This war that broke out in southern Lebanon 10 days ago doesn’t have a name yet, so I’m just calling it the Israel-Hezbollah war for now.

 

A couple of interesting editorials on the conflict.

 

In the Washington Post today, Alvaro Vargas Llosa argues in The Lebanon Blitz that Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is destroying the "best hope for civilized life in the Middle Ease," namely, the emergence of a renewed democracy and civil society in Lebanon.  

 

And on Wednesday, Thomas Friedman in the New York Times piece Not So Smart (Select subscription required)argues that Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has grossly miscalculated by provoking the Israelis.  The unintended effects will be an end, or at least an hiatus, to democracy experiments in the Middle East which have brought Islamic radicals into positios of power in Gaza and Lebanon.  It will also result, he says, in an end to any unilateral withdrawal by Israel from the West Bank.