Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Hezbollah and The Broken Window Fallacy (sort of)

It is amazing to me how the entire world can look at Hezbollah and say "isn't that nice that Hezbollah are rebuilding everyone's house who were destroyed by the evil Israelis?". How can these people forget who was responsible for the destruction that ruined these homes in the first place? It is difficult to believe that all of them can be thankful for Hezbollah for destroying and then rebuilding their neighborhoods. However, I see written everywhere that doing this will only make Hezbollah more popular and even stronger with the "shia community" (as if they are all one robotic body acting in sync) and general "arab street".

This seems to be just like the economist who claims that economic growth is achieved when thugs break a shopkeepers window and it is replaced. In this case the thugs caused the Israelis (acting properly in their own self defense) to destroy the homes and poof! instant popularity for the Hezbollah. Brilliant!