Actually, I don't think I'd like to be anywhere between Turkey and India at the moment... 

I know I've been unusually quiet about world events lately. The entire situation has grown somewhat tenuous as you can see if you've been watching the Security Watchtower feed.

Israel is pounding Hezbollah. The U.S. is maintaining a hands off policy and letting them do so, because you may or may not recall - the U.S. and Hezbollah have some history, and it isn't a pleasant reminder. They were behind some of the most notorious terrorist acts in the '70s and early '80s such as blowing up the marine barracks of our peace-keeping force in Lebanon, hijacking cruise ships, and other stuff like that. Sending rockets across the Israel border and kidnapping folks only tends to reinforce that image.

But what everybody seems to be overlooking is that Hezbollah has two sides. There's a political side which does some nasty stuff, and a social side; which generally tries to do good stuff. This social side is what makes it a messy situation. Across the arab world, Hezbollah is often revered for doing good deeds. They run hospitals, maintain welfare programs, and other stuff which makes them quite popular, and are known as the people to side with if you're down on your luck. Apart from a small minority of folks who have ties to big oil, a lot of arab folks are down on their luck.

This is creating a very nasty paradox. There doesn't appear to be any easy way of separating these two faces of Hezbollah into distinct entities - they are one. By attacking the rocket launchers and kidnappers, Israel is also attacking the entire social safety net of the impoverished and creating entirely new vengeances and allegiances of sworn enemies.

As if they didn't have enough enemies already...