That was the refrain, all through my childhood, as President Reagan consistently refused to come to the table with the thugs who took American hostages. Likewise, that was Prime Minister Thatcher’s refrain even as the IRA exploded bombs across London and turned Belfast into war zone.

Their reasoning was as simple as it was unassailable. Negotiating with terrorists only elevates and validates their cause. It gives the killers hope that their campaign of terror might someday succeed, and thus, provides the impetus for it to continue. And most importantly, terrorists are not the equals of nations. And they cannot be made so. The risks of inspiring others to become terrorists are too great.

I was pondering this tonight as I watched the evening news and learned that Secretary of State Rice is headed back to the Middle East with a plan to end the “violence”. (The press never says fighting or conflict. It’s always violence. I wonder if they think it implies civilian casualties.)

The plan, it seems, involves five points. Among them that an international force will deply along the Israeli-Lebanese border and that Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon will be folded into the Lebanese Army.

No you didn’t misread that. Our government wants to arrange it so that a bunch of terrorists will be put into the Lebanese army — a fighting force that serves the first freely elected government in a generation. It’s hard for me to imagine a more terrible idea.

But in the end, Hezbollah has to agree. They have to agree to stop their attacks. They have to agree to join the Lebanese army.

That means someone is negotiating with them.

Whoever it is should stop. Walk away. And Israel should finish the job. Hezbollah is dangerous — to Israel and to the U.S. Instead of looking for ways to “stop the violence,” we ought to be providing whatever assistance Israel needs to win the fight.

It’s time to get back to the simple principle that has served us so well: “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

UPDATE: There’s a must read comment in the thread. Take a moment and read it all. And it raises an interesting question that I shall address in another post… tomorrow.

Jim: I’m going to point out a few cases in which it may be morally justified to “negotiate with terrorists” - or at least work with them.

1) Afghanistan, late 1990s: The Clinton administration refused to authorize a CIA plan to assassinate Osama bin Laden using the Northern Alliance. The Clinton Administration, and for that matter, the Bush administration pre-9/11 refused to work with the Northern Alliance because of their human-rights-abusing warlord status, ties to the Iranians and Russians, and general moral gray areas. Were the Northern Alliance terrorists? Probably, in the eyes of who they were fighting.

1.5:) If you want our intelligence community to penetrate terrorist groups, they have to be able to interact with terrorist groups. This means bribes, cash, selling arms, even setting up fake terrorist attacks to prove their loyalty. If we give cash to an opium-smuggling Pakistani tribal militia to rat out Zawahiri, is that “negotiating with terrorists”?

2) If Iraq could negotiate an amnesty and settlement with the insurgents in Iraq, should they? I can see the argument that the ceasing of hostilities is worth the moral cost of “negotiating with terrorists.”

3) While we may not want to negotiate with Hezbollah, it does not hurt to have that “someone” with a line of communications through to them (I’ll bet it is members of the Lebanese Parliament). This line of communication could just be used to issue warnings — “If you guys hit any Americans evacuating from Beirut, we’ll carpet bomb the Bek’aa Valley.” Similarly, while the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Iran, I think the Swiss represent our diplomatic back-channel to Iran; the Pakistanis transfer Iran’s messages to us.

In the plan described above, if it worked (and I don’t think it will) I could see the value in having Hezbollah’s foot-soldiers incorporated into the Lebanese army - if Hezbollah’s men then swore allegiance to the elected government of Lebanon, and renounced taking orders from Syria or Iran. At that point, the rockets pointed toward Israel would be under the control of a more rational state that Israel could negotiate with — not some independent, unaccountable group that’s sworn to Israel’s destruction. If the rockets were launched again, it would mean genuine state-on-state war between Lebanon and Israel, not this quasi-war situation of Hezbollah vs. Israel, with Lebanon shouting, “Stop! Stop! You’ve chased away all the tourists!”

The problem with the plan discussed above is that I think it assumes a coherence and accountability within Hezbollah that isn’t there. Probably some Hezbollah would say, “Ceasefire? Sure. Sign us up for the Lebanese army,” while others would say, “No, no thanks,we’re going to stick to our core competency of killing Jews.”

This is why I think the entire discussion of a ceasefire is moot. I think it’s unenforceable on Hezbollah’s end; no matter how many concessions are made, some faction with access to rocket launchers will refuse and will fire more rockets into Israel sooner or later.

Jim, again: Jeff expands on his comments in a second comment, and with the specification that countries ought not to reward terrorists through negotiation, we have very little left to disagree about.

He mentions that working with the mujahadeen to defeat the Soviets is an example of “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.” Perhaps; as the War on Terror continues, I become increasingly convinced that victory is going to require working with some bad people to eliminate the threat from worse people.

For example, I’ve had a nagging sense that the House of Saud, rotten as they are, might be the most pro-U.S. leader of all possibilities within their territories; were they to be overthrown, the most likely replacement would be an Osama-type who would want to use his new authority as guardian of Mecca and Medina as justification to declare himself Caliphate, and/or unify the Muslim world in a war against the West. The result would be a mess, to say the least; most likely a nasty war and occupation of the oil fields in Saudi Arabia that would make Iraq look like a piece of cake. Hmm. Suddenly those double-dealing, backstabbing corrupt snakes in the Royal family look good by comparison.

It’s true. But they did it for the art, so that’s okay.

The weirdest thing about this is the fact that blogs have been discussing this story for months, yet I’ve never heard about it. The internet is indeed a big place. Lots of tubes for us to get lost in.

Jim: Wow. When I saw the post title, I figured you had to be exaggerating, or speaking figuratively, but no… this photographic artist, to get the right effect of her exhibit of crying, unhappy children, literally takes away lollipops from them.

Calling it “child abuse” is probably a bit over the top, but I kind of wonder about the mentality of a person willing to make a child cry and scream in order to serve their artistic statements. The soul it takes to do that is, I suspect, a bit cold and a bit sadistic.

Marshall: Some people are just idiots. Others are just jerks. These folks have accomplished the rare feat of being both at the same time.

Jim: When I see this report on alleged sock-puppetry by a prominent lefty blogger — i.e., posting under other names in comments sections to defend and praise his arguments — it’s just sad. This mockery is accurate, but man, this is why nobody takes blogs seriously. It’s over, people. This was once an innovative and exciting medium, but now it’s been taken over by the egomaniacs and the loons.

Marshall: Boy, Jim. I just think you’re nuts. And the same with our new “random” commenter. Who is just so obviously you, it’s painful. Resorting to sock puppeting yourself, I see. BTW, I’ve taken the liberty of adding a new contributor here at On Tap. His name is Thomas, and he agrees with me. Welcome, Thomas!

Thomas: Damn skippy. Blogs have become major influencers. They move news coverage and impact public policy. People pay attention. And blogs are the ultimate free market. The good ones float to the top. The crap sinks to the bottom. Jim, I hate to say it, you’re just wrong. And there’s no chance I’m buying your book.

Jim: Thomas, are you sure about that? Don’t you want to reread my argument and think this over?

Thomas: Boy, you’re right, Jim. I don’t know what came over me. Marshall’s nuts. Blogs have turned into a circus, and discerning readers are starting to tune them out as their signal-to-noise-ratio stops.

Jim: Don’t feel bad about it, Thomas. Marshall can be very persuasive. That’s how he uses mind control to get bloggers to say nice things about Wal-Mart. Speaking of which, now available from Wal-Mart…

Marshall: Damn you, Jim! You’ve taken my alter-ego, er, new On Tap contributor Thomas from me and turned him to the forces of evil. So now I must create a new alter-ego! Er, invite a new On Tap contributor to rebut your silly claims. But first, let me take a moment to promote Cam’s show. If you haven’t caught NRA News lately, you should tune in. Cam is one heck of a host, and the show is great.

Now, welcome new contributor, Charles.

Charles: Jim, you’re off your meds again, aren’t you? And you know Marshall is right. After all, he works for Edelman, and his writings have appeared in the Washington Post, Washington Times, The Hill and many other publications. He’s even appeared on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. Today, Marshall helps develop online communications strategies for Edelman clients. So he knows what he’s talking about. Not like you, with your silly book coming out. Blogs are cool. Millions of people are reading them. You’re just clueless. Go back to your typewriter you ink-stained wrtech.

Dave: Hey, Cam said I could post here, so I hope you don’t mind me chiming in. I just wanted to say that I really enjoy Marshall’s work in ensuring me low, low prices. And Jim, I’m really looking forward to reading your book.

That being said, I think it’s really amusing when bloggers get caught doing stuff like Greenwald allegedly did. You’re bloggers, not rocket scientists. You’re not curing cancer. You’re not saving the world. You’re blogging. Get over yourselves.

Cam: Wow. That’s the last time I let an asshole like Dave start posting here. Hopefully my friend Shempu, the imaginary sperm whale who lives in my bathtub has something more constructive to say.

Shempu: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I’m typing with my flippers!

Cam: Crap.

Scarlett: Hi, new girl here. Cam invited me over to join your postng party, so I thought I’d chime in. No really, he did. Bought me a drink and everything. So gentlemen, while your sock puppet theater was rather amusing, theirs was better. It had pictures.

There are supposed to be limits on federal power. Indeed, the Constitution exists to define those limits. But with each passing day, those limits are worn ever away.

For instance, just yesterday, President Bush signed a bill that passed both houses of Congress unanimously. The bill bans condominium and homeowners associations from limiting displays of the American flag.

Great. Wonderful. I like the flag, and I think HOAs that restrict its display are idiots.

But would someone please identify for me which authority-granting clause of the Constitution empowers Congress and the President to involve themselves with the day-to-day running of homeowners’ associations?! I mean, come on. No one can seriously argue that HAOs somehow impact or participate in interstate commerce, right? (This is rhetorical question. I realize that if challenged, that’s precisely what the Solitors’ General office will argue before the nine wise souls of Capitol Hill.)

HOAs are the ultimate creature of local government. County and city governments have, over the years, empowered HOAs under law to handle many of the pesky day-to-day administrative items that bureaucrats don’t want to be bothered with. You know, like keeping up the streets and collecting the garbage. But now, the feds want to stick their nose in.

Here’s my message to Congress and the White House: Stop it. Go away. Go work on something that matters. You know, like winning the War on Terror.

There are things the federal government can do well. The list is short. Regulating homeowners associations isn’t on it.

Full disclosure: A few years ago, when my wife and I bought our house, I decided I didn’t want to be a member of one of these aggressive, ridiculous HOAs that does things like regulate the display of the American flag. So I ran for the board. And now I’m the President. And our HOA does its business and, for the most part, leaves our neighbors alone. But just to be clear, I’m not defending HOAs. I’m not a fan. The point of the post above stands on its own.

Jim: My first instinct is to agree with Marshall. I mean, that’s just a general attitude, not just regarding the issue of homeowner associations.

But I wonder if this example gets at the soft underbelly of the conservative view, preferring state solutions to federal ones, and local solutions to state ones; the concept that as many decisions as possible ought to be made by the government closest to the people.

Of course, sometimes your local government just stinks, and is dominated by fruitcakes and loons and power-hungry meglomaniacs. (My perspective may be skewed by the amount of time I spent living in the District of Columbia.) So if my local government is filled with the kind of people who declare the flag “jingoistic” and demand that missile defense not be deployed over the locality’s airspace, do I want the Federal Government to come in and put a stop to nonsense?

It’s probably wrong, but it’s tempting.

On the specific topic of Home Owner’s Associations, I always feel divided when I go to Hilton Head Island, where my parents live. Particularly on the plantations - the unfortunately-named gated communities - there are building codes that are quasi-fascistic. I mean, “it’s earth tones or we send a mob to burn your house to the ground, buster.” (Okay, I exaggerate slightly.) The asthetic effect of these regulations is terrific - every house is in tune with the natural palette of greens and browns around it; there are no hot pinks or garish designs to ruin the sense of community.

So I love the effect of strict Homeowner’s associations on the look of a community. But the moment they tried to restrict one of my preferences, I would probably find it to be an outrageous violation of my rights as a property owner…

Marshall: I should have known that there was no way I was going to prevent this conversation from turning into a debate about the merits of homeowners associations…

However, I think that I will try not to take the Hilton Head bait and instead focus on your allusion to the various peoples republics that have sprung up in major cities like D.C. and San Francisco. Here’s why you shouldn’t be tempted: the people of those communities elected their socialist leaders. That was their choice. And the majority rules. Luckily, under the Constitution, folks not in the majority are protected from oppression by the Bill of Rights. One of those is the First Amendment. And displaying the American flag is clearly an exercise of those rights. (I think, in this rare case, that even the Courts agree with me.) So we don’t need a law, and we don’t need Congress sticking its nose even further into stuff it shouldn’t be anywhere near. Go away, Congress. Go away.

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending an event put on by the Smithsonian Associates — a lecture by Food Network star Alton Brown.

I’m a big fan of Alton’s, and his show Good Eats. He’s successfully combined two of my favorite things — geekdom and cooking. And judging by the sold-out audience, I’m not the only one who TiVOs every episode.

Brown is on tour to pimp his new show, Feasting on Asphalt, wherein Brown and a cabal of friends make their way from South Carolina to Las Vegas on motorcycles in search of American road food. (The show premieres this Saturday at 9p EDT on Food Network. Set your TiVO now.) And judging by the clips he showed us last night, the new show is a must-watch.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about Alton. I’ve seen him before — a brief talk before a book signing at the Borders near my house. But last night, he was in top form. My friend Jeff Harrell — who has a much better memory than me and is a much better writer — has all of the details.

Suffice it to say that Alton was hilarious. Every minute. At one point during his chat, Alton turned to the audience and asked, “Is there anyone here from Indiana?” A few people applauded. “Is there anyone here from Evansville?” A gentleman one row behind us began wildly clapping and waving his arms. From the stage, Brown located the man, and turning with a semi-sneer, asked the man, “What is it with you people and brain sandwiches?” After a brief discussion, the man let it be known that while he didn’t particularly like brain sandwiches, they had been served to him in his elementary school cafeteria. Seized with a fit laughter, Brown managed to stutter, “Oh. I have to use that on my daughter. No more bitching about fish sticks.” The audience was rolling.

All in all, it was a great night and great event. And there’s no way I’m going to miss the new show.

And there’s no way you should miss Jeff’s account of the evening. It’s here.

For a long time, August was my favorite time of year. I’m sure part of it had to do with vacations on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; but even more than that, the vacations often coincided with the long-awaited reappearance of professional football.

(Warning: Much of this post may be lost on baseball fans.)

I realize every sports fan loves the start of their seasons. Every year, preseason brings its own love-hate cycle. When the camps open (the Jets have their rookies in already), your eyebrows raise as there’s actual news, the first time something’s actually happened since the draft. Then the preseason begins with the Hall of Fame game, in which the starters play for maybe a drive, maybe two drives. Then the backups go in, and the quality of play steadily declines. By the third quarter, Joe Neverheardofhim is flubbing the handoff to Jack Neverwillhearofhimagain, and the penalty flags are being thrown with the frequency of empty statements at a U.N. meeting.

But when it’s your team playing, preseason football suddenly changes. Strangely, you find yourself wondering if that seventh-round pick from East Nowhere State is going to get a slot on the practice squad. You care who your backup left guard is, how good your backup quarterback is, whether that running back who got 80 yards in the fourth quarter might actually be pretty good playing up against starting-quality defenses. You love the name of the rookie free agent defensive end who had three sacks, even though he’s not expected to make the team.

And you scan Sportscenter nightly, or NFL Live, for news from around the camps. Oooh, that guy had a knee injury in camp, he’ll miss the first half of the season. So-and-so looks good at quarterback for his new team. Can you believe that idiot rookie is still holding out? No way he’s ready to play the first week of the season.

And the way the NFL schedules the preseason, you can catch a game Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday, Monday and sometimes even Tuesday and Thursday nights. Even without any special Dish network package, you can catch a glimpse of just about every team. Of course, every year, you see plenty of the Cowboys.

The opening weekend has the Hall of Fame game and then some game overseas; for teams not in those games, the preseason is four weeks. Week Three is usually the most interesting; the starters get the most time, usually playing about the first half. By Week Four, everybody’s afraid of an injury; the starters get yanked early, and much of the game is played by guys who will be cut in a week anyway.

And it’s in those last two weeks you get tired of preseason football. You’ve seen unknown backups botch snaps, jump offsides, drop passes, run the wrong pattern, fumble, trip, miss tackles, and blow coverages. If there’s a touchdown scored, it’s usually because somebody on defense screwed up, not because somebody on offense made a great play. You get tired of this anonymous, less talented substitute. You want to see some football! You want the excitement of Opening Day, when everybody’s 0 and 0, where your team has as much shot at the Lombardi Trophy as anybody else, and it starts with winning that first game.

And so, in early September, when the regular season arrives, you’re deleriously happy, even though everyone else is depressed about the end of summer. Back to work, back to school, cooler weather - hey, big deal. It’s football season. You’ve got a once-a-week emotional rollercoaster — every game counts. The kickoff finally arrives, and you’re elated.

Of course, when you’re a Jets fan, the elation usually sinks by the end of the first quarter of the first game…

So Pew has come out with a survey on bloggers, and I’m wondering what you fellas think.

Related surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the blog population has grown to about 12 million American adults, or 8% of adult internet users and that the number of blog readers has jumped to 57 million American adults, or 39% of the online population.

54% of bloggers are under the age of 30.

Women and men have statistical parity in the blogosphere, with women representing 46% of bloggers and men 54%.

57 million American adults read blogs? Apparently the vast majority of them haven’t heard of this place yet.

Jim: Looking at the survey results, the popularity of posting very personal information on the Internet surprises me; perhaps this is a reflection of the “everyone is entitled to fifteen minutes of fame” mentality. (It’s worth noting that when Warhol said that in the future, everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes, he wasn’t saying it was a good thing.) Reality television has turned people into minor celebrities for eating bugs, or surviving an island, or working for the Donald, or what have you. If you can get an audience just for fighting with your roommates (MTV’s Real World, Big Brother, etc.), then I guess many people conclude you can get an audience by writing about your daily life on your blog.

I wonder how many of these blogs will last; after a while, the thrill of sharing the details of your life with the world at large has to fade, right? Or are we such an exhibitionist society that in the future, most people will have a site that merges Facebook, MySpace, and their personal blog? You meet someone, you check out their blog, and you learn all kinds of details about their lives - favorite books, movies, interests, pets, and what they had for breakfast that morning.

(Somewhere out there, a bunch of stalkers just said, “Yessss!!!!”)

I’m about one part agreement, two parts disagreement with Ross Douthat’s latest post at the American Scene. He looks back on his feelings from 9/11 to the launch of the Iraq War, and feels a bit of guilt for desiring war then; he also is growing skeptical of those who feel that bringing war to Syria and/or Iran would improve America’s situation.

I do think that the remarkable popularity among my fellow conservatives of Ledeen’s utterly-untethered-from-reality “faster, please” theory of Middle East affairs - even after the various debacles associated with our Iraq policy - does reflect the persistent appeal of a vision of foreign policy in which supporting war, war, and more war provides an appealing clarity, and a sense of moral superiority, amid the otherwise-difficult problems of modern political life, and the perplexing complexities of the global stage. At home and abroad, it allows you to cast everyone who disagrees with you as either an appeaser or an apologist for tyrants, while you yourself are, well, Winston Churchill or someone similarly-farsighted.

Douthat’s thinking breaks down when he presumes that the decision is ours. We didn’t wake up on the morning of September 11 wanting war. Our enemies launched it on our soil; by the afternoon we wanted justice. We didn’t merely want to fight a war, we wanted (and still want) to win a war. Win, as in, eliminate the threat. Obliterate and scatter al-Qaeda and their allies. Turn the attack on New York and Washington into the same fatal miscalculation that the attack on Pearl Harbor turned out to be.

If he opposes a preemptive war on Syria and/or Iran, fine; I don’t think many Americans are calling for that, anyway. But do we really believe that the U.S. and these countries will continue to peacefully coexist forever? Can a nation that uses the phrase “death to America” like it’s a comma coexist with America? Or will a country like Iran match its promises of violence with violence itself, in one form or another?

We know Iran blew up Khobar Towers in 1996. We know they’re arming the insurgents in Iraq who are killing our soldiers. (Syria is providing passage and entry points.) We know the Iranians have never apologized for occupying American soil and violating every concept of international law by taking our embassy hostage. We’re already at war. The question is how we fight it.

Cam: I admit to being pretty down about the state of affairs recently. In a few months, we’ll mark the 5th anniversary of 9/11, and some would say the start of the Long War.

The biggest success, of course, is that we haven’t been hit again. But that victory is won in the shadows. The visible victories are far fewer, and maybe that’s the way this war will be fought and won. It makes for a harder sell for the public though.

I was having a discussion with another blogger earlier this week, and he wondered why the White House wasn’t using the term “World War III” to describe what’s going on in the Middle East. After I finished laughing in his face (rude of me, I know), I pointed out that for people of my generation, the phrase WWIII comes with some baggage. Growing up, when we heard that term we knew it meant nuclear war, utter devastation, and Mel Gibson riding around the Australian Outback in a weird leather outfit. Can you imagine the utter panic in this country if the President went on tv and announced we were in now engaged in World War III?

Jim, you say the question is how we fight the war we’re in? I wish I knew, because I don’t think what we’re doing can be sustained here at home much longer.

Jim: Interesting (and depressing), Cam. I want to tell you you’re wrong, that America’s wartime mentality can be sustained, but I’m starting to have my doubts myself.

I have faith the general good judgment of the American people. It’s hard to be a small-D democrat if you don’t have that faith. And yet, you hear enough poor thinking out there, you begin to wonder if enough citizens can think and reason clearly. (Maybe reading blogs magnifies it.)

Take your pick - the number of people who think that 9/11 was an “inside job”; the people who think that oil prices are arbitrarily set by greedy oil companies, that international supply and demand have no role. I can understand people having anxiety about the economy, or concerns about their personal financial situation, but I don’t understand how you can look at the current state of the U.S. economy and call it a depression. The people who take no steps to prepare for a contingency - be it a hurricane, or a need to get out of Lebanon quickly - and who demand that their government get them out of that tough situation immediately, with no awareness of the logistics or safety complications that prevent their government from getting them out RIGHT THIS MINUTE. The people who think that the dispute between Israel and terrorist groups out to destroy it could be resolved if the U.S. government just tried harder. You get the idea.

Erick Erickson points us to a report that the American Trial Lawyers Association is planning a name change.

Their new monicker? The American Association for Justice. (More here.)

Erick calls their move an effort to put lipstick on a pig. I think that’s being generous.

ATLA’s members aren’t interested in justice. They’re interested in big fees. And private jets. And expensive champagne. And they are big reason our society has become absurdly litigious.

Perhaps they ought to go for a more accurate name: The American Association of Greedy Windbags.

Jim: Marshall, you’re being too vague and subtle. Let it out. Let us know what you really think.

In a slightly more serious note, I would observe that the organization’s dropping the term “Trial Lawyer” represents a rhetorical victory for their opponents. My guess is, their polling and focus groups indicated that the term is now so indelably connected to images of ambulance-chasers, shysters, weasels, etc.; and that only by changing their name to a label so innocuous it verges on self-parody (”American Association for Justice”? Well, who’s against justice? Why not go all the way and call yourselves ”Americans for a Better America”?) can the group get its message across without their target audiences tuning them out.

So, Israel is now at war. No two ways about it. When you’ve got tanks and infantry in the field, planes dropping bombs, and naval vessels off shore to contribute the occassional shelling, you’re at war. Laying aside whether Israel’s actions of late are appropriate (at the moment, it seems to me that they are), the whole situation is pretty depressing for another reason.

Just this spring, Lebanon had become a real source of hope in the region. After decades of civil war, brutal government and internal strife, democracy seemed to have taken hold. Jim had the story here and here. The country was rebuilding. Beirut was on the road back to being a shining, seaside city instead of a house of death.

Now, in just a few days, all of the hopeful progress seems to have been undone.

There’s no doubt that Israel will prevail in whatever its military objectives might be. But the damage done to Lebanon will be lasting, as the militias and influence of Syria’s secret police likely return to the country. All of that will make peace in the wider region very much harder to achieve.

Jim: Amen to much of Marshall’s comments. I think this might be one more trigger in that “Tipping Point” idea I was discussing earlier this year - although since Lebanon has a bit more of a Christian population than your average Middle Eastern nation, recent events will persuade Americans to give up on the Middle East in general, rather than Muslims specifically. I mean…

Every time I’ve looked at this issue, I’ve kind of wondered why certain life lessons never seemed to permeate Arab cultures. Among them, “Do not throw rocks at a man with a gun, unless you want to get shot.” There is also the related lesson, “Do not stand next to a person throwing rocks at a man with a gun, because the man with the gun may miss.”

The Palestinians, the south Lebanese, Hezbollah, Hamas — so many groups opposing Israel seem to have this death wish. (Okay, Bill Kristol noted that this time around it’s not nations that are fighting Israel - they’re using proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. Sure, Syria and Iran are knee-deep in stirring up trouble, but it’s not like we’re seeing Syrian and Iranian troops moving towards Israeli borders. This is because every nation that starts a war with Israel tends to finish with less territory than they started with.) You, me - we all could have predicted that abducting Israeli soldiers and holding them hostage was not going to bring releases of Palestinian prisoners; it was clear that those actions only invited a massive military counterstrike.

So, to a certain extent, I’m succumbing to the attitude of, “Go to it, Israel.”  Too many folks in South Lebanon (and the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, and in Damascus and Tehran) have wanted this fight and invited it. Want to use live ammo next time you buzz Assad’s house? Go for it. Want to start some strikes on Iranian soil? Go for it. They already hate you, and pledge to kill you every day. The U.N. and Europe already denounce you for daring to fight back. All they’ll do is find new ways to denounce you.

And can those of us outside the region please retire the tired cliche, “continuing and escalating the cycle of violence”?