Pure Stupidity? Something Else?

[Seth Ackerman]

Brad DeLong wrote:
> Do you have a point? To the extent that you have any argument at all,
> it appears to be that Hezbollah is a legitimate, civilian,
> non-terrorist operation because Ariel Sharon is a war criminal. That
> just doesn't follow: it's either pure stupidity or something else..
.
Brad, you're suffering from short-term memory loss. This thread started as a
discussion of the "war on terror."

I said the war is really an effort to push through pre-existing US policy
goals using Sept. 11 as a battering ram, rather than a sincere refocusing of
policy onto the issue of "terrorism.".

I brought up the threats against Hezbollah as an example, and the relative
lack of pressure on Saudi Arabia as a counterexample. Hezbollah was a US
nemesis pre-9/11; Saudi was a US client pre-9/11. Nothing has changed - even
though Saudi Arabia has ominous ties to Al-Qaeda while Hezbollah doesn't.

I don't understand your fixation on this detour about Hezbollah's
"legitimacy" versus Likud's. It's a red herring. I don't like Hezbollah's
politics, if that's what you're implying. The point is that in the eyes of
US policymakers, Likud is a legitimate party, even though it grew out of
terrorist paramilitaries. Therefore, US hostility to Hezbollah can't
logically stem from its own roots as a paramilitary organization. It must be
something else.

Seth