Dangerous Days

The fighting in Lebanon and Israel is distracting the world from Iran's nuclear program. It could have a major kick back effect -- and serve to ignite a much wider conflict well beyond Iraq, Lebanon and Israel. These are dangerous days. The aftermath may not be what we expect.

An excellent anaylsis is in today's column by Jim Hoagland:
http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/4064520.html

I clipped the heart of the article. Here's the problem:

"The U.N. and the Bush administration also failed to press the Lebanese to live up to their responsibility to deploy forces into the border areas evacuated by Israel in 2000. Instead, Hezbollah moved in its Syrian- and Iranian-supplied rockets and its irregulars..."

And here's the solution:
"

This Israeli campaign will not erase Hezbollah as a force, alas. But a negotiated cease-fire could lead to two important steps:

One would be to put an international military force on Lebanon's border with Syria to police the traffic of rockets and disguised Syrian intelligence units into Lebanon.

The other is to get the Lebanese army finally to take control of its territory in the south and make Lebanon more of a real country again."

He's right...