CenterFeud

Why Europe and the Left will miss Bush

UK columnist Nick Cohen perfectly captures the realities of the post-Bush era, both for Europe and for liberals in general: "Why Bush has been a liberal's best friend."

By building him up into a great Satan, the oil man who invades countries to seize their reserves and the Christian who orders bloody crusades, [the liberal-left in Europe and North America] have hidden the totalitarian threats of our age from themselves and anyone who listens to them. Bush allowed them to explain away radical Islam as an understandable, even legitimate, response to the hypocrisies and iniquities of American policy. Even those in the European elites who do not buy the full 'America has it coming' package believe that Bush is a cowboy who doesn't understand that the postmodern way to end conflict is to compromise rather than fight.

In January, Bush will be history, leaving liberals all alone in a frightening world. Little else will change. Radical Islam will still authorise murder without limit, Iran will still want the bomb and the autocracies of China and Russia will still be growing in wealth and confidence. All those who argued that the 'root cause' of the Bush administration lay behind the terror will find that the terror still flourishes when the root cause has retired.

Agreed 100%. In many ways, an Obama presidency would be a relief, in that it would force the Democratic Left to confront the realities of an ideology of religious supremacism that stands foursquare opposed to all of its professed ideals. But since that ideology doesn't originate with familiar opponents, it may take awhile for the realization to set in. But those realities will be there to be confronted, and the illusions will last only so long once hard decisions must be made.

Once back in power, the Democrats will find that they can stay in power by pursuing popular programs here at home and putting out soothing idealistic rhetoric abroad, all the while quietly building on the assets left to them by the Bush administration, i.e., an emerging democratic Iraq and an al-Qaeda back on its heels after a stinging defeat in Mesopotamia -- a defeat Obama the Democrats would have gladly embraced to repudiate Bush and his war, regardless of the enormous cost. Fortunately, Bush made it easy by doubling down on the Surge, enabling that victory to occur at virtually no cost to the Democrats.

For their part, if the GOP is out of power, they will need to put country above politics and lend enthusiastic support to any moves by Obama to counter the influence and aggression of radical Islam, even if that means on occasion siding with the opposition party on principle, as did Joe Lieberman. Will the GOP have the courage of its convictions, even if they no longer call the shots?

AP catches up to Michael Yon on success in Iraq

Michael Yon, July 14, 2008: Success in Iraq.

Associated Press, July 26, 2008: Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost.

Hmmm...Only two weeks or so behind the curve. "Independent journalist beats MSM to the story" is seeming more and more like "dog bites man". Would be nice if occasionally, the mainstream press acknowledged this.

UPDATE: Maybe only 2 days behind the curve? On July 16, the AP was quietly saying the war was winding down, it just wasn't the headline. But Gateway Pundit commemorated the occasion with a flying pig.

Hitchens waterboarded

Writer and gadfly Christopher Hitchens undergoes the procedure as part of an article for Vanity Fair: "Believe me, it's torture." He doesn't last long. Video here.

Imagining an American intifada

Daniel Pipes conjures a grim near-future scenario that deftly mixes speculative fiction with recent history and current events:

Just as the 7/7 bombings had revealed in Great Britain, Islamist sleepers in substantial numbers lived quietly and unobtrusively in the United States. The violence became daily, ubiquitous, endemic, and routine, occurring in rural towns, upscale suburbs, and metropolitan centres, targeting private houses, restaurants, university buildings, gas stations, and electricity grids. As its frequency increased, terrorists became less cautious, leading to many arrests and bulging prisons. Some terrorists avoided this ignominious fate by engaging in suicide attacks, usually accompanied by boastful Internet videos. In all, roughly 100,000 incidents meant an average 10,000 deaths and many times more injuries each year.

Jihadis for Justice laid siege to Capitol Hill and the White House, inspired by three prior terrorist assaults on symbols of sovereignty: the attack on Trinidad's Red House in 1990, on India's Parliament House in 2001, and the failed plot to storm Ottawa's Parliament Hill in 2006. Despite massive security in Washington, sniper attacks picked off some legislators and presidential aides. Jihadis for Justice relied on Iranian and Saudi patronage but no U.S. retaliation followed because, before acting, President Obama required proofs that would pass muster in a U.S. court of law, something the intelligence agencies could not provide.

As in other countries – Israel offering the most obvious comparison – major changes in American life followed. Whoever wished to enter supermarkets, bus stations, malls, or campuses had to produce identification, show his bags and perhaps submit to a search of his person. Cars routinely underwent inspections at road blocks. As airline passengers had to arrive four hours before flight time to run the gauntlet of security questions about their travels, airports emptied and airline companies went bankrupt. Local public transportation went through similar upheavals, as commuters took up bicycling rather than submit to interrogations and near-strip searches on their way to work. Telecommuting finally took off.

Read it all.

Is France moving closer to Israel?

Yes, according to the Jerusalem Post, which tracks a shift in French thinking about the Middle East:

The negative attitude regarding Israel typical of the French government of late is shifting towards a new policy, according to the delegation of French senators sent to visit Israel and the West Bank by the Medbridge Institute.

Now, France is eager to offer Israel support in ensuring its national security by confronting terrorist groups and regimes in the Middle East. "The feeling in France today is that terror must be handled directly, and we are ready to combat terrorism," Jean Pierre Plancade, vice president of the Foreign Affairs and Defense committees, told The Jerusalem Post over the weekend.

Based on France's history of accommodating Arab governments, one would expect its position on the new Palestinian "unity" government agreed to in Mecca by Hamas and Fatah to be closer to that of Russia, i.e. that the Road Map's preconditions can be thrown over the side and the unity government could receive funding from the UN and EU in spite of its continued refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce terrorism or abide by past peace agreements with Israel. In fact, my own expectation was that France would eagerly cooperate in such a charade. Perhaps it will, but the initial reaction gives me more reason to hope than I would have otherwise had."

According to a French Foreign Ministry official, the French government's position on the conditions of the road map are non-negotiable. "Obviously we cannot judge what will happen in the future, but don't expect either Royal or Sarkozy to differ from the current government's position," the ministry official said.

Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert urged the French delegation to fulfill their "moral obligation" regarding Iran, insisting that "Europe must remain forceful regarding the nuclear capabilities of Iran." That position was echoed by Plancade, who acknowledged the threat of a nuclear Iran and opposed their efforts saying that a France under Royal "would totally oppose a nuclear Iran in any capacity. We have carefully analyzed the situation, and are against Iran having a nuclear program of any kind."

He added that they are "in favor of a more severe handling of Iran if they do not cease their efforts. It is not only Israel who will be in danger, but the Sunnis and the rest of the world would be under the Iranian threat." While the Chirac government is opposed to an Iranian nuclear arsenal and has expressed concern over the lack of cooperation by the Iranians with the international community regarding the program, they do not oppose peaceful nuclear technology in Iran.

Other delegates, such as Senate Secretary Yvon Collin, have admitted to broadening their views concerning Israeli-Palestinian relations. "We arrived with preconceived ideas but every day those preconceptions... make room for new realities," declared Collin.

France has a long history in the Middle East, and prides itself on knowing the nuances of the political situation in countries like Lebanon, Syria and Iran. French citizens have long championed the Palestinian cause, viewing Israel through the prism of its own colonial past in the Middle East, and not as an embattled democracy at war with both government and non-government forces who are determined to end its existence.

Now, perhaps realizing that French president Jacques Chirac's recent bizarre offhand comments indicating a comfort level with an Iran that has the Bomb, combined with its own realization that it may be facing its own "intifada" in the streets of its cities, it is possible -- maybe -- that elites in the French government are coming to the realization that the Arab-Israeli conflict may not be just about land, nor even about Arabs and Israelis -- but about a complete unwillingness on the part of the Muslim world to tolerate the existence of Israel under any circumstances, regardless of its policies.

If France is waking up because it perceives a threat to the democratic West, what about the rest of the EU? It seems odd to hear French criticism of the EU, but what to make of this?

Medbridge Chairman and member of the European Parliament Francois Zimeray, who founded the institution to fill the information gap between Middle East and the EU, said from Paris: "This is why Europe has no real impact in the Middle East. They cannot mediate a peace in the Middle East because they do not understand the Middle East.

"I was fed up hearing European diplomats talking about realities that they do not understand, so that is why I have sent 350 parliamentarians from 27 different European countries to Israel and the Palestinian territories." According to Zimeray, one such diplomat is French President Jacques Chirac, who he believes exposed his ignorance of Israel and the Middle East last week with his comment that Teheran would be razed if Iran fired a missile at Israel.

"Israel's real friends are those who understand the fragility of the state of Israel" Zimeray noted. "Saying that Israel would destroy Teheran shows that Chirac doesn't understand Israel's fragility. Israel is not going to take on confrontations all over the world, they need friends and supporters."

"George Bush, true Democrat"

Victor Davis Hanson points up the irony of how the US public, and particularly Democrats, have come to view Iraq: "If we fail..."

Prior to Iraq, there was some American guilt over past realism, whether stopping before Baghdad in 1991, playing Iran off Iraq, cozying up to dictatorships, or predicating American Middle East foreign policy solely on either oil or anti-Communism. Read the liberal literature of the 1990s and it was essentially a call for what George Bush is now doing — and being damned for. Then the liberal bogeyman was not Paul Wolfowitz, but Jim Baker (“jobs, jobs, jobs”/”F—- the Jews”). Now the latter is the model of Republican sobriety.

Arab intellectuals and much of the Western Left once decried Bakerism and called for a new muscular idealism that put us on the side of the powerless reformers and not with the entrenched authoritarians. But if we fail in Iraq, then again, fairly or not, the verdict will be far more sweeping than simply the incompetence of the Bremer proconsulship or the impotence of the Maliki government.

Rather, the conventional wisdom will arise that an infantile Middle East ipso facto — whether due to Islamism, tribalism, gender apartheid, sectarianism, engrained dictatorship, or corruption — is simply incapable at this time of consensual government. Anyone who seeks such reform, whether in the Gulf, Palestine, Lebanon, or Egypt, is to be written off not only as naïve, but as reckless as well. A Libyan dissident, a feminist writer in Egypt, or an Iraqi intellectual who decries Western indifference to their plight or American tolerance of regional dictatorships will be told to quit whining and get a life, by a been-there/done-that American public.

Both carping hothouse Arab intellectuals and Western liberals should be put on notice of this change to come. However imperfect, however flawed, however improperly explained our efforts in Iraq were, they nevertheless represented a costly American about-face to offer something in the Middle East other than theocracy or dictatorship — something we are not likely to see again in our lifetime.

Democrats and liberals should likewise realize that for all their hatred of George Bush and the partisan points to be gained by coddling up to the libertarian and paleo-conservative Right, George Bush’s embrace of freedom was far closer to their own past rhetoric than almost any Republican administration in history.

There is definitely a sense of having slipped into some alternate reality from the one I knew pre-9/11. I remember in early 2001 a sense of foreboding that, with the Republicans having won the White House, there would be a shift back to the realpolitik of Bush I and James Baker. The warnings of the Clinton administration about the strategic threat posed by Saddam Hussein and the urgent need to push for regime change in Iraq would be ignored, and we would continue to treat the Middle East as, in the words of Thomas Friedman, "a big dumb gas station". I fully expected the Republicans to stick to their traditional script, and ignore democratic reformers in the Middle East in favor of the usual dictators, tyrants and strongmen.

I didn't figure on George W. Bush, the most unlikely figure in the world to make democratic reform a centerpiece of Middle East policy. In a post-9/11 world, he concluded that there was no safety in the old "stability", only societies forced to choose between rule by thugs or theocrats, who would continue to demonize the West in order to redirect the anger and resentment of their people against an external "other", i.e. "decadent" democracies. Something had to be done to change that dynamic, otherwise it was only a matter of time before we were confronted with an alliance of terrorist networks equipped by their state sponsors with terrifying weapons that could kill hundreds of thousands and wreak social and economic turmoil. He concluded that confronting dictatorial regimes that were actively pursuing such weapons would be far less costly than fighting them when they had achieved their aims and had become emboldened.

It has now become fashionable to deride the so-called "neocons" as Machiavellians ruthlessly plotting global American hegemony, but an objective reading of their writings reveals an idealism rooted in the belief that America should stand with the forces of democratic reform and liberalism in places like the Middle East. Given a choice between coddling dictators and championing rule of law, the equality of women, and a free press, we should be unapologetically in favor of the latter. That support would not necessarily have to be military in nature, but diplomacy must to be backed with a credible threat of force or else it is ineffectual, especially in dealing with despotic regimes.

Now, with the neocons discredited and the general consensus that post-Saddam Iraq is ungovernable, we are back to a weird nostalgia for the dictators. James Baker is suddenly considered the voice of reasonableness by his erstwhile Democratic critics, even as he urges cutting deals with the likes of Iran's Ahmadinejad and Syria's Assad, who he assures us with a straight face have a long-term interest in a stable Iraq. Meanwhile, Iraqi democrats who risked their lives to elect a representative (if flawed and ineffectual) government are to be ignored. And bizarrely, Israel, the only true democracy in the region, is treated as a bargaining chip as we pursue the delusion that a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the magic key that will resolve Sunni-Shia bloodletting in Iraq and cause Iran to abandon its nuclear program and ambitions to dominate the region. And these are the "realists"!

And in the midst of all of it, there's George W. Bush, his popularity in the toilet, his credibility losing altitude by the minute, his every statement second-guessed, his war-fighting strategy undermined -- and yet he keeps at it, sending in yet more troops to take on the militias and terrorist gangs that are determined to impose their will on post-Saddam Iraq and make it a base for jihad against the West. Many of us have checked out, having concluded this war is already lost and not worth a single additional American life. Others want it to be lost if only to repudiate George W. Bush, whom they despise more than Saddam Hussein, the late Abu Musab Zarqawi, or Moqtada Al-Sadr. Ironically, Bush remains a "true democrat" while his critics on the left and right seem to have retreated to the comforts and illusions of the old realpolitik.

But whether the so-called "surge" turns the tide or represents yet another failed attempt to stabilize Iraq, we should all be desperately hoping it succeeds. Because to hope it fails, or to express ambivalence -- as apparently one third of Americans do according to a recent poll -- is to objectively side with religious zealots, Ba'athist thugs, and ethnic cleansers against the majority of Iraqis who want to live decent lives, just because you don't like Bush and want him to go down. If, like me, you retain the liberal idealism you grew up with, that realization should make you shudder.

UPDATE: In a must-read essay on America's checkered history with Iraq and the choices the US has made over the years, Neo-neocon makes a similar observation:

The funny thing about the whole thing (and I mean funny-strange, not funny ha-ha) is that it is the neocon philosophy that represents one of the only strategies offering a possible way out of the realpolitik dilemma. And yet those who criticize our realpolitik decisions to back dictators also criticize our neonconnish decisions to overthrow them and try to institute a better and more democratic form of government. Odd, isn't it?

With friends like these...

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick says of Tony Blair:

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe. And he's not a very good friend.

Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, Blair was instrumental in convincing US President George W. Bush to view the Palestinian jihad against Israel as a conflict completely separate from the global jihad. His success in convincing Bush of this distinction turned the anti-Semitic - not to mention strategically disastrous - view that terrorists who kill Israelis should be treated differently from terrorists who kill anyone else into one of the cognitive foundations of the US war on Islamic terror.

I am a huge fan of Tony Blair, whom I see as one of the last bastions of the responsible Left. Although he is clearsighted about the nature of the global jihad against the West, he has a blind spot when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians.

Like most on the Left, Blair operates under the assumption that terrorism against Israelis is somehow distinct in its motives and justification from terrorism anywhere else in the world. It is a tragically naive point of view, one that is implicitly or explicitly held around the world. It is based on the misplaced analogy that the Israelis are to the Palestinians what the former white nationalist apartheid government of South Africa was to black South Africans. In this framework, the Israeli/Palestinian question (and not religious extremism that rejects the existence of the Jewish state) lies at the heart of all problems in the Middle East. In Britain and Europe, reeling from terrorist attacks and looking for scapegoats, this worldview is expressed in a hatred for not only Israel (and by extension, its US sponsors) but of Jews in general. The old anti-Semitism has become fashionable again, only this time it comes from the supposedly progressive Left:

British antipathy towards the US and Israel was clearly exposed in an opinion poll published on September 6 in the Times of London. The poll reported that 73 percent of Britons believe that Blair's foreign policy, and especially his "support for the invasion of Iraq and refusal to demand an immediate cease-fire by Israel in the recent war against Hizbullah, has significantly increased the risk of terrorist attacks on Britain."

More than 62% said that to "reduce the risk of terrorist attacks on Britain, the government should change its foreign policy, in particular by distancing itself from America, being more critical of Israel and declaring a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq."

The day after the poll was published, Blair announced that he would leave office in a year.

Also, on September 7, a committee of members of Parliament released a report on anti-Semitism in Britain. The all-party committee found that that since the Palestinian jihad against Israel began in 2000, anti-Semitism in Britain has become a mainstream phenomenon. Attacks against Jews in Britain were at an all time high over the summer.

In their anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, the British, of course, are no different from their Continental brethren. And the situation in Europe is alarming. Writing in Frontpage magazine this week, Islamic expert Andrew Bostom reported that in November 2005, Stephen Steinlight, the former director of education at the US Holocaust Memorial Council, told a conference in Washington that on average, Muslims attack Jews in Paris 12 times a day. According to Steinlight, this means French anti-Semitic violence is approaching the level of anti-Semitic violence in Germany during the days of the Weimar Republic.

These attacks against Jews in Europe are accompanied by ever increasing official hostility towards Israel on the part of European governments. On the second day of the war with Hizbullah, Chirac felt comfortable alleging that "Israel's military offensive against Lebanon is totally disproportionate." Chirac then acidly asked, "Is destroying Lebanon the ultimate goal?"

Chirac's remarks opened the floodgates for anti-Israel propaganda throughout Europe. They were followed by the barring of El Al cargo planes carrying weapons shipments from the US from European airports. That prohibition still stands.

For those who have not yet caught on, the forces of global jihad are not going to suddenly abandon their desire to make war upon unbelievers just because those unbelievers favor retreat from Iraq, allowing Iran to go nuclear, or blaming Israel for fighting back "disproportionately" against enemies who want to wipe it off the face of the earth. The jihadists will gladly accept all these concessions as proper tribute to the rightness of their cause, and continue to push for the establishment of Islamic sharia law as the only acceptable form of rule in the world.

The Europeans, and even the British, in their willingness to demonize Israel (which last time I checked was not blowing up trains in their capitals), are selling out the only Western democracy in the Middle East, in the hopes of quelling their restive Muslim populations. And in the end, they will find that they are still targets, willingly co-opted by religious extremists for whom there will be no peace until all the world falls under their rule.

Making Israel the problem lets them ignore the real problem, and maintains the bubble of denial. This denial was on full display recently as the EU decided to back the newly formed Palestinian "unity" government, even though it does not recognize Israel's right to exist, and has not renounced terrorism.

Tony Blair is a little less cynical about this exercise than his counterparts on the continent; I have always seen him as an idealist, who wants to see a just peace in the Middle East but not at the expense of Israel's right to exist. But he is, sadly, the exception. And now he is headed for the exit.

9/11 plus five years

The five-year anniversary of Sept. 11 feels like intermission. We are well into what will prove to be a very long war, and already it feels like we have lost focus. Conspiracy theories run rampant: some 36 percent of the American public finds it plausible that the US government was somehow complicit in the 9/11 attacks. The level of denial required to believe this is astonishing; you have to ignore the obvious fanatics chanting "death to America" and issuing fatwas declaring war on the west for over a decade and instead assume that the Bush administration, the managenent of the World Trade Center, the airlines, the military and the media were all in on a murderous plot and coverup involving minimally hundreds of people if not thousands. (Bonus points for implicating Israel.)

The big story over the weekend was the attempt by the Clintonistas to censor and/or kill off altogether ABC's docudrama "The Path to 9/11", apparently because it showed them to be as clueless about Al Qaeda as the Bush admininstration on Sept. 10. Because of all the furor, I actually bothered to watch it (I hadn't dragged myself to either "Flight 93" or "World Trade Center"). It was better than I thought, particularly the scenes set in Afghanistan. Although we were constantly reminded that it was a dramatization, etc. etc., it was a much-needed tonic to the usual hand-wringing introspection.

Having not posted all day, I was startled to see my traffic spike, almost all of it pointing to a 9/11 essay I wrote two years ago, entitled "9/11 then and now". How it is that this has particular essay has become a magnet for so many people I don't know, but it's still just as relevant today as it was in 2004, so I'll quote it here:

Three years later, on the anniversary of 9/11, nothing fundamental has changed. The ideology of militant Islam that wrought destruction on New York and Washington three years before has not abated. We have scored some major victories in the opening phase of the war: routed the Taliban, killed or captured two-thirds of al-Qaeda's leaders and destroyed their training camps. But we are fighting a worldwide ideological movement, not a single group, and the religious fanaticism that drove the 9/11 hijackers flourishes around the world and rises, hydra-like to attack mercilessly in country after country: Indonesia, Turkey, Spain, Israel, Iraq, Russia. It kidnaps and beheads hostages, murders children, blows up innocents whether they are dancing in discos or at worship in synagogues. Its targets are everywhere - Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and of course Muslims who do not subscribe to its radical and violent interpretation of their faith and are therefore considered enemies.

Unless we understand this, we won't win this war. We can be critical of our own society, we can flagellate ourselves over decades of shortsighted policies in the Middle East, we can try to be more sensitive and understanding of other cultures, we can try to imagine "why they hate us". But in the final analysis, the people we're up against are fanatical theocrats who want us dead. Period. They're not nice people and as much as we think conflict shoud be solved by talking it over, they really have nothing to talk to us about. We're just supposed to eiether die or accept our destiny as second-class dhimmi subjects of the global Caliphate to come. Not really that hard to get it, yet it seems that the entire world and a good chunk of the US desperately does not want to deal with that unpleasant fact.

The Times of London recently ran a piece entitled, "Can the West defeat the Islamist threat? Here are ten reasons why not". And sadly, they were right on. In particular:

Moreover, to Islam’s further advantage, it has led most of today’s “progressives” to say little, or even to keep silent, about what would once have been regarded as the reactionary aspects of Islam: its oppressive hostility to dissent, its maltreatment of women, its supremacist hatred of selected out-groups such as Jews and gays, and its readiness to incite and to use extremes of violence against them. Mein Kampf circulates in Arab countries under the title Jihadi.

This is by far the most depressing aspect of the current political scene: the people who should have been most opposed to Islamic radicalism instead are wearing keffiyahs and marching in the streets proclaiming "we are Hezbollah". Cue Mark Steyn:

In theory, if you’d wanted to construct an enemy least likely to appeal to the progressive Left, wife-beating gay-bashing theocrats would surely be it. But Islamism turned out to be the ne plus ultra of multiculti diversity-celebration — for what more demonstrates the boundlessness of one’s “tolerance” than by tolerating the intolerant. The Europeans’ fetishization of the Palestinians — whereby the more depraved the suicide bombers are the more brutalized they must have been by the Israelis — has, in effect, been globalized.

But instead of the artful Steyn addressing the nation, we get George W. Bush, who understands the threat posed by radical Islam but is only capable of repeating the same formulaic phrases in speech after speech: "America is safer than it was, but not yet safe...We are fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them here..." If only he could be articulate as Steyn, or Christopher Hitchens. But then, we have the example of Tony Blair, certainly several rhetorical grades above Bush, and very articulate on the nature of the challenges we face -- yet still being pushed off the political stage in his own party.

In the final analysis, too many are unwilling or unable to contemplate what it would mean if the ideology espoused by the Taliban/al-Qaeda/Hezbollah /Hamas/Iran/Muslim Brotherhood were to sweep the globe and supplant our liberal Western civilization with its separation religion and state and its guarantees of personal freedoms. Five years after 9/11, my darkest fear is that we will know all only too soon.

Reuters admits to faked photo of Beirut

First RatherGate, now ReutersGate. From Pajamas Media, whose co-founder Charles Johnson (of LGF fame) was instrumental in bringing both media scandals to light:

In an apology that should cast serious doubt on much of the credibility of the news service itself, Reuters has acknowledged that its war photography from Beirut had been altered and is officially withdrawing the photograph. In a carefully worded statement Reuters admitted that “photo editing software was improperly used on this image. A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. We are sorry for any inconvience.”

Inconvenience? This display of media manipulation during wartime was uncovered by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs who previously uncovered the forged memos of Rathergate. In the past, Reuters has often been accused of bias by the blogosphere, which the news agency has denied.

This clumsily doctored photo, which included cloned portions to "enhance" the smoke and destroyed buildings, is only the tip of a much larger iceberg, in which media outlets continue to live in denial regarding their role in the skillful propaganda war being waged by jihadist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and Al-Qaeda. A recent example was CNN reporter Nic Robertson, who led his viewing audience through what he later admitted was a carefully staged Hezbollah propaganda piece.

No one is questioning the media's right to cover the destruction in Lebanon, and to provide the critical Lebanese perspective of the damage that is being wrought by Israel's attacks. But it is irresponsible to hand a megaphone to Hezbollah, or to report without establishing the motives of the people supplying the information. Part of Hezbollah's war-fighting strategy is to milk every possible casualty for its propaganda potential, and there is growing skepticism that some (certainly by no means all!) of the images of dead Lebanese civilans are manufactured or manipulated for consumption of both Arab and Western media. This technique of staging and manuipulating media imagery has been honed to an art form by Palestinian propagandists and was exposed in a 60-minutes segment titled "Pallywood".

It is certainly fair to point out that Israel's attacks are damaging civilian infrstructure and causing suffering and strife among the population, but not without noting that the airports, roads and bridges in question are targeted because they would otherwise be used by Syria and Iran to resupply Hezbollah.

It is also fair to say that Israel censors some of the reporting coming from its side of the border, but not without pointing out that such censorship is common in wartime, even among democracies, and is done to prevent disclosure of operational details that would damage the war effort and result in the loss of life -- and that Hezbollah exercises its own form of "censorship" by threatening the safety of those who might report less-than-favorably.

And it is fair to report the number of Lebanese civilans killed in the conflict, but not without mentioning that such casualties could be lessened if those civilans heeded the leaflets Israel drops as advance warning (not to mention that some of those casualties may in fact be Hezbollah fighters dressed as civilans). And, as has been noted elsewhere (but not repeated often enough in news reports), Israel regards civilan deaths as a tragic failure, while Hezbollah regards them as a victory.

All of the above factor into our understanding of the story and consequences of a victory by either Israel or Hezbollah (and by extension, its masters Syria and Iran). It is bad enough that the media reports the daily airstrikes and battles without supplying critical context; for it to rely on "journalists" who supply crudely doctored photos and act as shills for terrorist propaganda is unconscionable.

Cracking the code on Middle East coverage

Victor Davis Hanson offers a translation guide for the code phrases used by the press in its coverage of of the war between Israel and Hezbollah:

A “ceasefire” would occur should Hezbollah give back kidnapped Israelis and stop launching missiles; it would never follow a unilateral cessation of Israeli bombing. In fact, we will hear international calls for one only when Hezbollah’s rockets are about exhausted.

“Civilians” in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.

“Collateral damage” refers mostly to casualties among Hezbollah’s human shields; it can never be used to describe civilian deaths inside Israel, because everything there is by intent a target.

“Cycle of Violence” is used to denigrate those who are attacked, but are not supposed to win.

“Deliberate” reflects the accuracy of Israeli bombs hitting their targets; it never refers to Hezbollah rockets that are meant to destroy anything they can.

“Deplore” is usually evoked against Israel by those who themselves have slaughtered noncombatants or allowed them to perish — such as the Russians in Grozny, the Syrians in Hama, or the U.N. in Rwanda and Dafur.

“Disproportionate” means that the Hezbollah aggressors whose primitive rockets can’t kill very many Israeli civilians are losing, while the Israelis’ sophisticated response is deadly against the combatants themselves. See “excessive.”

Anytime you hear the adjective “excessive,” Hezbollah is losing. Anytime you don’t, it isn’t.

There's more along these lines, leading to the question of why the coverage tends to stress Lebanese casualties and damage, while ignoring the fact that Hezbollah is committed to the destruction of Israel in the name of the same Islamist ideology that lies behind terrorist attacks around the globe. Yet Israel remains the blind spot. Why?

What explains this distortion of language? A lot.

First there is the need for Middle Eastern oil. Take that away, and the war would receive the same scant attention as bloodletting in central Africa.

Then there is the fear of Islamic terrorism. If the Middle East were Buddhist, the world would care about Lebanon as little as it does about occupied Tibet.

And don’t forget the old anti-Semitism. If Russia or France were shelled by neighbors, Putin and Chirac would be threatening nuclear retaliation.

But while it's useful for Hanson to point this out, this is old news. Europe long ago chose sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict, with even popular opinion in Britain largely critical of Israel's policies and actions. To some extent this was due to a tendency to see in Israel a reflection of Europe's own shameful colonialist history, and to a large extent it has to do with the continent's energy and economic ties to the Middle East. China and Russia are a different matter. In addition to economic interests in the region, they are still smarting from the defeat of Communism and the rising influence of the US, so will do anything to undermine its policy aims, including turning a blind eye to an increasingly belliigerent Iran.

We know this is the case. And we also know that this time no one can make the claim that the hostilities are about land. After all, Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago, uprooted its settlements from Gaza last Fall, and was on a course to withdraw from large parts of the West Bank. Rather than building on these actions as milestones towards a lasting peace, Hamas and Hezbollah are trumpeting them as proof of Israel's weakness and so are pressing the attack, believing they have Israel backed into a corner. That they don't care what happens to the innocent (and some not-so-innocent) civilians they hide among is reason to condemn these terrorist organizations, not those who are fighting them to defend their very existence.

Sadly, not so long ago it was not out of the question that Israel and Lebanon might have one day worked out a peace agreement, since Israel had demonstrated that it was willing to quit its occupation of Southern Lebanon. Unfortunately, the Lebanese government is divided and weak, and Hezbollah's influence was strong enough to drag that beautiful country into war.

So for those who are wondering about the prospects of restoring "stability" to this troubled region, here is a little reality check:

Israel will do whatever it must do to defend itself from a well-armed, highly discplined terrorist group that is ideologically committed to its destruction. Whatever the spin in the media, Israel has no choice.

Hezbollah will press forward at the behest of its sponsor, Iran and its surrogate Syria, who are determined at all costs to prevent the formation of stable democracies in either Iraq or Lebanon. Playing the Israel card through Hezbollah is a reliable way for Iran to rearrange the playing field more to its liking.

The EU and the UN will bleat on about the need for a cease-fire and an international solution, but are not willing to actually expose themselves to real danger, so they are not in a position to affect the situation on the ground. The UN fled Iraq after its headquarters was attacked, and the UN presence on the Lebanese border has merely given cover to Hezbollah. Any credible international force will have to include real soldiers who are willing to put themselves on the line to protect both Israel and Lebanon from Hezbollah.

The US will go along to an extent with the international call for a cease-fire, but refuse to broker one on terms favorable to Hezbollah. The Bush administration realizes that a "peace agreement" cannot be reached with a terrorist organization. Any agreements that are achieved will be made with the Lebanese government, not with its would-be puppet masters in Syria or Iran.

In the Arab and Muslim world, the steady stream of hateful anti-semitic rhetoric will continue unabated. Calls will issue forth for the "Zionist regime" to leave the field to the jihadists, but from their standpoint it will matter little what the Israelis do. If they defend themselves against and kidnapings, suicide bombings and rocket attacks, their response will be decried as beliigerent and "disproportionate"; and if they withdraw their forces or hunker down, they will be scorned by their enemies as weak, and so attacks against them will only mount, with deadlier weapons. The goal is nothing less than the eradication of Israel and the slaughter or ethnic cleansing of every Jew in the region to clear the way for a Taliban-style Islamist regime.

And sadly, the oh-so sophisticated and progressive Western press will cooperate - whether wittingly or unwittingly - in this shameful propaganda effort to demonize and deligitimize the Jewish state. It's up to the rest of us to keep Hanson's decoder ring close at hand.