Getting Hezbollah to Behave

New York Times:

...As Mr. Nasrallah put it shortly after the last successful prisoner exchange with Israel in 2004, “These fools do not learn from their past mistakes: when they withdrew from Lebanon, they continued to occupy the Shebaa Farms and kept our brothers in custody.” By doing that, Mr. Nasrallah said of the Israelis, “they opened the door for us.”

Of course, one could argue that even if these “bleeding wounds” were removed, Hezbollah would simply invent other excuses to justify attacks. That’s certainly plausible, given that the Party of God views “resistance” as a fundamental principle, but the point is that these new excuses would undoubtedly be viewed as such: as false choices presented by one party bent on accomplishing its own narrow, even non-Lebanese interests.

And that possibility is one that would only further restrict Hezbollah’s actions, just as it finds itself already restricted by its ever-expanding web of political alliances.

By heeding Mr. Nasrallah’s advice and removing the “bleeding wounds,” the United States and its allies in Europe could then help to unleash exactly the kind of broad-based political, economic and military reform that would further convince Hezbollah and its supporters that the use of violence has become both unnecessary and, ultimately, counterproductive....

Nicholas Noe, a founder and the editor in chief of Mideastwire.com, is the editor of the forthcoming “Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.”

This article, particularly including but not limited to the boldfaced portion, must truly be one of the stupidest things I've ever read on the Middle East. Methinks he has been spending way too much time listening to Nasrallah, and his critical faculties have turned to jelly (which is not to impugn the shrewdness or cunning of Nasrallah).

I don't think it's even worth the effort of going through the motions to provide justification for that conclusion (although I suspect a few of my readers--gluttons for punishment that they may be--will disagree. Nothing new there.)