Idle threat of the week

During a week when much of the Northern Hemisphere decamped for the sun of the beach or the shade of the mountains, the hard working diplomats of the world were burning the midnight oil over at Turtle Bay. This dedication paid off big time when UN Security Council Resolution 1701 emerged as The Idle Threat of the Week.

The resolution took the coveted crown by threatening to disarm or remove Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon. Due to some sneaky and precarious language it took a great deal of parsing before our judges were able make the award official by determining the resolution actually said anything at all.

1701 claims the defanging of Hezbollah will be the job of the Lebanese army, backed by 15,000 United Nation Peacekeepers likely led by the French. Our panel of judges were surprised to learn this is the same Lebanese army last seen literally running and hiding when their country was attacked, and the same French whose military history can be politely described as "bumbling."

Of course, if the resolution had called for the deployment of a 30,000 strong force tasked to perch in observation towers and only come down when village girls in need of a good ravaging are spotted, the threat would have been deemed quite valid.

And some other person or document would have won Idle Threat of the Week for August 8 -14.

!!!Middle East crisis solved!!!

Damn, I'm good. As I sat here waiting for updates on Lindsey Lohan's collapse due to "dehydration," I was able to piece together an unconventional, but sure-fire, way to bring peace to the Middle East. I can only pity the "pundits," who have been getting all worked up trying to find a solution by regurgitating the same crap already responsible for that tangled mess of a web.

Besides the folks on the liberal blogs, of course, where any talk of Israel has been banned, so as not to provoke a rhetorical civil war in the wordy, if not particularly important, American Left.

None of that matters now because, with very little effort, I've solved the latest crisis and perhaps the whole situation forever. The solution came to me via a search engine query that brought a citizen of the Islamic Republic of Iran to this space.

The Iranian was looking for "super sexy photos." Because my site is the one-stop shop for all things Timberlake and his mission to "bring sexy back" the Iranian was directed to jsb.

So, I'm like, egads, we have the other JT, who wants to bring sexy back, and we have Iran, who wants sexy.

Let's get them together!

At the very least the good-will created by this American-brokered marriage of convenience will result in Iran calling off the dogs of Hezbollah and declaring an immediate cessation of their controversial nuclear program.

If it turns out these crazy kids really like each other, expect an ebullient Timberlake to try to "burn it up" with every man, women and child in the Islamic Republic.

Good news sure, but somewhat tempered by word (from India?!?) that Lohan will be giving up partying. Well, you win some and you lose some.

Thinking of the children

Photographs of children in Northern Israel painting taunting messages on shells meant for targets in Lebanon have made their way around the world, via that dastardly internet, inciting controversy at every stop.

Also today Nobel peace laureate Betty Williams, while addressing a large audience of school children in Brisbane, Australia, said she "would like to kill George Bush."

I'm a big fan of preaching violence to children. I think it does a good job preparing them for when they become adults.

That in mind, I whole-heartily endorse children painting taunting messages on bombs.

Messages have been painted on bombs ever since either bombs or paint were invented. And taking into account kids grow up so fast these days with the myspace and the cell phones, I think we owe it to children to treat them as adults in respect to ordnance.

Plus this activity encourages creativity. Although, I can't say the examples of messages cited, such as "from Israel with love," were particularly creative. What they really need is a contest to spice things up. The winner would get a summer internship as a New York Post headline writer.

As for Mrs. Williams's "kill Bush" remarks, I'm mixed. Part of me thinks any speech to a youth group that encourages the issuing of idle threats is only beneficial to jsb's long-term prospects.

But another part of if me thinks Justin Timberlake is still a very young man and it is cruel to even suggest a humble schoolchild from a place called "Brisbane" would ever be in position where he or she could dream of ending Timberlake's tyrannically Idle Threat of the Week reign.

The folly of equality

FIFA finally weighed in on the Zidane headbutt, suspending the retired French football star three games, but also suspending Italian defender Marco Materazzi two games for taunting Zidane.

A few minutes later the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Anan, addressing the UN security council, blamed both Hezbollah and Israel for the conflict in Lebanon.

What links these two stories is they are more examples of an international organization looking at a situation where there is conflict and controversy and trying their damnedest to dole out blame equally.

Since international institutions represent a cornucopia of interests and perspectives they have to do this to maintain their legitimacy among their members.

The price they pay for this legitimacy is a lack of authority.

It has been said diplomacy is "the art of letting someone have your way."

So how could it be anything but folly to turn an organization like the UN, which doesn't have a unified "way," for diplomacy?

I'm not stating anything earth-shaking here. The UN has lost authority as a geopolitical broker every year it has existed. I doubt many serious people still think it can serve that function at all.

But what has replaced the UN is the de facto mini-UN's we create when we excercise the instinct to bring in as many voices as possible into conflicts, whether it be Iraq, North Korea or Lebanon.

Diplomacy needs to be handled as unilaterally as possible -- or not at all.

The "equal" solutions large groups tend to come up with are anything but, and they only lead to more trouble down the road.

Hezbollah is like rain on your wedding day

President Bush has had a tough few months, with the falling approval ratings and the explosions, but he was on top of his game this morning in Russia. Without knowing there was a live microphone in front of him, The President used an expletive, misused the word "irony" and spoke with his mouth full.

All in the span of a few seconds.

The irony* being in some quarters they are mocking W for this.

Well, my friends, if you mock a man for cussing, using "irony" incorrectly and speaking while he chews, you mock us all.

Earlier, in his off-the-cuff chat with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush kept it real by whipping out the American colloquialisms "yo" and "you know what I'm saying."

The constitution prevents Bush from running for a third term. If he could, this plainspoken, "plugged" conversation with Blair would be in his first campaign ad.

Today's shit was so good it would probably work in a commerical if Jeb decided to run.

*I'm not even sure I used the word "irony" correctly (or the president used it incorrectly.) That word has always made me dizzy. Even before the song.