the Israelis and in a year or two we will be right back to the status quo ante. Voting for this resolution is no way for the United States to win a war against terrorists.

Ten Ways Darwinists Help ID

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has put together a series of posts titled 10 Ways Darwinists Help Intelligent Design, and it's quite perceptive. The series is in three parts. Part one is here, part two can be found here and part three is here.

The following is a list of Carter's ten ways. Go to his site to read his explanations of them:

1. By remaining completely ignorant about ID while knocking down strawman versions of the theory.
   
2. By claiming that ID is stealth creationism.
   
3. By resorting to "science of the gaps" arguments.
   
4. By claiming that ID isn't science since it's not published peer-reviewed literature...and then refusing to allow publications of ID papers in peer-reviewed journals.
   
5. By making claims that natural selection is responsible for all behaviors and biological features.
   
6. By invoking design in non-design explanations.
   
7. By claiming that the criticism of ID has nothing to do with a prejudice against theism - and then having the most vocal critics of ID be anti-religious atheists.
   
8. By separating origins of life science from evolutionary explanations.
   
9. By resorting to ad hominems instead of arguments (e.g., claiming that advocates of ID are "ignorant").
   
10. By not being able to believe their own theory.
    

Also, on the evolution/ID front, here's a brief video geared toward kids that succinctly explains the difference between materialist and theistic explanations of the origin of life.

Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the tip.

The Nature of the Foe

Gary Varvel explains why the casualties among Lebanese civilians are "disproportionately" high:

Botching the War on Terror

Not content with having botched, from all appearances, the post-war in Iraq, the Bush administration is now trying to botch the Israeli war against Hezbollah, at least it seems that way if this Jerusalem Post story is accurate:

After 30 days of fighting, the war with Hizbullah seemed to be nearing its conclusion Thursday.

Just a day earlier, the situation had looked drastically different. The security cabinet had approved the army's request to send thousands of troops up to the Litani River and beyond in an effort to destroy Hizbullah's infrastructure and to stop the Katyusha attacks. After the cabinet meeting, one division actually began moving north from Metulla. Its goal - to clear out al-Khiam and Marjayoun and to reach the Litani.

But then, under pressure from the US, Defense Minister Amir Peretz made a frantic call to Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz and ordered him to stop the division in its tracks. "We need to give the diplomatic process one last chance," Peretz told Halutz. The orders trickled down the chain of command and by the time they reached 366, it had already reached Marjayoun, a stone's throw from the Litani.

With the UN Security Council on the verge of passing a cease-fire resolution, the IDF understood on Thursday that Operation Change of Direction was ending, for better or for worse.

Any United Nations cease-fire resolution will inevitably allow Hezbollah to survive and insure that more Israeli civilians will die from terrorist rockets in the future. The only solution to Hezbollah's murderous aggression is to eliminate Hezbollah. One might think that if anyone would understand that it would be George Bush. Apparently, however, the Bush administration is of the view that the cause of peace and justice is best served by enabling those who care about neither to continue their assaults on the villages and towns of northern Israel.

The pressure from the White House to stop the Israeli advance is inexplicable. Surely there is no one in the administration who actually believes that if only the Israelis end their military action that Hezbollah will lay down its weapons and live in peace with its Jewish neighbors. Surely this administration recognizes that the only road to peace with terrorist fanatics is to extirpate the terrorists. Why then, do they stand in the way of an opportunity to do just that?