The lessons keep coming, but some refuse to learn them or even pay attention. Everyone was warned that if Israel was not given the time and support needed to deal with Hizbullah, that it would not be long before there was more trouble in Lebanon.... the same as they are warning about leaving Iraq as a job half done and telling us if we do, we will end up back there in an even worse situation. I touched on this in the Lebanon and Iraq Comparison.
(Hat Tip to YID with LID for the link) We now see that Hizbullah is rearming right under the French Army's nose, with the French turning a blind eye.
Lebanese civilians close to the border with Syria told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that weapons for Hizbullah were being brought in by the truckload at night. Lebanese Army troops on duty at the border refused to confirm the claims.
This correspondent watched as a line of trucks and lorries several kilometers long built up at one crossing on the road from Lebanon into Syria. The trucks, en route from Beirut to Damascus, were laden with a mixture of goods: everything from construction materials to fruits and vegetables. But in the late afternoon wintry chill they were stationary; their drivers had disappeared and only the occasional soldier kept guard every few hundred meters.
"They don't move in the day," said Yusuf Saad, a taxi driver waiting at the border crossing.
Saad, who had watched this correspondent from the other side of the road for some time before signaling for me to come over, added that "It's much easier for them to drive at night." He nodded toward the distant Syrian mountain range.
"There's not so much traffic on the road. And I can tell you" - his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper - "they might be going in with produce, but they're coming out with weapons. They hide the rockets under the goods and that's how they're able to bring them into the country."
If having Hizbullah rearm is not enough, we have the high tensions that have been created from the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, which has kicked of quite a few Anti-Hizbullah protestors.
Young men stamped on portraits of Lahoud and his Syrian and Iranian counterparts, Bashar Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the principal backers of Hizbullah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah.
“Nasrallah, come and see who is the majority” in Lebanon, chanted the crowd.
“We want only the army to bear weapons,” the mourners chanted, referring to Hizbullah’s persistent refusal to lay down its weapons in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolutions following the devastating summer war with Israel.
The full article here.
Right Wing Nuthouse is keeping up with the situation is Lebanon today.
Hizbullah, understanding that this assassination may have pushed the wrong buttons has cancelled the street demonstration on Thursday for fear of chaos ensuing with the anti-hibullah, anti syria crowds.
We all warned that this would happen, that Hizbullahs support would erode, they would rearm and that Lebanon would be thrown into chaos yet again if Israel was not supported in finishing the job.... again, quite a comparison with Iraq.
The same warnings have been given, the same ignorance is shown in ignoring, not only the warnings, but the lessons that recent as well as past history has been trying to teach us.
Hyscience points to a RCP piece called "Making the Last Mistake in Iraq"
The decisions made on Iraq over the next few months will take the measure of America's maturity and sense of responsibility. Because, whether we like it or not, our decisions -- and our decisions alone -- will determine whether the barely containable murderous pathologies of the Middle East will just be dumped into the face of humanity -- or whether rational efforts will be persisted at to contain and mitigate its civilization-threatening forces.
We have the most profound obligation to attempt to calculate the consequences of the impending American decision to wash our hands of the Iraq unpleasantness. In that regard, the words of President Kennedy come to mind: "There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."
If we, the most powerful force on the planet, in a fit of disappointment and anger at our bungling policies to date, decide to shrug off our responsibilities to the future -- we will soon receive, and deserve, the furious contempt of a terrified world. In fact, even those Americans who today can't wait to end our involvement in the "hopeless" war in Iraq will -- when the consequences of our irresponsibility becomes manifest -- join the chorus of outrage.
So true, those same people crying out to leave Iraq now, will be the same idiots that cry the loudest when Iraq is taken by al-Qaeda and used as a base to attack us again, harder and perhaps with nuclear capabilities.
They will cry "they didn't know"--- a lie, because they have been told.
They will scream when their children die-- They will get no sympathy because their actions is what got their children killed.
They will beat their fists on their chests and claim we didn't do enough to stop it-- We tried, their policies of appeasements will be at fault.
When cowards decides to run, they get shot in the back.
At least when one stands up for what is right, they stand a chance of winning. There is no chance of winning when one runs with their tails between their legs.
Richard at Hyscience states it perfectly.
Unfortunately for Americans and others throughout the West, that hell to pay is likely to happen on the streets here at home when al-Qaeda and Iranian nuclear weapons are set off by radical Islamists, and the entire Middle East is lost to radical Islam. Sure, the Dems will have been exposed for the naive "realists" that they are, but that will be small consolation to the millions of American (and Western) dead here and abroad. If we end up pulling out of Iraq, the election of the Dems may just have doomed the fate of Western civilization, and ushered in the caliphate sought by the radical Islamists.
We will either start listening to the lessons of history, or we will keep repeating the same mistakes for all the world to see.
Since it IS Thanksgiving, Happy Gobble Gobble to everyone and here is a smile from Woman Honor Thyself.