Lebanon: Now What?

As Lebanese strive to rebuild their country, two sobering assessments of what's happened and what it means for the future.

There may come a point when the Lebanese blame Hezbollah as much, if not more, for the loss and destruction they've experienced in this recent war. After all, it was Hezbollah that precipitated the conflict by poking their wet fingers into the electric socket and getting a response.

But it was Israeli bombs that fell on Lebanese homes, businesses, power plants, airport, highways, and bridges in what appears to have been a non-sequitur counterattack.

Besides all that, of course, is the encouragement which this war has given to that strain of thinking in the Middle East traced by Lebanese Druse leader Walid Jumblatt to "Karbala and Masada." It willingly accepts stupid, futile, meaningless martyrdom as a glorious thing.

John Kennedy used to ruminate over the fact that if a would-be assassin were desperate enough and heedless enough of losing his own life, no security measures in the world could be strong enough to impede him. Radicalized Islam has perhaps concluded that life is so cheap and meaningless that it's willing to sustain death "in a blaze of glory" over life in a peaceful democracy. (And that appears to not only be true in the struggling democracy of Lebanon, but also the advanced nation of Great Britain!)

Life has once more been cheapened in Lebanon. Hezbollah is the immediate beneficiary. Let's pray that the Lebanese don't remain enamored of the group for long. People who see their lives as meaningless tend to share their misery in very destructive ways.

Whatever we can do in America to help the Lebanese rebuild their country could give people reason to doubt the dangerous, empty-headed propaganda of Hezbollah...and reason too, to back away from the silly path of faux-martyrdom embraced by those with no appreciation for the gift of life.