Medary.com

Tigerhawk, who is not an idiot:

Lebanon is, in fact, a catastrophe. So many people, particularly Westerners, so wanted last year's "Cedar Revolution" to be a harbinger of a new Lebanon, if not a new Arab Middle East. Even I -- a strong supporter of Israel and unreconstructed hawk on Islamist terror -- am extremely disappointed and saddened by the developments of the last week. The Lebanese who did not vote for Hezbollah last year deserve much better.

But then I remember not to be an idiot.

Here is the basic problem: Southern Lebanon is a "failed state," a place where the authority of the central government does not extend. Hezbollah has occupied that failed state and acquired much more deadly weapons than anybody ("anybody" meaning, in this case, the CIA, Israel's intelligence agencies, and anybody who would tell those people) imagined. It is using southern Lebanon as a base from which to wage a war against Israel. It has also built a global terrorist network that many observers believe has a greater capability for mass casualty attacks than al Qaeda.