Lebanon

[drscott]

Lots of news this morning. As usual, Lebanon's people are being dragged into war by external parties. They recently threw off the domination of Syria, but haven't been able to gain control over Hezbollah in the south -- Hezbollah has enough support to remain a tolerated faction. Now the financiers of terror (in this case, Iran) are getting their desired distraction in the form of a war on Israel, rockets have hit Haifa, and innocents on all sides are dying. To the extent that Israel has made some effort to avoid noncombatant casualties, I give them credit. But it's still tragic that Lebanon must suffer so that the hatreds of others can play out. I've been chatting with lebocub, who hopes it will blow over soon. Meanwhile, Beirut has been leafleted from the sky with warnings to avoid Hezbollah facilities.

This is ominous because it may trigger open warfare with Iran and a global crisis.

Comments

[pklexton.livejournal.com]

Yes, this does have a disturbingly worse-than-unusual, very bad feel to it. (Kind of like the feeling I had early on about the cartoon crisis).

Unfortunately with the current crowd in charge Washington I am not very confident of their crisis management capabilities. The only area in which they excel seems to be to manipulate crises to serve pre-existing agendas of their constituency. So that adds another element of fuel for the fire. Usually intervention from the White House is the most likely way these things get defused. This White House has credibility only on one side of the dispute.

[friendofjack.livejournal.com]

The only area in which they excel seems to be to manipulate crises to serve pre-existing agendas of their constituency.

Don't forget that this administration also has another area of excellence: making things worse than they were before.

We should tell the Syrians that if they don't straighten up and start acting right, we'll invade their country and mismanage it.