YET MORE WAR (and a comment that sums it all up!)

[ProSense]

July 12, 2006

YET MORE WAR....Hamas's success at instigating a full-blown war with Israel in Gaza has apparently inspired Hezbollah to try and start a full-blown war of its own with Israel in southern Lebanon. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, Hezbollah's cross-border strike and abduction of two Israeli soldiers is playing well with the hometown crowd:

"Look, we're used to it — 25 years, 26 years it's been like this," Hassan Qaryani, a 21-year-old butcher from Burj Rahal, said of the airstrikes. The kidnapping, he said, was "like a crown on my head . . . as soon as I heard the news I was overjoyed. It was like Italy winning the World Cup."

In the southern suburbs of Beirut, people handed out candy in the streets and set off fireworks. Fireworks also were set off on the airport road, snarling traffic.

Yasser Arafat, wherever he might be warming his toes at the moment, has much to answer for. How different would the world be if he had accepted Ehud Barak's peace offer six years ago and put his personal reputation behind making it work?

As for Israel, I have no idea what they think their response is going to accomplish. They're retaliating in exactly the way that the most militant members of Hamas and Hezbollah were hoping for, and it's unlikely that there's any exit strategy for them that actually improves their internal security or their strategic position. We've been down this road a dozen times before, after all.

Sigh.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009161.php

Anybody seen that roadmap to peace, anywhere??

Is there any area of foreign policy this moronic Administration hasn’t totally failed in??? George W. Bush has to be the biggest failure in the history of this planet…

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_07/009161.php#918786

Failure is a good word!

[TallahasseeGrannie]

1. I have reached a point

where it just rolls off my shoulders anymore. I am numb. That's not a good thing.

[bdamomma]

6. you're getting desensitized.

[cantstandbush]

2. I see they are still blaming it all on Arafat. As though the living

leaders in Israel play no part in this. Failure is the only word. The entire world has failed. The blood is on everyone's shoes.

[Blue_In_AK]

3. I would like to hear more

about the Palestinian prisoners who have been held by the Israelis for years, supposedly the motivation behind the kidnapping of the first Israeli soldier. Does anybody know what the story is there? It seems we always hear just one side of this conflict.

[originalpckelly]

4. We're talking about a handful of people...

on either side who have been killed or captured. It is simply not worth starting an entire war that may kill thousands of people. I know it must be difficult at times for these people to step back and realize what they are doing, now they need to do that or something terrible will happen.

[chill_wind]

5. Failure? Or the greatest success, depending on your perspective,

for weapons and nuke manufacturers, dirty arms dealers and our whole rotten (permanent base-building) war-profiteering cabal of war and death industy pioneers. They've've selectively armed enough of that region over the decades to the teeth.

No one can think they're the least bit ready to let the good times end now, surely.

[OwnedByFerrets]

7. I keep thinking that the

far-right christian fanatics are behind this. Doesn't Israel have to be utterly destroyed before the "rapture" can happen? I'm sure that "god" has spoken to them and said it was alright to hasten it a bit with some well planned prodding in the right places. I'm just saying......:sarcasm:

[chill_wind]

8. I'm no expert in dominionist theology, but

I think that's the whole eschatological ballgame, yes. But then there's also that pre-trib, post-trib thing.

The present machiavel/straussians in power know exactly how to manipulate and expoit them. Bush's base. Religion is the opiate of the masses. The end justifies the means.

Just as Hitler needed his willing Christian foot-soldiers to march in his cause as his mighty Nazi State "bulwark against the godless bolsheviks", the neo-cons needed Bush's carefully wooed, extreme RRR base to keep funding, fueling and fanatically cheering the current mid-east agenda, no matter how costly in worldly terms.

The Neocons and their contractor pals knew exactly who their best political tool for this was to be. And he has been that much. Their total willing tool.