A modest proposal: General War.

Claudia Rosett has a finely tuned radar for finding hypocrisy on matters affecting human rights, prisoners of conscience, and spittle lickers everywhere. The link below is to her article about her interview with Gebran Tueni, the journalist in Lebanon who was killed by a car bomb December 12, 2005. Of Syrian guilt there can be no doubt.


Mr. Tueni was an incredibly brave man who previously had been shot -- twice -- and kidnapped for his outspoken views. His "defiance of despotic rule extended not only to Syrian occupation but to the presence of Hezbollah ['an imported product from Iran'] in Lebanese politics."

To the Colonel's simple and apparently anachronistic way of looking at things (e.g., "Go to war over acts of war.") Syria has perpetrated a casus belli by, at a minimum, murdering Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Iran has done the same by subverting Lebanon through its financing of Hezbollah and its murderous activities.

Of course, Lebanon cannot respond appropriately and only fools think that the United Nations will ever take any effective action to punish international pariahs who kill and maim.

Ms. Rosett's question at the end of this short quotation from her article is the core question. How it is answered will determine if the world's efforts to eradicate terror will remain partial and ineffective or become sharp and decisive.

Think "Barbary Pirates."

The insanity of terrorism cries out for a monumental commitment to its eradication. The United Nations has done nothing to deal with the problem of international anarchy. It is time to relegate it to a relief organization with occasional responsibility for maintaining roadblocks and water purification facilities.

A new action arm needs forming that will git 'er done, which would include hunting down the Syrian government, hunting down the Iranian government and the senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, removing all Arab and Iranian control over oil, distributing oil to all comers, and diverting oil revenues to infrastructure development, desalination, reversing desertification, health care, etc. on a per capita basis.

So, here's the question of the decade:

Gebran Tueni has now become the latest casualty in a series of terrorist bombings that are an assault not only on Lebanese democracy, but on all those in the Middle East--or anywhere else, for that matter--who believe government should be a matter of civil compact, not of rule by blood and fear. The urgent question by now is not only who precisely gave the order or laid the bomb, but who will act to put an end to this terror, and how.

"Gebran Tueni, R.I.P. My conversations with the latest victim of Syrian terror." By Claudia Rosett, Wall Street Journal, 12/14/05 (emphasis added).