Daniel Pipes explains the history of Hezbollah & Hamas' war against America, providing some useful history behind current fighting in Lebanon:
Almost without public notice, the two sides have declared war on each other. President George W. Bush stated in June 2003 that "the free world, those who love freedom and peace, must deal harshly with Hamas" and that "Hamas must be dismantled." Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage announced in September 2002 that "Hezbollah may be the A-team of terrorists and maybe Al-Qaeda is actually the B-team. … They have a blood debt to us, which you spoke to; and we're not going to forget it and it's all in good time. … We're going to take them down one at a time."
These ambitious sentiments have been accompanied by a shift in resources. The Washington Post reported in May that the FBI, "Confident that its efforts to track the Al-Qaeda terrorist network in this country are beginning to pay off, … is devoting more resources to the two Middle Eastern groups, which command more widespread support in Arab and Muslim communities" in the United States. The Post article tells about a November 2002 ruling from a secretive three-judge appeals panel that authorized federal agents pursuing criminal prosecutions of terrorist suspects to exploit the previously inaccessible vast backlog of classified wiretaps and intelligence reports from foreign security agencies. This has led to "stepped-up investigations in at least two dozen U.S. cities." The first public result came in February 2003 with the indictment of Sami Al-Arian and seven others. Current investigations are focused on the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and several individuals, including Abdelhaleem Ashqar, Mohamad Hammoud, and Ali Nasrallah.
Today, Hezbollah gave its fullest retort to date, in an interview by its leader Hassan Nasrallah to the Times of London. Nasrallah overtly threatened American interests around the world if the U.S. government does attempt to eradicate Hezbollah. "In such a case Hezbollah has a right to defend its existence, its people and its country through any means and at any time and in any place." To back this up, he noted that "There are many people throughout the world who love Hezbollah, who like Hezbollah and who support Hezbollah," he said. "Some may not sit idly by when seeing a brutal aggression against Lebanon."
Comment: It appears that Hamas and Hezbollah are no longer just Israel's problem but increasingly America's as well. (July 28, 2003)
BTW, from Pipes' article, it looks a little bit like Israel is carrying water for America against Hezbollah--which blew up hundreds of US Marines in Beirut during the Reagan administration. Here's an excerpt
from the Wikipedia entry:Hezbollah during the Lebanese war (1982-1990)[edit]
Combat Operations
After emerging during the civil war of the early 1980s as an Iranian-sponsored second resistance movement (besides Amal) for Lebanon's Shia community, Hezbollah focused on expelling Israeli and Western forces from Lebanon. It is the principal suspect[citation needed] in several notable attacks on the American, French and Italian Multinational forces, whose stated purpose was the stabilization of Lebanon: the suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy, which killed 63, including 17 Americans; of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut (see 1983 Beirut barracks bombing), which killed 241 American servicemen; and of the French multinational force headquarters which killed 58 French troops. Hezbollah has always denied having any involvement with these bombings, although regarding them as justified. [citation needed]
Elements of the group have been "linked" to involvement in kidnapping, detention and interrogation of American and other Western hostages in Lebanon by groups such as Islamic Jihad who claimed the hostage-takings were in retaliation to the detentions, hostage-taking and torture by the Israeli proxy army South Lebanon Army (SLA).
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Allegations of Hezbollah involvement in terrorism
Using names like the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth and the Revolutionary Justice Organization, Hezbollah is also believed by the United States and some other countries' intelligence agencies to have kidnapped and tortured to death with no clear evidence [11] U.S. Marine Colonel William R. Higgins and the CIA Station Chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley, and to have kidnapped around 30 other Westerners between 1982 and 1992, including the American journalist Terry Anderson, British journalist John McCarthy, the Archbishop of Canterbury's special envoy Terry Waite and Irish citizen Brian Keenan.[12] Hezbollah was accused by the US government of being responsible for the April 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63; of being behind the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, a suicide truck bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines in their barracks in Beirut in October 1983; of bombing the replacement U.S. Embassy in East Beirut on September 20, 1984, killing 20 Lebanese and two American soldiers; and of carrying out the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome.
It is believed that Hezbollah had a hand in the terrorist attacks in Argentina in 1990 and 1994: the Israeli Embassy Attack in Buenos Aires and the AMIA Bombing, respectively.[13]
