Friday, July 21, 2006

The Boomerang Effect

Why can't the Doves, with strickingly good ideas, never win in this crazy world?

Why do these men, who run the nations always have to have a testosterone fit, and start bombing the crap out of innocent people?

tbe Progressive American:

One of the broader tragedies in the Middle East is 'the boomerang syndrome.'

Impatient Arabs backed violence and thus put Ariel Sharon and now Ehud Olmert into power, while utterly discrediting Israeli doves. Some Arabs seethed at their daily discomforts, and so they backed provocations that are now vastly multiplying the suffering in Gaza and Lebanon alike.
I'm afraid that impatient Israelis may now be falling into the same trap. Israelis, outraged by attacks and kidnappings, have escalated the conflict by launching an assault on Lebanon that may make life in Israel far more dangerous for many years to come.

It's easy to sympathize with Israeli outrage, particularly since the attacks on it follow its withdrawals first from Lebanon and then from Gaza. But the winners in this conflict, in the medium to long term, are likely to be hard-liners throughout the Islamic world.

The Iranian and Syrian regimes are illegitimate, incompetent and unpopular, but they may be able to exploit anger at the television images from Lebanon into a longer lease on life for themselves. Pakistani extremists will be strengthened in their calls for jihad. In Sudan, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will rally popular anger to resist U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur. In Iraq, sympathy for Lebanese Shiites may strengthen Iraq's own extremist Shiite militias.

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