Brooks: As Israel Goes for Withdrawal, Its Enemies Go Berserk:

In all other crises, the Palestinians, thanks to Yasir Arafat’s strenuous efforts, owned their own cause, but now the clerics in Iran are taking control of the Palestinian cause and turning it into a weapon in a much larger struggle.

In all other crises there was a negotiation process, a set of plans and some hope of reconciliation. But this crisis is different. Iran doesn’t do road maps. The jihadists who are driving this crisis don’t do reconciliation.

From Tom Friedman:

The world needs to understand what is going on here: the little flowers of democracy that were planted in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories are being crushed by the boots of Syrian-backed Islamist militias who are desperate to keep real democracy from taking hold in this region and Iranian-backed Islamist militias desperate to keep modernism from taking hold.

It may be the skeptics are right: maybe democracy, while it is the most powerful form of legitimate government, simply can’t be implemented everywhere. It certainly is never going to work in the Arab-Muslim world if the U.S. and Britain are alone in pushing it in Iraq, if Europe dithers on the fence, if the moderate Arabs cannot come together and make a fist, and if Islamist parties are allowed to sit in governments and be treated with respect — while maintaining private armies.

The whole democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is at stake here, and right now it’s going up in smoke.

There is another element at work here as well. It is the effort by Iranian leaders (Holocaust deniers, nuclear weapon seekers, and general assholes) to taunt the U.S. They know that the U.S. is stretched thin in terms of military options and even thinner when it comes to an ability to have a defined strategy and execute on that strategy.

So Iran is sending their lackeys to murder in Iraq, to bomb in Northern Israel and to kidnap in Gaza. And just beneath the surface of these actions is a question for the cowboys out West. “What are you going to do about it?”

Think about it. Bush and Blair set out to remake the Middle East to give some stability to the oil rich region. We’ve now not only got a lot less stability, but Bush and Blair are, at least as of this moment, not even close to having significant control of the historical events taking place on the ground.

On the other hand, Iran may have overplayed its hand. The lack of outrage among many Arab governments is loud and clear. Many see this moment as a key opportunity to sit back and let Israel put the thumb on Hezbollah and Hamas – both of which are seen as threats to existing regimes and an unwelcome extension of Iran’s manipulation of regional events.

Even for the Middle East, these are complicated times.

Camus and Zidane Offer Views on How Things End:

Of all the planetary audience for the final, the only ones who did not know what had happened were those in the stadium. Because the defining act of the match, and perhaps the tournament, took place far from the ball, only those with access to television replays could see Zidane down Marco Materazzi.

As a result, tens of thousands of spectators, those actually watching the game in real life, had to resort to calling or texting friends, often in faraway places like the United States or Japan, to find out what was happening in Berlin. Why was Zidane, the resurgent French hero, walking with a bowed head from the field?

When I was a kid, my bookshelves were lined with a series of history books called “We Were There.”

Hard to imagine those would sell much these days, when being there is often the best place to miss a story. I’ve always wondered why, for example, journalists show up to cover political debates while sitting in the same room as the participants.

Who cares how the show plays live?

Who knows, maybe this is the root of Zidane’s own hesitation when it comes to making public comment on his final football header. He needs to watch the replay a few times to figure out what the hell happened.

Update: I’m not sure I’m translating the French exactly right, but I’m pretty sure he said: “The Italians had a plan to bug me until I self-destructed and it worked pretty well.”

Why aren’t more people irritated by Anderson Cooper? It could be because they’re not watching.

On average, only some 630,000 viewers a night tune in to Anderson Cooper 360, to watch Anderson Cooper do his professional duties.

It’s not just that Anderson Cooper 360 doesn’t get American Idol ratings. Or that it doesn’t get Grey’s Anatomy ratings or O’Reilly Factor ratings or On the Record with Greta van Susteren ratings.

Many nights, Mr. Cooper doesn’t even do as well as his predecessor Aaron Brown, the ice to his fire, the old-fashioned, bespectacled anchor who was booted in 2005 to make room for Mr. Cooper.

Hype is reality.