I think it's something new, in that a non-state organization has undertaken a major, sustained, broad-scale, and so far, the successful military offensive against a state," said William Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "What changes here ... is that non-state forces are able to challenge states militarily -- and win."We reproduce our comments on Wretchard's post:
It obscures an important point merely to refer to "non-state forces [that] are able to challenge states militarily."The solution to the problem with Hezbollah is to deal with the real problem -- Iran. Surely, we could use those stealth bomber we spent so much money on to bomb every Revolutionary Guard barracks, vehicle park, headquarters, and supply dump and every intelligence facility in Iran. We could do this while we bomb their nuclear facilities as sort of a PS to that those other love notes.
The vital concept upon which to focus is: "non-state forces that are supported by states."
Hezbollah wouldn't be able to do 1/1000th of what it's doing now without the support of Iran, directly and through its Syrian intermediary. And . . . with the income from its criminal activities in North and South America, although the income from these activities is merely the lagniappe to what Iran provides.
Ergo, the problem is Iran and this focus on "non-state forces" is an unhelpful distraction from the main point. The world is infected by fleas but the silly Westerners just can't bring themselves to do something about the dog right there in the living room.
If elephants harbored fleas, the image would be perfect.
Anything short of this is just to play a parlor game with Ahmadinejad and the priests.
"The Sling and the Stone." By Wretchard, 8/8/06.
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