VDH on Hezbollah

Here's Victor Davis Hanson's take on the escalating conflict in the middle east [per an interview with Hugh Hewitt]:

And after Oslo, and after all of these, as I said, sober and judicious diplomacies, the Palestinians and Hezbollah thought the Israelis were rational, they had this good life, they wouldn't want to give it up. They were willing to incrementally be attacked. They might have a little appeasement. Now, the Israelis have to say to Hezbollah, we are crazier than you are, and unlike you, we can inflict a lot more damage, and we really don't care what the world says, because we're not going to live like this in fear. Even if you don't take out a power plant, and even if you don't make life miserable, we just don't want to live where one or two Israelis gets killed every week by one of these crazy rockets. So we're crazier than you, and you're really going to pay this time.

It's interesting that VDH would use the phrase "crazier than you" but it makes sense. Because he's in an interview, he's using a common parlance but what he's really saying is that it's time to take some serious action and let these people know that we've been pushed to a point that goes beyond our better nature of judicious and measured response. Even a child on the playground, armed with good sense, moral judgment, and superior strength, can only ignore and attempt to reason with the bully for so long before he must finally beat him down.