The Hell of Hezbollah

Great demands are being made of our armed forces, and many of the forces in the UN. But we must be mindful that in winning this war on terror we do not turn a blind eye to Hezbollah. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah the leader of Hezbollah threatened Israel with open war two years ago and vowed that the end of the Jewish state was imminent. Nasrallah delivered his threat in the Hezbollah controlled southern suburbs of Beirut. This is a man with a long history of violence and terror to his name - he masterminded a series of kidnappings and terrorist activities that killed hundreds of US and French soldiers in Lebanon in the 1980s; that’s to say nothing of the truck bombing which called the former Lebanese prime Minister Rafik Hariri (murdered because he was an outward objector to Syria’s menacing presence in his country). Nasrallah is overseeing thousands of well-trained and equipped combatants who are ready for martyrdom because of what their holy book tells them. Syria is a major backer of Islamist extremists in Lebanon, supplying arms regularly. The hidden hand of Syria - the brutal hand - is the hand that is writing Lebanon’s’ tragic script, and we mustn’t overlook that, however tough things get elsewhere.

Although there was some success in forcing Syrian troops to leave Lebanon in 2005, one still suspects that the remnant pro-Syrian military intelligence continues to run Lebanon as a private fiefdom. How long can Lebanon continue to endure these assaults on its sovereignty? It seems to me that America can’t seem to decide whether it is more beneficial to remain allied with Syria and Mr Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist regime - a man whose position is cemented in many quarters by his continued support for Hezbollah and Hamas – or whether to take a risk and go for the jugular. I know which I would prefer, but it doesn’t appear that Barak Obama is a ‘go for the jugular’ type.