Mark Phillips: The American Question
2/25/03: Clues.
Today's article in Time Magazine,
"Hizballah Is Moving Up the Threat Chart",
contains a strong hint that Lebanon may be the next theater of the War on Islam.
"Hizballah may be the 'A team' of terrorists, and maybe al-Qaeda is
actually the 'B team.' And they're on the list and their time will come," Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage said last September. "They have a blood debt to us,... and we're not
going to forget it."
Antiwar activists should take this "blood debt" rhetoric very seriously. It's an
indication of how an attack on Lebanon will be marketed to the American public. Hizballah will
not be portrayed as what it is, a sophisticated mass political movement committed to democratic
pluralism in Lebanon's ethnically and religiously divided society. Instead they'll be depicted
as irrational, fanatical, murderous; and above all, people who have it coming to them.
"Remember the Alamo!"
But a war in Lebanon will not be a walkover, as the coming defeat of Saddam
will be.
Hizballah has an enormously sophisticated and successful guerilla wing, which has twice
defeated the Israeli army, and once defeated the U.S. Marines. U.S. forces will be there a
very long time,
as they will be in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and potentially many other countries simultaneously.
After thousands of needless deaths
they'll eventually be defeated, as they were by the Vietnamese, and as Israel was by Hizballah.
This defeat is inevitable. How many will die unnecessarily before the U.S. withdraws?
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