How is the conflict going to end?

[Denver Dave]

How do we imagine the conflict will end? It started with one of the most western leaning and style secular arab countries, but with Hezbollah mixed into the population. To eliminate Hezbollah, doesn't Israel have to pretty much bomb and destroy Lebanon back to the stone age the way that they have done to Gaza for the last 35 years and the way that Russia did with Chechnya - perhaps leaving a Iraq type void?

I don't see any signs politically from Lebanon, Hezbollah or Israel for a political settlement.

Hard to imagine any kind of UN force "shooting their way in".

Where is the hope?

[Jackson Roykirk]

1. there ain't none

:nuke:

[Igel]

2. I don't know how it'll stop.

But there's no need to bomb and destroy Lebanon back to the stone age. Just wipe out most of what Hezbollah's done and make it possible for them to not rebuild.

That means making sure that outside funds and support aren't forthcoming (they've been assiduously bombing banks); that outside munitions don't get in (close airport, blockade ports, strike roads to Syria).

That means removing much of Hezbollah's infrastructure. Not just personnel, the hideously metaphorical "infrastructure of terror". No, it means actual infrastructure. The way they show their good side to gain loyalty--schools, hospitals, and the like. The way they earn money and pay wages locally--factories, businesses, etc.

It means reducing their influence so that when it's all done, the Lebanese can get a truckload of money and rebuild non-Hezbollah facilities. It means wiping out their munitions stockpiles, so if La Signora goes for a sex-change the Lebanese army can establish control without facing Iranian and Syrian weapons.

But I think I know how it'll end. Badly. Because they won't--they won't be allowed--to do what's needed. And that's discrediting Hezbollah's ideology. Communism fell in E. Europe because nobody believed its ideology any more. Nobody seriously takes Nazism seriously because it's discredited. Pol Pot, same thing. China shifted its stance when the ideology was fading; now it's simply fascist, victimized nationalist + command-and-control.

Afghanistan shows that you can mostly wipe out the military and the political power, but if you have the clerics still preaching and teaching Talibanism, you get more Taliban. Similarly with Hezbollah: Unless Hezbollah is defeated in such a way that it's discredited, it'll be back in some form. It presents a secular face, a sort of nationalist + command-and-control based on the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood model, but it has a religious core; it's that core that has to be struck. And it's especially that core that is untouchable. If that could be attacked, the weapons wouldn't matter, and there'd be no need for bombing.

[brokensymmetry]

3. Badly, with no conclusion - but with

the emotions throughout the Middle East enflamed.

Wait a few years - perhaps two or three - and a spark
will set off a general war.

All IMHO, of course.

[Name removed]

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[Lithos]

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