Austin Bay links to Michael Totten’s most recent report from Lebanon (if you haven’t been reading Totten’s blog and series, you should do so).

On the subject of Hezbollah’s “Divine Victory,” Bay says:

Our enemies are masters of media manipulation. But “information victories” without on the ground success are thin facades.

I agree that “information victories” are thin facades. They are better, however, than no victories at all. What’s more: score enough of them that are “sticky” (per Malcolm Gladwell) and you can actually change a narrative. That makes “information victories” very important in a hearts-and-minds war such as the one that Hezbollah continues to wage. We shouldn’t underestimate their importance.

It is dispiriting to watch various jihadi and Islamist groups, in the West and everywhere else, manipulate the media again and again. It is way past time for the West to start scoring some “information victories” of its own—particularly in the (seeming) absence of “real” victories.

We cannot afford too many “information victories” for jihadis and Islamists. l

The joker who impersonates the “prime minister” of the Palestinian Authority—Ismail Haniyeh—issues his fifteenth (or fiftieth—whatever) statement regarding Hamas’s position vis-a-vis Israel. Just in case you’re interested:

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Saturday that his Hamas group would be willing to accept a temporary Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in exchange for a 10-year truce with Israel.

Do I hear twenty years? twenty-five?

Get out your handkerchiefs:

“I have been called a liar,” Carter said … “I have been called an anti-Semite,” he said. “I have been called a bigot. I have been called a plagiarist. I have been called a coward. Those kind of accusations, they concern me, but they don’t detract from the fact the book is accurate and is needed.”

Un-huh. Just look how much it has done for the Palestinians.

Jon Stewart: “Wait a minute—they got rum and opium and we got tea?”
Michael Oren: “Yeah. And we dumped the tea in the harbor.”
courtesy of the Daily Show: