Guns blazing

Jeffrey Goldberg (h/t Instapundit)

It’s been a tough year already for Hezbollah’s apologists; the assassination of Imad Mugniyah, the terrorist many of Hezbollah’s friends denied existed until Hezbollah gave him what amounted to a state funeral, hurt the cause of those on the left, in particular, who wanted to whitewash Hezbollah’s violent, anti-democratic program.

And that’s not to mention the news that Hezbollah has been caught re-arming in defiance of Resolution 1701.

The apologists are still hard at work, I was astonished the other day by the AFP reports.

A blindfolded pro-government detainee begs Hezbollah gunmen for mercy in west Beirut on May 9, 2008. Hezbollah fighters, their guns blazing, seized control of west Beirut after three days of street battles with pro-government foes pushed Lebanon dangerously close to all-out civil war. The sectarian fighting had eased by early afternoon and the army and police moved across areas now in the hands of Iranian-backed Shiite opposition forces who routed Sunni militants loyal to the Western-backed government.

(emphases mine)

That was one of a series of pictures with varying first sentences followed by the “Hezbollah fighter” boilerplate. Yes the heroic fighters with their “guns blazing” routed the “pro-government foes.”

Snapped Shot puts it nicely:

Does that mean that Agence France-Presse is against the lawfully-elected Lebanese government?

Perhaps that was the cost of reporting from occupied west Beirut.

When Hamas is involved we get to hear how awful it is to ignore the folks who won an election two years ago. So what’s the excuse for cheerleading for Hezbollah who’s fighting a democratically elected government? Oh, I get it the problem is that the government is “Western backed.”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.