Kerry’s Diplomacy Tour

The wonderful Baker Boys Iraq Study Group report has now been digested by all the kleptocrats in the Middle East. From Syria, John Kerry reports on his meeting with Bashar “baby thug” Assad that Syria might stop sending “money, weapons and terrorists” into Iraq and Lebanon, if only we asked him nicely. “I certainly came away with a sense that it's worth pursuing as a dialogue,” Kerry said. “It's worth following up on, on a number of avenues. It certainly validated the judgment of the Iraq Study Group.”

Kerry closed his verbal report to the dimwitted David Gregory with the news flash that “there is a major crisis brewing in Lebanon, and it is a three week problem, not a six month problem like Iraq.” Apparently Kerry was surfing last summer during the little war between Israel and Lebanon. Heaven help us, this guy almost became our president.

We’re anticipating that Kerry will continue his diplomacy tour with Mahmoud Ahmadinewackjob in Iran. Recall the fatuous recommendation of the ISG report: “Diplomatic efforts should seek to persuade Iran that it should take specific steps to improve the situation in Iraq.” The report calls for a “New Diplomatic Offensive” as though our enemies are really good old boys who have been “inadequately exposed to the discreet charms of the U.S. diplomatic corps.”

Here’s hoping that Kerry has better luck than Jim Baker, who fared about as well as Neville Chamberlain. You can view this video at the excellent Powerline blog. (Thanks to Zone Bridge friend David for the link to the video.) The key to the benefits program, if I understand Baker correctly, is that there is no need to fight evil when appeasement will do just fine –- just like Chamberlain with Hitler.

By the way, a new report using previously classified photos and video tapes, establishes conclusively that Hezbollah committed war crimes against both Lebanese and Israeli civilians. Asked by The New York Times whether Hezbollah's use of Lebanese “human shields” does not make Hezbollah responsible for Lebanese civilian deaths, Lebanese Army general Elias Hanna replied: “Of course Hezbollah is responsible. But these people are ready to sacrifice their lives for Hezbollah.”

From the Wall Street Journal: “These images suggest how Islamists seek to use the restraint of Western powers against them. They shoot at us from the safety of their own civilian enclaves that they know we are reluctant to attack. Then if by chance their civilians are killed, they call in CNN and al-Jazeera cameras and wait for the likes of Human Rights Watch to denounce America or Israel for war crimes. None of this means the U.S. shouldn't continue to fight with discrimination and avoid civilian casualties. But it means our political leadership needs to speak as candidly as Israelis now are speaking about this enemy strategy, so the American people can understand and be steeled against this new civilian battleground.”

That sweet war-hawk Diana West of the Washington Times writes about the “two greatest obstacles to our efforts in the region: namely, Islam -- culturally unsuited to Westernity, and our own politically correct rules of engagement -- strategically unsuited to victory. She offers two solutions that the Iraq Study Groupies overlooked.

“The first option is military. The fact is the United States has an arsenal that could obliterate any jihad threat in the region once and for all, whether that threat is bands of IED-exploding insurgents in Ramadi, the deadly so-called Mahdi Army in Sadr City, or genocidal maniacs in Tehran. In other words, it's a disgrace for military brass to talk about the 21st-century struggle with Islam as necessarily being a 50- to 100-year war. Ridiculous! It could be over in two weeks if we cared enough to blast our way off the list of endangered civilizations.”

“The great paradox of the war on terror, of course, is that as our capacity and desire to protect civilians in warfare grows, our enemy's capacity and desire to kill civilians as a means of warfare grows also. Thus, the second option: Get out of the way. Get out of the way of Sunnis and Shi'ites killing each other. As a sectarian conflict more than 1,000 years old, this is not only one fight we didn't start, but it's one we can't end. And why should we? If Iran, the jihad-supporting leader of the Shi'ite world, is being strangled by Saudi Arabia, the jihad-supporting leader of the Sunni world, isn't that good for the Sunni-and-Shiite-terrorized West?”

Tough gal, that Diana West.

Let’s hope that the war meetings the president is holding face up to this ugly reality. If we are going to fight this war, we need to “engage” (ie kill) the enemy before they begin shooting at us. There will be civilian casualties because that is part of the enemy strategy. If our leaders are unwilling to fight like that then we should get out of the way and leave it to the Iraqi military and police forces. With all due respect to Ms. West, I’d use our forces to keep the Iranians and the Saudis out of it, but that’s a post for another day.