Hezbollah is SO Cool

Check out this article by Hannah Allam of McClatchy Newspapers.

Ms. Allam suffers from Tom Swift syndrome - overuse of adjectives and adverbs, always to the advantage of Hezbollah and the disadvantage of Israel.

Here are some wonderful quotes from her article (the emphasis is mine):

Hezbollah guards armed with shiny machine guns reappeared at their posts at the mouth of Beirut's southern suburbs Tuesday...

"Shiny machine guns"? Why not just "machine guns"? Or just "armed Hezbollah guards"?

If anyone doubts that Hezbollah still rules its crumbling urban fiefdom, spokesman Hussein Naboulsi offers foreign reporters daily tours in defiance of the Israeli drones that hover overhead.

"In defiance". Makes Hezbollah seem pretty powerful, doesn't it?

And what about this?

"Despite all the air raids, despite the destruction, despite the killing of civilians, we're still here," Naboulsi said triumphantly Tuesday from a patch of rubble. "We're still here, standing on our feet with our heads held up to the sky. And we will resist."

Hmm. If Ms. Allam ever loses her job as a journalist, I'm sure she could quickly find one writing Hezbollah recruitment posters.

Hezbollah's ability to regroup so quickly in a place where acrid smoke is still rising from fresh targets illustrates the futility of Israel's initial aim of dismantling the militant network.

What a Negative Nelly this reporter is.

The group operates 14 schools, whose students typically fall in the highest percentile of standardized testing scores, and three major hospitals, and it funds several smaller clinics.

In Ms. Allam’s eyes, Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization, but runs the best schools this side of the Euphrates. Maybe we should turn Washington State schools over to them so our children have a better chance of passing the WASLs.

Ms. Allam ends her love-fest with the following:

Few visible remnants of Hezbollah operations remain in the south, around Beirut or on the main highway that links the capital with Syria: The charity bureaus, the political offices, the homes used by the group's iconic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, are all gone.

Those darned Israelis. All they do is bomb “charity bureaus” and “political offices”. Ms. Allam neglects to mention the rocket launch sites, arsenals, and staging areas that are also now gone.

Sigh. It makes me wonder, what DO they teach journalism students in college these days?