Barry Rubin writes: “The Lebanese logjam has broken at last as Hizballah seized west Beirut and inflicted a big defeat on the pro-government side. While Iran and Syria provide guns and strong backing to their friends, the West responds with words backed by nothing. Who can blame Hizballah and Damascus and Tehran for laughing with contempt, believing they are the tide of the future, assuming their “passionate intensity” will inevitably triumph over the weak-willed West?”

I know I can’t; they’re probably right. The West won’t do anything about them. Whenever we talk about Iran we pretend that the only problem with the Mullahs is that they try to develop nuclear weapons. In fact, however, nuclear energy is merely one of the major problems. The main reason I have advocated a hawkish and tough approach towards Iran is this country’s support for terrorists.

Iran supports Hezbollah; it supports Hamas; it supports Shiite terrorists in Iraq; the list goes on indefinitely. Whenever there are Islamic extremists causing mayhem somewhere, you can bet on it that Iran is, in one way or another, supporting them.

And that’s something we should talk about… and we should do something about it.

But the West ignores the obvious truth, and as a result nothing will be done.

The same goes, of course, for Hezbollah. We will not do anything. It doesn’t matter what the terrorists do, the West won’t help the pro-Western government. If the Lebanese government is overthrown, we’ll talk about it, say how terrible it all is, and then quickly ignore the chaos and wait for terrorists to strike at us in our own countries and for them to take over more countries in the Middle East.

Rubin points out, however, that Hezbollah’s intention is not to overthrow the government. Not right now anyway. No, they just want to control it “so it does nothing they dislike: no strong relations with the West, no ability to stop war against Israel, no disarming Hizballah’s militias or countering that group’s control over large parts of the country, and certainly no investigation of Syrian involvement in terrorism there.”

And then he spends some attention to Barack Obama and notices that terrorists are smiling when they imagine a Obama victory this year. “If the dictators and terrorists are smiling, it means everyone else is crying.”

The Syrian and Iranian regimes know that while they may walk through the valley of the shadow of sanctions they need fear nothing because there are all too many who comfort them.

After all, if the UN human rights committee is run by Libya, if UNIFIL forces in Lebanon tread lightly so Hizballah won’t be angry with them, if Westerners tremble and repeal freedom of speech lest some Muslims be offended, why should the “bad guys” worry?

Yet the West doesn’t have to play it stupid forever. Now is the time for energetic action on Lebanon to wipe that confident sneer off their faces. To contain Iran and Syria, to buck up the Lebanese government side and all those Arabs who, whatever their faults, don’t want to live in an Islamist caliphate.

If you want to know what’s wrong, consider Obama’s May 10 statement on Lebanon. He starts out playing tough, talking about “Hezbollah’s power grab in Beirut….This effort to undermine Lebanon’s elected government needs to stop, and all those who have influence with Hezbollah must press them to stand down immediately.” He calls for supporting the Lebanese government, strengthening the Lebanese army, and to “insist on disarming Hezbollah.”

But how to do this? By “working with the international with the international community and the private sector to rebuild Lebanon and get its economy back on its feet.”

That will do it! Wonderful idea! What a genius.

Say, why hasn’t, say, Europe tried that in the past? O, wait, we have. That’s the / our problem.

More:

In other words, according to the Obama world view, it’s a problem of development. If people have more money they won’t be terrorists. Of course, that was the policy of Hariri, which was countered by Syria blowing him up. In politics, bombs trump business. And any way you can’t have a strong economy with no government and chaos. Part of the mistake here is Obama’s assumption that Hizballah (and other radicals) want stability and prosperity. In fact, they want to use instability as blackmail in their pursuit of power. They don’t want conciliation. It’s a military-strategic problem, not one of community organizing.

The statement continues: “We must support the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions that reinforce Lebanon’s sovereignty, especially resolution 1701 banning the provision of arms to Hezbollah, which is violated by Iran and Syria.”

Great. But the UN is no substitute for U.S. power. As David Schenker of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy writes, “It is highly unlikely that the UN — which failed to even prevent the rearming of Hizballah–would agree to more dangerous deployments in Lebanon.” America doesn’t need a president whose solution is to turn over crises to the UN.

Obviously, Obama is not alone in this. He isn’t the creator of such a dovish and nearly idiotic foreign policy; he’s the product decades of ‘liberal thinking’ (heh) in the United States. He simply embraces the solutions propagated by the far left.

And that’s a huge problem. Especially considering the fact that Europe is often walking behind the United States. If the United States doesn’t take the lead, who will? As a European myself, it seems to me that I have to do my best to get conservatives elected in Europe. European countries have to take the lead if Obama becomes the President of the United States. The main problem with that, of course, is that Europe is not one country. The United States is as powerful as it is, among other reasons, because it’s one country. One nation. One people. The same cannot be said for Europe. We are completely different peoples, living on the same continent. If you think it’s difficult to unite one people, imagine what it’s like to attempt to unite 25 peoples.

On top of that you’ve got to remember that if the US doesn’t threaten to use its army, well, Europe can threaten all it wants, but since our countries are smaller - much smaller - than the US, so are the armies. The US army is gigantic, and extremely strong. If there’s a president in the oval office who gives terrorists and Islamists the impression that he won’t use the army if they attempt to take over control of certain countries, they will probably become more ambitious by the day.

But still, excuses won’t do. Europe has lived in its Kantian paradise for too long. Britain, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain all need conservative governments. If that’s what they get, we could limit the damage in the coming years somewhat.