Luttwak on Hezbollah

I highlighted some strategic thinking by Edward Luttwak a while back. Well, today Luttwak takes to the Op-Ed pages of the WSJ to suggest an, um...er...interesting way to deal with Hezbollah. He says bribe Bashar Assad of Syria to do a Paulie Walnuts on Hezbollah. Well, give Luttwak points for out of the box thinking. The strategy seems so outlandish to our modern sensibilities but it has a long and distinguished history. The British were masters at it back in the day - offer a bribe to a local thug to do your dirty work to eliminate other pesky local thugs. What is missing though in Luttwak's plan is the final element of the strategy...after the pesky threat is eliminated, stiff the thug on the bribe and tell him his reward is he gets to live. We here in the US used to be pretty good at this as well before we got in touch with our feminine sides.