Lebanon on the Altar

Michael Totten reports, and has some pretty shocking pictures, and it’s depressingly doubtful that democracy can survive there. The Cedar Revolution will become a victim of Iranian infanticide and the amivalence of Europe, the United States, and other democracies to support it in its hour of need. The lesson comes through clearly: investing your nation’s survival in the United Nations and its French peacekeepers is like investing your savings in a partnership with that exiled Nigerian general who keeps e-mailing you. When Kofi Annan intervened to stop the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel (where I was critical of some of the target selection), the end result was supposed to have been the disarmament and demobilization of Hezbollah and the extension of democratic authority over Hezbistan. As is so often the case when the U.N. takes over, things worked out the other way around. That’s also why I’m preemptively skeptical of any deal with North Korea that relies on the U.N. for inspection or enforcement. We’ve seen that movie before.

So much for Korea’s contribution, I suppose. Related question: could Seoul’s streets look like the Beirut of Totten’s pictures in ten years? How about five? It’s hard to deny that they could when they did two decades ago.

If reason can’t prevail anywhere in the Middle East — and the collapse of Western politicial will to support any Middle Eastern democracy makes that so — then what alternatives are left? If that region comes under the domination of those who refuse to coexist with the rest of us, can’t be deterred from attacking us, and keep upgrading their arsenals to scarier weaponry, the alternatives are looking pretty grave, aren’t they?

I see one way to avoid that bleak result, and it requires us to do as much as the political will we can summon allows against Iran. This could mean severe economic sanctions, a blockade, air strikes against its nuclear faciliities and the militias who keep the regime in power, and active support for armed or unarmed opposition to it. Those who have demanded “sacrifice” — those for whom it is not a veiled argument for drafting everyone but them — will have their chance. An embargo of Iran would have a disastrous effect on our oil supply and badly damage our economy, but I believe the adjustment to this modest hardship would be easier than the alternative.

I’m betting that nothing even resembling that will happen in a time when escapism has replaced leadership, militant masochism has replaced liberalism, and we have become too obsessed with short-term comforts to see medium-term dangers. It’s wonderfully tempting to say that things will all work out, and for most of our lifetimes, they always have. But a world in which we’ve given up on offense, defense, and deterrence is scarier than the “Dr. Strangelove” days of the 1960’s by several degrees.