The appeasers for peace at the United Nations who want us to believe they really don't hate Jewish people have been calling for talks with anyone who will join them, supposedly to halt the cycle of violence in the Middle East. The invitees include Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, Iran, and presumably the guy on the corner of Main and Third who collects quarters from passersby.

They say if we can just talk this through and in the meantime get some real envoys for peace, as well as a multi-national peacekeeping force, into the region then all will be well and they can get back to the process of making money from keeping the masses at each others' throats.

This ignores two realities of life. One, by pushing for talks with Hezbollah and Hamas, terrorist organizations that exist not for the welfare of their subjects or to build a better world, but specifically to destroy another culture, they are bestowing nation-state status on terrorists. They are elevating terrorism to the level of legitimate governments, and affording those murderers a status equivalent to Noble Peace Prize nominees! OK, considering some others who have been nominated for, and occasionally awarded, a Nobel Peace Prize over the past three decades this may be a bad example, but you get the point.

Terrorists use talk as a tactic to get them closer to their overall goal. They count on the fact that the good nature and good will of more civilized people will buy them time when they have suffered setbacks. So if someone invites them to a talk, it is seen in their world as capitulation by their enemy. Since everyone who is not them is the enemy, they exploit this opportunity to the fullest, all the while rearming, training, and planning their next move.

Second, as far sending envoys for peace to the Middle East, we have already done that, in the form of the USS Iwo Jima, its crew and the contingent of U.S. Marines it carried.

Sure, I know that the World Terrorist Media aired lots of film of Marines helping old ladies across the street and carrying luggage for loud-mouthed ingrates who think the world exists only to wait on them, but aside from those images there was a more subtle message in that visit.

Hezbollah thinks that by scoring a public relations victory in Beirut in 1983 when a homicide bomber in a truck full of explosives blew up the Marine barracks, killing 241 American servicemen, they also scored a true military victory. Unfortunately the decision on how to respond to Hezbollah back then was made in the political arena, not the military arena, and the response was to leave.

Marines don't like it when they lose their brothers and don't get a chance for payback on the guys who did it. American Marines to this day have as much animosity toward Hezbollah as they do toward Vietnamese communists. At least in Vietnam we prevailed on the battlefield. In Lebanon it is still an open sore.

So when the Iwo Jima pulled in on a mercy operation for people who were mostly grateful for the opportunity to leave, but unfortunately were accompanied by a fair number of extras from the movie The Ugly American, it was letting Hezbollah know that there was another option open in this battle.

Frankly, if it was up to me, I would have been sending teams of highly skilled Recons and other Special Ops forces into Lebanon to help Israel put the smack down on the terrorists. I would have liked to see some of my brother Marines out there painting targets with lasers so the Israeli artillery and air power could put some of those hi-tech, precision guided bombs right down a terrorist's throat, or at least in the window of a missile storage area.

Actually, I don't know why we have to keep our options limited in this area. Maybe it is because we know Israel can handle the job itself, and maybe it is because we know the Israeli army will emerge from this battle with a new generation of trained, skilled and experienced combat troops.

But still, America shouldn't have to wait for some cataclysmic event before it puts the full might of our military power into play. It is no secret that the guys behind this are Syria and Iran and that Iran, like Hezbollah, is just buying time until it has a nuclear weapon.

Iran already has demonstrated that it can deliver rockets to anywhere in the Middle East. If we wait until it attaches a nuclear warhead to one of those missiles before we act, then the blood of the resultant thousands of casualties will be on our hands.

MURTHA SUED FOR DEFAMATION

News reports were circulating early late Tuesday and early Wednesday that Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha, the Democrat who brags up his service in the Marines as the foundation for criticisms on international affairs, is being sued in federal court by an active duty Marine who served in Iraq.

Good. It is about time, and I hope the young Marine's lawsuit is successful.

Murtha, with virtually no first-hand knowledge, while an investigation into civilian deaths in Iraq last year was ongoing, alleged in a press conference that the Marine infantrymen involved were guilty of cold-blooded murder.

The Pentagon at the time was in the initial stages of an investigation into allegations that Marines had gone on a rampage in an Iraqi city after an IED had killed one member of their unit. In the months since the initial reports from the World Terrorist Media, which pilloried the Marines, information has surfaced that terrorists engaged the Marines in house-to-house fighting using civilians as shields.

That is a far cry from Murtha's preferred version. Thus far, no one has been charged in the incident, and the outcome is anything but certain. But any real Marine would have stood up for his brothers unless and until solid information of wrongdoing was developed.

Murtha's comments were politically motivated, self-serving, untimely and likely to be proved highly inaccurate. He is an embarrassment to himself, the Democratic party that encouraged his statements, and ultimately to the Marine Corps.

More than a few Marines past and present would like to see the Commandant of the Marine Corps reactivate Murtha's commission just so he could be drummed out.

Sounds like a viable option.