This message will be warmly received around the world, and not just in the Arab world:
Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in a TV interview aired Tuesday that the US has failed in Iraq and that animosity in the Arab world against Washington should not be blamed on Islamic extremism.
Nasrallah, in his first appearance since speaking at a “victory” rally in south Beirut last month, accused the United States of being responsible for continued violence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Afghanistan is a failure… In Iraq, there is clear failure on the security, military and political levels… Who shoulders responsibility? It’s the American administration and the occupation forces in control of the situation,” Nasrallah said in a taped interview on Hizbullah’s television station Al-Manar.
He said America’s plans in the Middle East face “failure, frustration and a state of collapse,” and predicted the US would be forced to leave the region in the future – just like it left Vietnam after the war there three decades ago.
The US has “no future” in the region, Nasrallah said. “They will leave the Mideast, Arab and Islamic worlds just as they left Vietnam, and I advise those who are counting on them to draw conclusions from the Vietnam experience.”
This would happen “within years, not months,” he added.
Hizbollah – while clearly not a terrorist organisation, despite being labelled as such by crusading and hopelessly clueless Liberal Senators – represents a growing resistance to US ambitions in the Middle East.
We misunderstand this at our peril.