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Talk show host Bud Hedinger recently used a brilliant analogy when he referred to Hezbollah. “Treat them like fire ants,” Hedinger said. “You don’t talk things over with fire ants. You don’t try to find ways to satisfy their urges. Nor do you passively accept their stinging which in large enough numbers can kill.” None of these things are effective in dealing with fire ants, Hedinger noted. Neither does giving them a portion of the lawn to call their own work, as some might suggest, and expect that they will not continue to come into your part of the lawn and sting the dickens out of you and your family. No, Hedinger concludes, “the only thing that works with fire ants is to kill them. Kill every one of them right down to the queen. Kill the entire nest.” Hedinger is correct.

Contributor Gordon Cucullu Former Green Beret lieutenant colonel, Gordon Cucullu is now an editorialist, author and a popular speaker. Born into a military family, he lived and served for more than thirteen years in East Asia, including eight years in Korea. For his Special Forces service in Vietnam he was awarded a Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Presidential Unit Commendation. After separation from the Army, he worked on Korea and East Asian affairs at both the Pentagon and Department of State as well as an executive for General Electric in Korea. His first major non-fiction work, Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin, is based in large part on his extensive experience in Korea and East Asia as a governmental insider and businessman. [website] [go to Cucullu index]

Separated at Birth : How North Korea Became the Evil Twin Gordon Cucullu

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Where the metaphor might break down is that fire ants are nature-directed, not driven by a vile ideology that cloaks itself in religion and de-humanizes even its own participants. So it is fair to say that Islamofascist terrorists and those that eagerly sponsor them are worse than fire ants since they consciously go about their nefarious work. But just as our neighbors in the South learned decades ago that fire ants may be killed but not wiped out permanently, we need to recognize that Islamofascism is going to be around for a long time; perhaps forever.

Nonetheless, because it may be impossible to exterminate fire ants does not mean that you do not go after them when you find them with a most ruthless objective: kill them down to the queen. If done often enough it provides security. Yes, they are out there, but they are beaten down, subdued, no longer a threat unless vigilance is relaxed. True, the fight may be for a lifetime or more, but one eventually accepts that some threats like, death and taxes, will always be out there. So it is with Hezbollah, and so it is with the viral ideology that spurs them on.

Some analysts now categorize this pestilential belief as salafist while others call it Islamofascism. Whatever you term it, the belief has penetrated the social and political fabric of some segments of the world Islamic population so deeply that even the most optimistic realize it will not be excised in our lifetimes, nor, probably in that of successive generations. Just as candles still burn in a few Austrian and German households annually in April to commemorate Hitler’s birthday, so too will the spark of virulent Islamofascism burn within the breasts of terrorists and those who adulate them for decades, perhaps centuries. Recall, if you will, that the Whabbist sect of Islam that begat the current terrorist ideologies emerged from the Saudi deserts two centuries ago and it itself was based on predecessor sects.

Nor are these present-day terrorist fire ants merely a nuisance to be brushed aside. Motivated as author and columnist Ralph Peters notes by “his faith, his family, and the earth beneath his feet,” the Hezbollah fighter will “kill anyone and give his own life to win.” In fact, Peters thinks that the Hezbollah army may be the “new model” for regional armies. They don’t possess tanks and aircraft – yet – but are equipped with highly effective basic infantry weapons and increasingly sophisticated missiles cheerfully supplied by their sponsors, Syria and Iran. But, Peters says, Hezbollah has learned – as other terrorists also learn – that “strength of will is the greatest virtue.”

Since their strength of will – the moral clarity, however twisted, to carry the fight to the death and beyond - is so valuable to them, attacking our moral clarity in turn is a logical Hezbollah strategy. They have learned to play a compliant, often complicit media with astonishing skill, and use international organizations such as the EU and UN along with weak-kneed bystanders, to pressure America and Israel to desist. They strike in the most horrific ways, deliberately cowering behind civilian targets. When innocents – real or contrived – are injured then they protest. If sufficient damage is inflicted on the terrorists their supporters clamor for a ceasefire. Hezbollah fighters and leaders realize that the will to carry the fight to the death, to kill them in their nests right down to the queen, is lacking in a Western civilization emasculated by moral relativism and muddle-headed multi-cultural pabulum. They take great advantage of this moral weakness.

Almost from the onset of the Hezbollah attacks Israel was being pressured by faint-hearted European and American Arab sympathizers to “exercise restraint” and avoid “disproportionate response” whatever that irrational comment means. Americans were heartened when UN Ambassador John Bolton rhetorically asked the press “how do you negotiate with a terrorist organization?” “Whose word do we take,” Bolton queried, “and how do we know that they can be trusted.”

Would that Bolton’s comments had been heeded decades earlier. Witness a late-20th century phenomenon pioneered by Yasar Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Arafat, the poster child for Munich, the intifada, suicide bombers, and other despicable atrocities, maneuvered himself, with the assistance of culpable European, American, and UN sycophants, into the position that he began to be treated as a legitimate head of state. This travesty lasted through his death and beyond. It persists today and is exactly the model that Hezbollah is using in this latest round of attacks. That is why it is so important that they be exposed for the frauds they really are.

Hezbollah is an organization without a state – similar to bin Laden’s al Qaeda. Like al Qaeda it attached itself to any state that would welcome or tolerate it, such as Somalia and Afghanistan, or any state too weak to dislodge it, such as Lebanon. In a fashion similar to Hamas it seeks legitimacy through a skewed electoral process that opens the door for murders and kidnappers. Similarly Hezbollah intends to establish itself as a legitimate player in the international community. If Israel is unable to destroy the fire ant nest of Hezbollah, or if Israel is pressured to “restrain itself” then we can expect a moral victory at the very least for the terrorists and their sponsors. “To the Arab masses,” Peters comments, “Hezbollah’s resistance appears heroic, triumphant – and inspiring.” A victory for Hezbollah, especially one that allows Syria and Iran to meddle unpunished in the region to the degree that they are doing will have unacceptably dire results.

Even a “decapitation strike” that would take Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah out of the picture for good, while highly desirable would not solve the issue. Hezbollah is a parasite on the Lebanese government and must be destroyed in detail. In order for that to happen Lebanon must be willing to take on the task and provided with proper assistance to accomplish that difficult mission. Further, Syrian and Iranian support for Hezbollah must be terminated, by military means if necessary. For to destroy Hezbollah properly the queen of the ants – who now reside in Teheran serviced by drones from Damascus – must be eliminated also.

And that move may require all the resolve, all of the moral courage that America and Israel and our precious few allies can muster. CRO

copyright 2006 Gordon Cucullu

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