I think I saw a pig in the sky.

And it looked like Obama. Color me crazy, is this a politician who understands, or surrounds himself with people who understand, the Middle East?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/opinion/16brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

David Brooks' interview with Obama reveals that the democractic presidential candidate truly understands the roots of problems in the Middle East and the true nature of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Again, like I have stated in other posts, if leaders do not seek understand the real cuases of violence and conflict in the ME, they will not understand how to solve problems there. This goes for Hezbollah: If leaders continue to erroneously dismiss them as a 'terrorist group (like David Brooks so arrogantly and idiotically does in the first line of this article, the US is doomed. I am just irate at him for dong this, a well informed journalist offering such a simplistic and inflammatory description. Hezbollah is a multifaceted group with an extremist militant wing that also provide social services to a large part of Lebanon's population.)

Obama states in this article, “It’s time to engage in diplomatic efforts to help build a new Lebanese consensus that focuses on electoral reform, an end to the current corrupt patronage system, and the development of the economy that provides for a fair distribution of services, opportunities and employment.” Wait you're telling me that bombing the shit out of Hezbollah in the south is not the way to fix Lebanon? This is just too much to take in.

Brooks then, like Bush, confuses Obama’s diplomatic intelligent comments, which show understanding of Lebanon and the Middle East, with appeasement. This silly dismissal falls in line with Brooks' ignorant, simplistic line opener for this article which I mentioned earlier.

A multifaceted group like Hezbollah cannot be confronted with purely military means, bc it is not a purely military group. It provides healthcare, education, financing, homes, security, among other services to the population of Southern Lebanon. Hezbollah also shows a desire to play a role in Lebanese political system.