It’s great news, of course, that Fox News Channel reporter Steve Centanni and his videographer, Olaf Wiig, have been released by their Islamist captors kidnappers unharmed. However, their release came at a price:

“We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint,” Centanni told FOX News. “Don’t get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn’t know what the [blank] was going on.” …

[B]efore the journalists’ release, a new video was released, showing Wiig and Centanni dressed in beige Arab-style robes. Wiig, of New Zealand, delivered an anti-Western speech, his face expressionless and his tone halting. The kidnappers claimed both men had converted to Islam.

The way to convert to Islam is very simple. One simply utters the confession, “There is no god but Allah and Muhammed is in prophet.” The confession is one of the “five pillars of Islam,” that every Muslim is required to do. (The other four are making a pilgrimmage to Mecca, giving alms, praying daily while facing toward Mecca and fasting during the Islamic month of Ramadan.)

In Western jurisprudence coerced confessions are invalid in courts of law. This has not always been true, of course; for example, confessions resulting from torture were considered valid during the Inquisition and other times of the Middle Ages. But generally, coerced confessions of conversion to Christian faith, as opposed to confessions of juridical guilt, have never been thought valid. There have been exceptions. Again, I think the Inquisitiion was one, and during some of the eastern European anti-Jewish pogroms of later centuries, some Orthodox priests offered to baptize Jews to save them from persecution. These would have to count as coerced “conversions,” although it was not the church, but civil authorities, doing the coercion.

So - were the forced confessions of Islam by Centanni and Wiig valid? I would say not because there is no reason to believe from the men’s reports that they experienced a religious change of heart. That is, the men’s confession did not spring from faith in Allah, it was a deed done from fear of their lives.

But, let us remember that the basis of Islam, indeed the very meaning of the word, is “submission,” not faith. There is no concept of original sin in Islam as there is in Christianity; indeed, while original sin is the conceptual glue that holds Christian doctrine together, it is entirely rejected in Islam. Christianity teaches that original sin cannot be remitted by any human works, only by the works of God, namely, Christ dying and resurrected. Hence, no deeds human beings can do can bring them to salvation. Thus, wrote St. Paul, “If you believe in your heart that Jesus was raised from the dead and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.” Note the order: confession follows a change of heart, an affirmation of belief. Without the change of heart the confession’s utterance is of no value.

But in Islam, the confession’s utterance is unconnected to a change of heart. In fact, a change of heart is wholly irrelevant. The confession stands alone and its only point is that it is done, not that it is believed. The entire edifice of salvation theory in Islam is built on one thing alone: human submission to perform deeds ordered by Allah. Islam does not teach that Allah desires human beings to love him; they are commanded to obey.

According to the Koran, “humans have been created with a sound nature and provided by God with a true religion that enables them to have fullness of life through close communion with God in this world and the next. … God’s revelation to Muhammad and Muhammad’s words and actions, as gathered in “authenticated” Hadith, provide rules of correct action; unlike in Christianity, where original sin precludes salvation without God’s grace, here man’s nature enables him to act in ways that merit God’s grace. While not easy to follow, the rules do not demand anything that people are incapable of accomplishing through their own capacities; the rules guide men to paradise.

So according to the precepts of Islam, Centanni’s and Wiig’s confessions were completely valid. Any Muslim, not just their captors, considers it so. That they were uttered “at gunpoint” is unobjectionable. The guns simply enabled the two newsmen to understand that submission to Allah was required of them. Regardless of what Centanni or Wiig may think or believe, Muslims now consider them to be of their religion.

Update: Here’s an interesting point: what would the western media’s reaction be if the US started requiring Gitmo prisoners to be baptized into the Christian church as a condition of their release? And, as Dean Barnett points out, what was being said by the media that Centanni and Wiig were “released unharmed”?

Interesting locution there, “released unharmed,” no? This comes from the newspaper that believes that a Christmas crèche or a prayer uttered before a high school football game is a violation of the highest order. And yet being forced to adopt another faith at the point of a gun doesn’t rise to the level of “harm” in the Times’ judgment.

Good question.

Update: I’ll backtrack a little. Whether forced conversions in Islam are considered valid by Muslims is a matter of controversy within Islam’s history. Thanks to PD Shaw’s comment at Winds of Change for linking to an explanation of jihad by Abd-al-Masih:

Idolatry is the greatest evil that exists, so warfare is considered legitimate as a means to rid the world of this evil. Idolators may be forced to convert to Islam, on pain of death or enslavement. It is an act of piety (in Islam) to make converts in this way [but] Christians and Jews, should be granted a certain measure of toleration within the Muslim community, e.g. it is contrary to Muslim law to convert a Jew or Christian by force… .

Christians and Jews have historically not been considered idolaters in Islamic history since Muslims claim that the God of Abraham and the God of Jesus is the same as the God of Muhammed. The captors of Centanni and Wiig would have presumptively considered them Christian, but that may not have mattered when it came to coercion. Consider Shaw’s citation of present-day Egyptian textbooks:

If a Protected Person [Dhimmi] is forced to convert to Islam, his conversion is valid. If a Harbi [non-Muslim alien] is fought against and converts to Islam - it is valid… If the [same] Dhimmi returns [to his former religion], he is not killed [like an ordinary apostate], but imprisoned until he converts to Islam [again], because there is doubt regarding his belief [when he was forced to convert]. There is a possibility that it [i.e., his forced conversion] was sincere, so he is to be killed as an apostate. It is [also] possible that he did not believe [in Islam while having been forced to convert] and then he [should] be a Dhimmi and shall not be killed…
Selections for the Explanation of [the Book of] “Selection”, Grade 10, (2002) p. 168 (Azharite)

Naturally, the defenders of the kidnappers have rushed to drag out the tired old quote from the Quran that “there is no compulsion in religion,” but I would suggest that how most Muslims define “compulsion” and how we of the West do doesn’t line up too good.

While we’re on the topic of Iraq and the GWOT, let’s take a short review of the strategic plans of important combatants.

You may recall that I wrote on July 22 that Israel, in its campaign against Hezbollah, was carrying out a spasm, not a strategy. It’s one thing to have strategic goals that’s not the same as having a strategic plan. Israel had the former but not the latter. In Sept. 2003 I wrote basically the same critique of al Qaeda, that Osama bin Laden had strategic goals but no actual plan to accomplish them.

In October 2003 I explained what was then the American strategy in, “The Big Picture.”

I have been thinking for some time now that the same sort of criticisms I made of the strategic thinking of al Qaeda and Israel has become germane to the Bush administration. I held beginning in early 2003 that the case for the Iraq war was just, resting only partly on Saddam’s WMD programs. And when I wrote The Big Picture, it seemed that the administration was thinking long term. But it seems that their thinking froze before 2003 ended and events since then haven’t reinvigorated their strategic thinking.

For the nonce, I urge everyone to read retired Lt. Col. Joseph Myers’ essay, “America’s Strategic Fix and Our New Decision Points.” I plan on writing more about this in coming days.

Austin Bay’s guest writer, Tom Nichols, who teaches at the Naval War College, reviews the intelligence posture on whether Iraq had WMDs going back to the Clinton administration. A nice, unwitting companion piece to my October 2002 review of what the president said about the subject.

Edward Luttwak writes that the ceasefire is far from a defeat for Israel, including an observation that Hezbollah’s military prowess is much overhyped; in fact, Luttwak says the war proved its fighters to be mediocre and far from the standard set by previous Arab armies who fought Israel. As for the existing IDF plan, dating back at least three years, to surge to the Litani, Luttwak says,

That plan was not implemented because of the lack of casualties among Israeli civilians. It had been a fair assumption that thousands of Hizbullah rockets fired in concentrated barrages would kill many civilians, perhaps hundreds of them each day.

But Hezbollah proved incapable of doing that, resulting in Iraeli deaths of one or two per day. (Luttwak does not address that a million Israelis huddled in bomb shelters.) So, says Luttwak, it was politically unacceptable for Olmert to launch the blitz to the Litani. I think he’s wrong because if there is anything reading multiple Israeli media during the wear showed, it was that Olmert enjoyed a wealth of domestic political capital practically without precedent in the country’s history. The electorate was urging Olmert to close the issue, but he refused.

Luttwak concludes,

[T]he outcome of the war is likely to be more satisfactory than many now seem to believe. Hassan Nasrallah is not another Yasser Arafat, who was fighting for eternal Palestine and not for actually living Palestinians, whose prosperity and safety he was always willing to sacrifice for the cause.

Nasrallah has a political constituency, and it happens to be centered in southern Lebanon. Implicitly accepting responsibility for having started the war, Nasrallah has directed his Hizbullah to focus on rapid reconstruction in villages and towns, right up to the Israeli border.

He cannot start another round of fighting that would quickly destroy everything again. Yet another unexpected result of the war is that Nasrallah’s power-base in southern Lebanon is more than ever a hostage for Hizbullah’s good behavior. /p>

Well, maybe. I’m skeptical. Most commentators expected Hamas to morph into moderation once it gained power in Gaza, but that sure didn’t happen. That’s why I’m skeptical of present claims that Hezbollah will be hindered from rearming and retraining for war because of its great social-welfare responsibilities for the people of southern Lebanon. One, Hezbollah really believes that Israel is preparing to attack it again, making Hezbollah’s prerparation for a renewed onslaught all the more imperative in its view. Two, Hezbollah has announced it will give $12,000 to every household destroyed by the Israelis. Now that the Lebanese government has announced it is moving into southern Lebanon, it gives Hezbollah a perfect escape from future social work: that’s the Siniora government’s problem. We, Hezbollah can claim, are the guardians of Lebanese independence from and resistance to Israel. With its newly-buttressed hero status, Hezbollah will hardly need to pass out blankets and water and canned goods.

There is a growing sentiment among many Israelis that one reason the Olmert government did not send large formations of ground forces into southern Lebanon early, to win a decisive victory on the ground right away, is that the Bush administration placed a tether on Olmert to prevent such an operation. For example, an Israeli soldier, Yaron, whose views on the war I posted here, is of that opinion.

[T]he sub-plot surfacing currently from other sources (see http://www.debka.co.il) suggests that the US and specifically Condoleezza Rice had more than a hand in the decision to “take it slowly” and not use the full might of the forces. Generally speaking, Condi preferred the crying of Israeli mothers over the Lebanese ones.

Well, Debka is not always very reliable; its analyses seem to be borne out no more often than not. Nonetheless, there was a lot of discussion in the war’s early days on whether President Bush had given Israel a “green light” to smash Hezbollah. The White House and the State Department said no, and that in fact the president never even spoke to Olmert until shortly before the passing of the UNSC’s Resolution 1701, which established the ceasefire. This position is somewhat disingenuous, though, since what diplomats don’t say is just as important as what they do say.

Much of the media record of the day is past easy retrieval now. But my recollection (and someone please provide corrections with links, if you can, if I’m wrong) is that the USG temporized quite a bit in moving toward a ceasefire. Over and again, both President Bush and SecState Rice said that the Middle East was “littered with ceasefire agreements” that didn’t hold up, and they refused to put the administration behind yet another litter-to-be agreement. If Bush and Rice didn’t give Israel a positive green light to stomp Hezbollah, they at least refrained from showing Israel a red light, or even a yelllow one. On July 18, however, the UK’s Guardian reported that the White House had advised Israel that it had only one more week to wrap things up. Only three days later Secretary Rice said that the US did not support termination of the war on the basis of the status quo ante. But by that time even outsiders were wondering whether Israel actually had a strategy to fight the war.

Eventually, of course, the US did start to press for a ceasefire resolution in the UNSC, but certainly not one that obligated Israel and not Lebanon or Hezbollah. My analysis is that the administration initially played “hands off” the anti-Hezbollah campaign, expecting that the IDF would enter action decisively on the ground relatively soon, within the first two weeks or so. But time dragged on and the ground campaign was never more than desultory at best; with only a couple of exceptions IDF units didn’t penetrate more than two or three kilomters into Lebanon. Eventually the Bush administration figured out that Olmert et. al. had not the will, hence not the intention, actually to enter a decisive ground fight with Hezbollah.

That meant that, inevitably, world diplomatic and popular opinion would turn against Israel, especially in view of the news reports of deaths and damage coming from Lebanon. That many of the reports were “fauxtography” didn’t matter. It was always in America’s self-interest for Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s army, but the Olmert government was not willing to do so. For two reasons, this fact mitigated against the continuing the tacit “green light” that the Bush administration had given Israel:

1. Indecision is neither a just aim in war nor a pragmatic tactic.

2. Even the Arab governments that would have privately smiled at Hezbollah’s elimination would not countenance Israel’s bombing of Lebanon that was increasingly unconnected to that goal and, by the last two weeks at least, of no obvious connection to a ground campaign that clearly was never going to come about.

At the end of the day, all nations finally look out for number one. Olmert got an implicit green light from Bush but sat there merely revving the engine. American interests with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait would have been harmed by Israel continuing what was a violent though phony war. American finally pushed for the ceasefire not because it was in Israel’s interests, but because it was in ours, since Israel was obviously never going to close Hezbollah down. (By the time PM Olmert did give the go-ahead to move to the Litani river, it was too late; the UNSC had reached agreement.)

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 calls for 15,000 UN-back soldiers to be deployed in southern Lebanon, expanding the presence of the small, existing UN Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL), which has been there since 1978. France, which pushed hard for the measure and was expected to lead the mission, backpedaled furiously a few days ago. (Jules Crittenden argues that since we don’t speak French, we must have misunderstood what they meant.

[O]ne must understand that when France suggested it wanted to broker peace in Lebanon, it did not necessarily mean “broker” or “peace” or “Lebanon” in the way we might understand those words. The same is true when France further suggested it wanted to “lead” a “strong” “multinational” “force” there.

But I digress.)

Anyway, Italy has pledged 3,000 troops but there is still no chain of command established or a clear mission or rules of engagement or anything that would make the UN force a, well, military force. Already, UN spokespeople have ruled out absolutely that the reinforced UNIFIL will disarm Hezbollah, which the Lebanese government also has said it will not do and which is (sort of) called for by the same UNSC Resolution 1701.

Other than Israel and the sea, southern Lebanon borders Syria. Since Syria is the main supplier of Hezbollah’s weapons, one might imagine that UNIFIL would take an interest in patrolling along the Syrian border, on the Lebanese side, of course. And so UNIFIL might take such an interest, if indeed a new UNIFIL actually ever sets foot there (which I doubt).

Syria has no interest at all in any new UNIFIL, however pusillanimous it may be, in stepping onto Lebanese soil, and Syrian dictator President Bashar Assad restated only last week that no peace is possible with Israel. As Lebanon’s Daily Star reports,

Indeed, as the recent declaration made by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem during his brief visit to Lebanon indicated, the prospect of a wider regional war is something these regimes actually welcome. For the strong showing that Hizbullah has made, the destruction of Lebanese infrastructure notwithstanding, is encouragement enough for these regimes, with their minds and hearts still stuck in the 1980s, to revive the old dream of defeating Israel militarily through involvement in a war of attrition and thus achieving military glory that will boost their credentials both at home and abroad. With the US caught in the Iraqi quagmire and its power seemingly neutralized as a result, this prospect might appear more and more tempting with each passing day.

Add to these things that Syria has continued to resupply Hezbollah with weapons since the ceasefire went into effect (as confirmed by Israeli surveillance aircraft, the announcement of which has been studiously ignored by Western media) - well then, it shall come as no surprise that Assad,

… was quoted Wednesday as rejecting the deployment of UN troops along the Lebanon-Syria border, saying such a move would create animosity between the two countries.

“This is an infringement on Lebanese sovereignty and a hostile position,” Assad told Dubai Television. The TV station’s anchor quoted Assad without showing video of the interview, which would air later Wednesday.

Assad also urged the Lebanese government to adhere to its responsibilities and not embark on anything that could sabotage relations with Syria.

Does it not bring a tear to your eye that Syrian dictator President Assad is so concerned about Lebanese sovereignty? I mean, it’s not like Syria ever occupied Lebanon or did something truly dastardly like, say, assassinating Lebanon’s prime minister.

Fer shur Assad doesn’t want Lebanon to do anything that “could sabotage relations with Syria,” since Assad & Co. consider Lebanon to be a Syrian satrapy - so the Lebanese better not get any silly ideas such as actually being a self-determining people. And most of all they may not disarm Hezbollah, Syria’s only real means, at present, of fighting Israel.

Now, the questions are whether the new, reinforced UNIFIL will, (a) ever be formed and if so, (b) will it defy Assad and deploy along the Syrian-Lebanese border anyway, because otherwise it cannot minimally fulfill UNSC 1701’s mandate wishes.

Here’s your four-letter answer: No, no.

Over at my Blogspot-hosted blog devoted exclusively to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, an Israeli MLRS artillery soldier named Yaron wrote a long comment in response to my post, “Lebanese govt.: We will not disarm Hezbollah,” which is posted on this site with a little more content. I am pasting Yaron’s comment below for your consideration.

I am an Israeli reserve soldier, and just came back from a “30 day tour” serving in the Israeli MLRS (which is how I came across your site…)

I stumbled upon your blog and though I normally don’t comment and just mind my own business - this time I think I’ve got to.

What you say is true, mostly. The Israeli Army should have taken down the Hezbollah in the 1st week, or maximum 10 days, with a full blown air strike and artillery usage against the katyusha launchers. It was Ehud Olmert and his cabinets’ responsibility to our nation and people to take care of that threat at any cost, and he failed to do so, and therefore MUST resign, along with Defense Minister Amir Peretz & Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.

However, the sub-plot surfacing currently from other sources (see http://www.debka.co.il) suggests that the US and specifically Condoleezza Rice had more than a hand in the decision to “take it slowly” and not use the full might of the forces. Generally speaking, Condi preferred the crying of Israeli mothers over the Lebanese ones.

(more…)

Joe Rosenthal has died at age 94.

Photographer Joe Rosenthal in the field during World War II

Joe was the war correspondent on Iwo Jima in 1945 who took what some historians say is the most-reproduced photograph of all time - the raising of the second flag on Mt. Suribachi.

His photograph of the flag-raising atop Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945, may be the most widely reproduced photo in American history. It was re-created on at least 3.5 million Treasury Department posters publicizing a massive war-bond campaign. It was engraved on three-cent Marine Corps commemorative stamps that broke Post Office records for first-day cancellations in 1945. It was reproduced as a 100-ton Marine Corps War Memorial bronze sculpture near Arlington National Cemetery. And it brought Mr. Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize.

I remember reading Joe’s own account of the picture. He had gone to the summit of the extinct volcano to shoot photos of the first flag to be raised, not knowing it was to be taken down. The battalion commander of the Marine unit that raised it ordered it brought back because it was too small to be seen across the island and out to sea; he also knew that Navy Secretary Frank Knox was afloat offshore and was worried that some brasshat would order the flag be given to Knox. The Marine commander was determined it go to the regimental museum.

Disappointed that he had missed the first flag going up, Joe said he almost missed the shot of the second, larger flag being raised. He was fiddling with his camera (reloading film, I think). There was a Marine motion-picture photographer there, too, Sgt. William Genaust, who knew another flag was to be raised and who stacked a couple of rocks to get a good angle. He alerted Joe, who turned at the last moment, raised his camera and pressed the shutter.

Mr. Rosenthal said he was lucky to catch the flag-raising at its most dramatic instant, producing a masterpiece of composition acclaimed as a work of art.

“The sky was overcast, but just enough sunlight fell from almost directly overhead, because it happened to be about noon, to give the figures a sculptural depth,” he wrote in Collier’s magazine on the 10th anniversary of the flag-raising.

“The 20-foot pipe was heavy, which meant the men had to strain to get it up, imparting that feeling of action,” he wrote. “The wind just whipped the flag out over the heads of the group, and at their feet the disrupted terrain and the broken stalks of the shrubbery exemplified the turbulence of war.”

Joe coped for years after the war with accusations that the photo was posed, but it wasn’t, as Sgt. Genaust’s movie proves. Moreover, as news photos go (Joe was an AP wire photographer), the shot is very poor. Some of the men can hardly be seen and none of them are facing the camera. It didn’t matter.

“The characters create an ascending motion, but they’re frozen in time in a brilliantly precise way,” Alan Trachtenberg, the author of “Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans,” said in a 1997 interview with The New York Times. “And it’s more than just raising a flag. It’s a sense of culmination, of triumph, not just over an enemy but over the challenge of war itself. It’s become an iconic image, like Uncle Sam.”

Fifty-six years later, that iconic image still resonated in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

As had been done in 1945 with Joe’s photo, many newspapers in America published full-page versions of this photo. Yet, inspiring as this shot was at the time (and still is), its emotional effect depended on Joe’s decades-old work.

The men raising the flag were Pfc. Ira Hayes, Pfc. Franklin Sousley, Pharmacist’s Mate 2d Class John Bradley, a corpsman and Sgt. Michael Strank, Pfc. Rene Gagnon and Cpl. Harlon Block of Texas. Bradley and Strank cannot be clearly seen in the picture.

Although depicting sacrifice, courage and determination, the photo did not depict triumph. The battle for Iwo Jima raged another month. Of the Marines in Joe’s photo, Pfc. Sousley, Sgt. Strank, Sgt. Hansen and Cpl. Block were killed in action. Sergeant Genaust, who took the movie of the flag raising, also was killed. Navy Corpsman John Bradley was awarded the Navy Cross for later heroism.

After the war, Joe Rosenthal worked for The San Francisco Chronicle after the war until his retirement in 1981.

Michael Totten emails from the Israeli front,

Here is my third dispatch from the Lebanon/Israeli border.

This one is not like the others. It’s mental. It’s about what it’s like to be in a war zone for the first time. Now that I’ve been there, I can never write an essay like this one again. Every war correspondent only has the chance to write something like this essay once.

It’s called “War Warps the Mind a Little.”

What struck me was how quickly he was able to adjust to sleeping through the sounds of artillery firing nearby. As a former artillery officer, I can tell you - those cannons are loud. But, like Michael, I learned quickly to sleep through the noise when necessary, sometimes as close as, oh, 15 meters. To this day, sudden, unexpected, loud noises don’t make me blink an eye.

Read the whole thing. Really!

The Lebanese government has announced it will not disarm Hezbollah. Israeli editorialists are claiming this refusal violates the terms of the ceasefire as demanded by UNSC Resolution 1701, voted unanimously last Friday.

But does it? Consider some of the text of the resolution:

OP3. [TheUNSC] Emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory … for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon;

In other words, it’s quite unclear that the UNSC called for Hezbollah (which is never named in UNSC 1701) to be disarmed. This part of the resolution grants the Lebanese government the authority to permit Hezbollah to retain its arms. And that, Lebanon’s government announced, is exactly what it is going to do. The Mercury News reports,

“The army won’t be deployed to south Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah - something Israel wasn’t able to do itself,” Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr said on Lebanese television.

[T]he resolution that established the current cease-fire, which went into effect Monday, doesn’t specifically call for the disarmament of Hezbollah. It also doesn’t say how U.N. peacekeepers and the Lebanese army are to control the area in the face of an armed Hezbollah that has exercised unchallenged military authority since Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago after a difficult 18-year occupation.

The confusion, said Timor Goksel, a former official with the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, is one reason that countries have been reluctant to contribute forces.

“Everybody wants to know what is the exact mission; nobody is happy with this wishy-washy U.N. mandate,” said Goksel, who now teaches at the American University in Beirut.

However, it will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with committee work (and the UNSC is one big committee) that the resolution apparently contradicts itself later, calling for :

… full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state,

The Lebanese cabinet decision referred to was a “seven-point plan that among other things called for weapons to remain only in the hands of Lebanese authorities.” The Taif Accords date from October 1989, when “the Lebanese National Assembly met in Taif, Saudi Arabia to ratify a ‘National Reconciliation Accord’ under Syrian and Saudi tutelage.”

The Taif accords transferred power away from the Lebanese presidency, traditionally given to Maronites, and invested it in a cabinet divided equally between Muslims and Christians. The Taif accords also declared the intention of extending Lebanese government sovereignty over southern Lebanon. Though Israel eventually withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, armed Hizbollah militia remained in control of the area, apparently maintaining a tacit arrangement whereby Hizbollah could harass Israel within limits, but not so seriously that it would provoke a massive retaliation.

My analysis:

The arrangement between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government will no longer be “tacit.” Since 2000 Hezbollah has won seats in the Lebanese parliament and two Hezbollahis are cabinet ministers of the Lebanese government. In weeks and months to come Hezbollah’s influence inside Lebanon, high before the war, will come to dominate. By the end of this year, conservatively, there will be no meaningful distinction between Hezbollah troops and Lebanese troops. The Lebanese national army and the Hezbollah military wing will be, for all practical purposes, the same - and Hezbollah will be in control.

What hath Olmert wrought by his goverment’s ineptitude in prosecuting its war against Hezbollah, most of all its refusal to force a decision quickly against Hezbollah’s armed force?

. . .

Ehud Olmert and Neville Chamberlain - soul brothers

“Peace in our time?” No, not under the provisions of UNSC 1701. Israel may boast that it destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rockets before firing, but that means nothing - Iran and Syria will resupply them in short order. Olmert’s war was a whetstone that sharpened Iran’s sword. Its temporary ending endangers Israel more than ever. Israel faces very difficult times to come, and very violent ones. This war is far from over. As former prime minister Benjamin Natanyahu told the Knesset Monday,

“Unfortunately, there will be another round [in this war] because the government’s just demands weren’t met” by the cease-fire agreement that went into effect Monday morning.

“The [kidnapped] soldiers weren’t returned home, the Hizbullah was not disarmed … Right now, we are [merely] in an interim period between wars,” Netanyahu warned. “And there is no one who will prevent our enemies from rearmed and preparing for the next round.”

In the same session, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik of Olmert’s own Kadima party “called for the establishment of an emergency national unity government” to “prepare us for the next war.”

We may hope and wish otherwise, but hope is not a method and wishes are not plans.

The political pressures on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to lose office are severe enough, but now there is a revelation that Israel’s chief of the general staff (equivalent to the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) cut his personal financial losses before sending the IAF to attack Lebanon:

Senior sources in the Israel Defense Forces General Staff and field officers who took part in the war in Lebanon said on Tuesday that Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, who went to his bank branch and sold an NIS 120,000 investment portfolio only three hours after two soldiers were abducted by Hezbollah on the northern border, cannot escape resignation.

The sources say there is a clear ethical flaw in the chief of staff’s behavior during the hours when soldiers were killed in Lebanon and others were attempting to rescue wounded. Halutz should resign the moment the military completes its pullout from south Lebanon, they said.

At this stage, it does not appear that Halutz intends to resign of his own accord.

The military-political situation in Israel seems to be getting worse and worse.

Update: Lt. Gen. Halutz denies wrongdoing. As OpinionJournal points out, Halutz says he had been selling off his portfolio in increments for some time and then finally liquidated it on July 12. But here’s the kicker. Halutz said,

“[Y]ou can’t link between this and the war. There is no connection. At that moment I didn’t think and didn’t expect there would be war.”

On the very day that Israel began bombing Lebanon for Hezbollah’s cross-border raid, the chief of Israel’s general staff was not anticipating actually going to war!

I wrote only 10 days after the war began that Israel was carrying out a spasm, not a strategy. I’d say that Lt. Gen. Halutz’s comments pretty much seals it.

The Jerusalem Post continues to turn up the heat on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:

From all sides of the political spectrum calls are being raised for the establishment of an official commission of inquiry to investigate the Olmert government’s incompetent management of the war in Lebanon. These calls are misguided.

We do not need a commission to know what happened or what has to happen. The Olmert government has failed on every level. The Olmert government must go.

The Knesset must vote no confidence in this government and new elections must be carried out as soon as the law permits. If the Knesset hesitates in taking this required step, then the people of Israel must take to the streets in mass demonstrations and demand that our representatives send Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and their comrades out to pasture. …

Because of the Olmert government’s failures, ever greater battles await us. As the dangers mount by the hour, we must replace this misbegotten government with one that can defend us.

Yossi Klein Halevi writes,

However hard Ehud Olmert tries to spin it, the U.N. ceasefire that began yesterday is a disaster for Israel and for the war on terrorism generally. …

As one outraged TV anchor put it, Israeli towns were exposed to the worst attacks since the nation’s founding, a million residents of the Galilee fled or sat in shelters for a month, more than 150 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed along with nearly a thousand Lebanese-all in order to ensure the return of U.N. peacekeepers to southern Lebanon.

I predicted on Aug. 11 that Olmert would lose his office in the wake of this war, but it didn’t exactly take political brilliance to figure out that minimally there would be serious calls for his ouster. But even a columnist in Israel who thinks Olmert should be run out of town is far from sure it can actually take place.

I’ve posted a number of times about the crisis of the declining birth rates in Europe. Now we learn that Germany’s birth rate has declined precipitously in just one year. But that’s not all - it’s deaths have increased.

Official figures show that the number of births fell by a further 2.8% last year. Meanwhile, the mortality rate rose by 1.5% compared with 2004.

The birth rate is exceptionally low in the former East Germany, where the city of Chemnitz is thought to have the lowest birth rate in the world.

Economists say Europe’s population decline threatens to damage economic growth for decades.

The data from Germany’s Office for Federal Statistics show there were 686,000 births last year - half as many as in the early 1960s.

It’s astonishing that Europe in general seems to be deliberately committing suicide. What can account for it?