Barry Rubin has issued a thundering jeremiad against the incredible sloth and appeasement by the West in permitting Hizbollah to take over Lebanon creating a de facto victory for the Syrian and Iranian puppet masters. Both he and the Beirut to Beltway blog that he cites blast at another piece of sophistry by Senator Obama issued in his comments Saturday about what Walid Phares in our post called the Hizbullah ‘Beirut blitz’. Well, given breaking news reports out of Lebanon it looks like fighting has spread beyond Beirut, despite Hizbullah allegedly standing down.. So Hizbullah barrels ahead with its plan to control Lebanon. Meanwhile that US Naval task force keeps steaming offshore ‘waiting instructions’ which may never come.

Rubin blasts at the US for not providing something more than lip service and an offshore naval task force. Witness this:

The Lebanese logjam has broken at last as Hizballah seized west Beirut and inflicted a big defeat on the pro-government side.

While Iran and Syria provide guns and strong backing to their friends, the West responds with words backed by nothing. Who can blame Hizballah and Damascus and Tehran for laughing with contempt, believing they are the tide of the future, assuming their “passionate intensity” will inevitably triumph over the weak-willed West?

The historic great powers act as pitiful, helpless giants but their enemies will take no pity on them. In short, Hizballah is pulling a two-stage version of Hamas’s Gaza strategy in Lebanon and no one does anything effective about that either.

Why should Lebanese Sunni, Druze, and Christians risk their lives when the West doesn’t help them? Every Israeli speaking nonsense about Syria making peace; every American claiming Damascus might split from Tehran; every European preaching appeasement has in fact been engaged in confidence-breaking measures.

Hizballah doesn’t need to win a military victory but only to show it can win one, using that position of strength to try to force its demands on the moderate government. . The government has already accepted Michel Suleiman, Syria’s candidate for president. But Hizballah and the rest say this is not enough: they want veto power over everything.

The goal of Hizballah, and its Syrian and Iranian backers at present is not the full conquest of Lebanon–something beyond their means–but to control the government so it does nothing they dislike: no strong relations with the West, no ability to stop war against Israel, no disarming Hizballah’s militias or countering that group’s control over large parts of the country, and certainly no investigation of Syrian involvement in terrorism there.

Here’s Rubin’s blast at Obama:

If you want to know what’s wrong, consider Obama’s May 10 statement on Lebanon. He starts out playing tough, talking about “Hezbollah’s power grab in Beirut….This effort to undermine Lebanon’s elected government needs to stop, and all those who have influence with Hezbollah must press them to stand down immediately.” He calls for supporting the Lebanese government, strengthening the Lebanese army, and to “insist on disarming Hezbollah.”

But how to do this? By “working with the international with the international community and the private sector to rebuild Lebanon and get its economy back on its feet.”

In other words, according to the Obama world view, it’s a problem of development. If people have more money they won’t be terrorists. Of course, that was the policy of Hariri, which was countered by Syria blowing him up. In politics, bombs trump business. And any way you can’t have a strong economy with no government and chaos. Part of the mistake here is Obama’s assumption that Hizballah (and other radicals) want stability and prosperity. In fact, they want to use instability as blackmail in their pursuit of power. They don’t want conciliation. It’s a military-strategic problem, not one of community organizing.

The statement continues: “We must support the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions that reinforce Lebanon’s sovereignty, especially resolution 1701 banning the provision of arms to Hezbollah, which is violated by Iran and Syria.”

“It’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment.”

Here, make no mistake, Obama is endorsing the Hizballah program. It wants a new Lebanese consensus based on it having, along with its pro-Syrian allies, 51 percent of the power. What’s needed is not consensus (the equivalent being getting Fatah and Hamas to bury their differences, or bringing in Iran and Syria to determine Iraq’s future) but the willingness to fight a battle. In effect, Obama without realizing it, is arguing for a Syrian-, Iranian-, and Hizballah-dominated Lebanon. Such talk makes moderate Arabs despair.

To cap things off the Beirut to Beltway blog takes Obama to the proverbial cleaners:

“Oh the time we wasted by fighting Hizballah all those years….If only we had engaged them and their masters in diplomacy…sitting with them around discussion tables, welcoming them into our parliament, and letting them veto cabinet decisions. If only Obama had shared his wisdom with us before, back when he was rallying with some of our former friends at pro-Palestinian rallies in Chicago. How stupid we were when, instead of developing `national consensus’ with them, we organized media campaigns against Israel on behalf of the impoverished people who voted for them.

“During that time when we bought into the cause against Israel, treating resistance fighters like our brothers, we really should have been `building consensus’ with them. Because what we did…was…unnecessary antagonism, a product of a `corrupt patronage system and unfair distribution of wealth.’”

“We stand today regretting the wasted time that could have been wisely spent talking to them, to the Syrian occupiers who brought them into our system, and the Iranian revolutionary guards who trained them.

Rubin concludes with:

Back the Lebanese government with real power and aid, covertly or overtly, those battling the radical forces in Lebanon.

Time for our ACT members in Greeley to do some investigating with the folks at JBS/Swift & Company and Lutheran Family Services, the local refugee resettlement agency (VOLAG). All this coming to Greeley courtesy of American taxpayers.

Watch this important CBN video story on Hamas supporters and cells in Hillyard, Ohio. View interviews with our allies Patrick Poole of Central Ohioans Against Terrorism and Steven Emerson of The Investigative Project Against Terrorism discussing Sheik Sultan, formerly from Hillyard and barred from the US for appearing at a Hamas Rally in Turkey.

Patrick Poole of Central Ohioans Against Terrorism, asks us why a Dayton, Ohio Community College is sponsored a ‘talk’ by an outrageous fraudster and American convert to Wahhabism Khalid Yasin. Yasin is the ultimate is Islamic hate sheiks and has been made a pariah in the U.K. and Australia. Those of you who live in the metro Dayton area should read this post by Poole and then contact the administrators at Sinclair Community College and ask why they are lending their facility for this hate fest on May 16th.

Here’s what Poole writes about what Yasin promotes:

Thursday was Yom Ha’aztma’ut (Israel Independence Day). There were festivities and commemorations across North America, Europe and in Israel. Christians United for Israel (CUFI) held a Night to honor Israel at a regional gathering in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

Pastor John Hagee, founder of CUFI was there and according to those in attendance was eloquent as ever in defense of Israel and the Jewish people. Having attended a CUFI event in Washington, I know that the love and enthusiasm is genuinely palpable This occasion and others like it across America put to shame naysayers like Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the United Reform Movement,the J-Street crowd and many mainstream Jewish leaders.

One exception is my friend, Conservative Rabbi Jon Hausman of the Conservative Ahavath Torah Congregation of Stoughton, Massachusetts. Hausman is a unique rabbi. He is a lifelong Republican, son and grandson of Jewish Republicans from Bridgeport, Connecticut. His mother, whom I knew as a fellow congregant at a synagogue in Fairfield, Connecticut, and all of his uncles served during WWII. On his mother’s side, he is a Medved and has a famous cousin, the nationally syndicated conservative talk show host, Michael Medved out in Washington. He is a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition and a member of CUFI. Hausman also believes that he has pulled off a real hat trick. He has educated his originally left liberal suburban congregation about the realities in Israel and domestic issues and at least perceives his ‘education’ he believes has moved the views of many congregants to the ‘center or ‘center right’. Hausman is “one of us” and clearly understands the Islamist threat to Israel’s existence, the necessity of replacing the corrupt incompetent Olmert Kadima government in the Knesset and is unafraid to publicly speak about it. He also knows who are Israel’s real friends among Christian Zionists here in the US. (more…)