This is not a war between Israel and Hezbollah. This is a crisis, if not initiated by Iran, at least now managed by Teheran. This is a war by proxy. Imagine a Canadian or Mexican militia/terrorist group abducting USA servicemen and then shelling El Paso or San Diego or Detroit with rockets and the respective and sovereign governments of Canada or Mexico doing nothing, claiming that it was too weak to extend its power and authority over its own territory. What would the USA government and people do?

The argument that one has to appease the radicals in order not to lose the moderates in the Arab and Muslim world is a hollow one. The more you appease the militants the weaker they perceive you to be and the more aggressive they become. It is clear that the Western world supports Israel this time (probably for the first time since the war of independence in 1948) as does most Arab governments, though not in the open (with a rare exception of Saudi Arabia which bashed Hezbollah).

I believe that the majority of the Lebanese people and their political parties wish to see Israel dwarfing the power of Hezbollah. Why? Because they realize that if Hassan Nasrallah's organization doesn't suffer a major blow to its pride, its hubris and its radical ideology -- i.e creating a theocracy in Lebanon modeled on Iran's Islamic Republic -- will make the world less safe.

Today Israel is on the receiving end of Iran's Shiite revolutionary expansionist dreams but tomorrow it will Egypt, Jordan and others. If the war ends and Hezbollah's militia is removed from the border areas with Israel and dismantled according to UN Security Council resolution 1559 and international law, Iran will be weaker and the Western world will be much safer.