by Patrick J. Buchanan – April 16, 2003

No one knows how America’s occupation of Iraq will play out.

Optimists say this will be like Germany and Japan after World War II, which were converted into democratic allies for the duration of the Cold War. Pessimists point to Lebanon and Israel’s invasion of 1982.

Put me down among the pessimists. I think Brer Rabbit just hit the tar baby.

In 1982, after a terror attack maimed an Israeli diplomat in London, Ariel Sharon sent his army crashing into Lebanon to expel a PLO that Israel claimed was a mortal peril to its northern border.