As the situation in Israel gets worse by the hour, two very unpopular things need to be said. One, the Bush administration's policy of disengagement has been exposed as a disastrous and ill-conceived abrogation of America's historic responsibilities in the Middle East. And two, Israel's military response to the unremitting terror war being waged against it, while entirely justified, won't succeed; democracies are simply incapable of the kind of sustained brutality required to subjugate a restive and thoroughly radicalized people. (What happens when sixteen-year-old Palestinian girls bent on martyrdom start throwing themselves under Israeli tanks? Does Israel really have the stomach to roll over ten of them? A hundred? A thousand?)

As much as it depresses me to say this, the Palestinians are right about one thing: Israel faces a choice between capitulation and ethnic cleansing, and because it will never choose the latter, it will ultimately be forced to accept the former. I hope and pray that all this is just my (occasionally) dark Irish soul talking, but I fear it's not. The terrorists are winning.
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