Weenie Dogs of War

With psychopaths like William Kristol claiming to be real liberals (because even paleocons know they're crazy) who want to spread the benefits of corporate dinocracy by force of arms, and the Middle East heating up with every day November draws closer, two excellent analyses come to mind.

The first is by that cautious pessimist:

Israel's war upon Lebanon would be a disproportionate response if Israel were actually responding to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers. It isn't, of course. (If it were, we may have seen a limited cross-border incursion that resembled a rescue mission, rather than these blunt-force deep attacks on Lebanese infrastructure.) Rather the war, like most wars of aggression, is a response to the pathological necessities of the aggressor's ideology.

America's Countdown: Tehran has been stuck at 20 minutes and holding for a couple of months now, derailed by Iran's rational posture regarding its nuclear ambitions and the ongoing thwarting of anything approaching even the Bush administration's benchmark for a casus belli. Israel's hawks, by smashing in the back door, are baiting Iran to action, which would goad the US to crash through the front. Israeli military claims, trumpeted by FoxNews, that the Haifa rockets were fired by Iranian Guard units, and the absurd suggestion that Hezbollah intends to transport their captured soldiers to Iran, say forcefully that this isn't about Lebanon, though for now it will be mostly the Lebanese who perish. (Interestingly, The Jerusualem Post noted yesterday that "Before the attack on Haifa, CNN reported that the US Navy ordered one of their ships that was docked at the Haifa Bay to be moved to a safer location." Though the story has since been removed.)

This is a war crime of opportunity, calculated to at last draw out Iran and draw in American arms to finish what they began in Iraq. Madness is the method, and Death was never going to take a holiday this summer...

As always, the comments at Jeff's site are a mixture of total bullshit disinformation and penetrating analyses. I particularly like the one about the Barbara P.

The other more mainstream progressive analysis to note is Arthur Silber's:

Some people seem to think I'm suggesting that there is a conspiracy of some kind, involving those in the U.S. and in Israel who hope to intentionally provoke a broader regional war. My repeated observation that "it's all about Iran" appears to have played a large part in this view of my remarks. I have never put much store in conspiracy thinking of any kind. My approach is the Occam's Razor one: to put it informally, in the absence of other factors and other evidence, the simplest explanation is the right one. And "conspiracy" is a very odd word to use in this context. The neocons and their supporters have announced their plans explicitly for many years. If this is a conspiracy, it's one conducted before the entire world, and utilizing one of the biggest PR campaigns of all time.

In recent days, we have had several high profile examples of these announcements once again -- but I note that identical remarks stretch back to the 1990s. From the other day, here is Michael Ledeen:
"No one should have any lingering doubts about what’s going on in the Middle East. It’s war, and it now runs from Gaza into Israel, through Lebanon and thence to Iraq via Syria. There are different instruments, ranging from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon and on to the multifaceted "insurgency" in Iraq. But there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable.
"It is very good news that the White House immediately denounced Iran and Syria, just as Ambassador Khalilzad had yesterday tagged the terrorist Siamese twins as sponsors of terrorism in Iraq.
"...The only way we are going to win this war is to bring down those regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and they are not going to fall as a result of fighting between their terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon on the one hand, and Israel on the other. Only the United States can accomplish it."

Here is Andrew Sullivan:
"It's hard to avoid the conclusion from the fast-changing events in the Middle East that we are approaching a wider conflagration. The Maliki government is hanging by a thread as Casey begs for more troops for Baghdad. Only three years too late. Iran's success in infiltrating and controlling a large chunk of Iraq has now emboldened the mullahs not merely to press ahead with nuclear weapons but also to attack Israel via Hezbollah. This has always been a regional conflict, with Iran and Syria as dangerous than Saddam ever was. The Middle East has exploded before, of course. But not with 130,000 American troops stationed in the heart of it."

And here is William Kristol, in an article titled, "It's Our War":
"What's happening in the Middle East, then, isn't just another chapter in the Arab-Israeli conflict. What's happening is an Islamist-Israeli war. You might even say this is part of the Islamist war on the West--but is India part of the West? Better to say that what's under attack is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States.
"...No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria (a secular government that has its own reasons for needing Iranian help and for supporting Hezbollah and Hamas), little state sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah. And no Shiite Iranian revolution, far less of an impetus for the Saudis to finance the export of the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam as a competitor to Khomeini's claim for leadership of militant Islam--and thus no Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and perhaps no Hamas either.
" ...The war against radical Islamism is likely to be a long one. Radical Islamism isn't going away anytime soon. But it will make a big difference how strong the state sponsors, harborers, and financiers of radical Islamism are. Thus, our focus should be less on Hamas and Hezbollah, and more on their paymasters and real commanders--Syria and Iran. And our focus should be not only on the regional war in the Middle East, but also on the global struggle against radical Islamism.
"...The right response is renewed strength--in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

Given these kinds of views and this sort of perspective, all of which are shared by some of the key people in the Bush administration (most notably in the Cheney wing), it isn't necessary for Israel and the U.S. to concoct or arrange stories...

It's amazing and unsettling when a raving (but interesting) conspiracy theorist like Jeff Wells hits the nail squarely on the head. In comparing and contrasting the views of Silber and Wells, let me note that once again Shystee's model of emergent conspiracy works fine here, too.