A Nation Of Tinkers

We Are Compulsive Tinkers

As soon as I started to plow through the headlines and commentary on the Mid-East crisis, I knew that Israel and President Bush are doing the right thing. In Newsweek, President Bush’s foreign policy is given a “down” arrow. The San Francisco Chronicle criticizes Israel for killing Lebanese civilians. European governments, and commentators at all levels of newspapers, television, and magazines, collectively wring their hands and implore, beseech, plead, demand, a cease fire.

What, in the name of Sam Hill, would a cease fire accomplish? Would it “pave the way for diplomacy?” So far, the way paved by diplomacy was used by Hezbollah and Hamas to bring in and sequester a very large supply of rockets, the sole purpose of which was to rain terror on Israel by killing Israeli civilians.

Iran and Syria have hidden behind the actions of their Hezbollah and Hamas surrogates, bankrolling and supplying war materials to them while denying involvement.

Again I ask, what does a cease fire accomplish? The government of Lebanon cannot even control southern Lebanon. The only way Hezbollah will cease their murderous ways is if they are annihilated by Israeli attacks. Why should Hezbollah be given freedom to attack Israel from Lebanon, without Israel treating this as an act of war? Should Israel be expected to not blow up Hezbollah fighters and war materials because Hezbollah chooses to hide them among Lebanese civilians? Hezbollah certainly isn't constrained by world opinion from attacking Israeli civilians – in fact, Israeli civilians seem to be their primary target.

Why does Hezbollah have the rockets? Not for defensive purposes, obviously. Why did Hamas keep firing rockets into Israel? Not for defensive purposes, obviously.

What then is the obvious reason Hezbollah and Hamas have the rockets, and have been attacking Israel? The obvious reason is they want to perpetuate a state of war with Israel until their final triumph over Israel. The old saying is “it doesn’t matter how many times Israel wins, Israel’s opponents only have to win once.”

Still the fools, and the savages who hate Israel, plead for President Bush to make Israel cease firing. Israel must not be allowed to decimate Hezbollah and Hamas, because that would be “disproportionate” use of force. After all, Hezbollah and Hamas can’t annihilate Israel, yet, so why shouldn’t Israel be made to wait until annihilation is a more credible threat? At least wait until Hezbollah and Hamas are better armed, and can inflict real damage. Also Israel should wait until Iran has nuclear warfare capabilities, rather than striking preemptively. Where is Israel’s sense of fairness? Just because all of their antagonists have pledged the destruction of Israel shouldn’t be anything to worry about.

Americans are natural-born tinkers. We don’t want to take something that isn’t working worth a damn, tear it out by its roots, and replace it with something that makes sense. Our Internal Revenue Code runs into hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations and interpretations, so to solve the problem we create – more regulations and interpretations – and then we will label the resulting abomination the IRS Simplification and Reform Act of Year Whatever. In truth, only the very simple think anything was simplified or reformed. We just tinker, we never actually change anything.

If Israel is continually attacked by agencies sworn to its destruction, we plead for diplomacy to be given a chance. Liberals point to the great diplomatic efforts of Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat, which brought peace to the Middle East for a weekend or two. A peace that was used then as cover to recruit, train, and supply the forces that are attacking Israel now. Hamas says they won’t honor any of the agreements previously made with Israel. So much for Bill Clinton’s legacy as Tinker-in-Chief.

The demands are at a crescendo for President Bush to show he can tinker. And he had better start his tinkering right now, before it’s too late for Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel is “a-fixin’-to” lay some serious “tinkering” on them.