In other words, whatever one might think of Hezbollah’s reactionary ideology and its sordid history, the group did not constitute such a serious threat to Israel’s security as to legitimate a pre-emptive war.

Having ousted Syrian forces from Lebanon in an impressive nonviolent uprising last year, the Lebanese had re-established what may perhaps be the most democratic state in the Arab world. Because they allowed the anti-Israel and anti-American Hezbollah to participate in the elections, however, the Israeli government and the Bush administration—with strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill—apparently decided that Lebanon as a whole must be punished in the name of “the war on terror.” ~Stephen Zunes

You do have to admire the agility of the war’s supporters, who at once claim the war is aimed at helping the Lebanese government free itself from Hizbullah while simultaneously blaming all of Lebanon for having the temerity of letting Hizbullah into government…after its political wing won seats in a democratic election that, in any other country, the war supporters would applaud and cite as an example of the universal potential of democratisation.  The message seems to be: we insist that you have democracy, but you cannot actually have a coalition government that includes parties of which we disapprove and all of you are all culpable for anything members of one party in the coalition do.  Imagine if, somehow, Sinn Fein were ever to be included in a British cabinet and the IRA then set off an attack on British targets–would the British be obliged to start bombing Manchester and Leeds to punish the British people for having “allowed” Sinn Fein into government?  The people of Lebanon did not “allow” Hizbullah into government–the rules of the processes of election and legislative representation “allowed” them in by making them such a sizeable contingent in the parliament that they could not simply be excluded.  The rest of Lebanon is being laid waste because it was too respectful of election results.  Unlike advanced democracies, such as Belgium or Germany, the Lebanese do not ban parties whose ideas they find offensive (not, of course, that the other sects had the effective means to disarm Hizbullah had they wanted to proscribe it).  Obviously, they must be punished for their lack of vision.