First it was the Taliban, now it's Hezbollah. Memo to the Obama administration: when it comes to jihadist groups, "moderate" means the cutoff age for suicide bombers is six years old rather than eleven. if you're cool with that, then by all means, go ahead and "engage."
From Reuters:
The Obama administration is looking for ways to build up "moderate elements" within the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla movement and to diminish the influence of hard-liners, a top White House official said on Tuesday.
John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, met with Lebanese leaders during a recent visit.
"Hezbollah is a very interesting organization," Brennan told a Washington conference, citing its evolution from "purely a terrorist organization" to a militia to an organization that now has members within the parliament and the cabinet.
"There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they're doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements," Brennan said.
He did not spell out how Washington hoped to promote "moderate elements" given that the organization is branded a "foreign terrorist organization" by the United States.
"We don't deal with them," he acknowledged.
Good luck with that, Johnny. Let me know how you make out finding those moderate elements within Hezbollah: an Iranian-created and funded group that has killed hundreds of Americans and pledges to wipe Israel off the map. The mere thought of engaging the Islamo-Nazis of Hezbollah--a sworn enemy of the United States--is pure madness. Then again, so is this administration's policy of "engaging" Syria, Iran and Venezuela (this pic from '09 sums things up rather nicely). But to quote Jane's Addiction, nothing's shocking with Obama's fearless, crack squad of foreign policy and Middle East svengalis.