No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Wargasm

The fruits of the "Bush Doctrine" are now dismally clear. Emboldened by Junior's reckless adventurism in Iraq (in response to an attack by Saudi Arabians), Israeli PM Ehud Olmert - anxious to portray himself as even more bad-ass than Sharon - responds to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by waging a grossly disproportionate shock-and-awe blitzkrieg against Lebanon, slaughtering civilians, destroying the infrastructure, and sealing the country off so that anyone who tries to flee can be picked off like fish in a barrel.

In the US, the lunatic religious right are wetting their pants at this sign o'the End Times. And their secular counterparts, the neonazi-cons, are equally orgasmic. They want the US to join in on Israel's side and up the ante a hundred-fold, until the entire region is racked by death and conflagration. Because that's how you spread freedom and democracy. (It really must be the end times if George Will starts making sense.)

Needless to say, when the US is stretched past the breaking point in Iraq and Afghanistan, and can't even get its own civilians out of Lebanon, that's the perfect time to spark off a whole new war against Iran - because we will be greeted as liberators. So say Bill Kristol and the Hammer of the Krauts respectively, so it must be true.

Jeezus H. Christ on a goddam pennyfarthing bicycle! What planet do these neonazi-con warmongers live on? Even if the Iranians hate their regime - which is undoubtedly the case for a significant percentage of them - anyone with the IQ of a sea cucumber realizes that they are going to hate the US infinitely more once we start destroying their country, and they will rally behind their government, become radicalized, and wage an insurgency that will make the current Iraqi quagmire look like a Methodist covered-dish supper.

Two things the US and Israeli regimes have in common: exceptionalism, the belief that they have a sacred calling which exempts them from norms of civilized behavior; and the conviction that all Arabs and Muslims are crazed, bestial untermenschen carrying a defective gene that fills them with subhuman rage and hatred, and a mindless desire to massacre every Jew on earth. Of course it couldn't possibly be that Muslims have any valid reason to be angry at Israel. When they see Lebanon being destroyed, they should shrug their shoulders and say that it belongs to Israel anyway.

As long as the Israeli tail wags the American dog - and as long as blind overwhelming firepower is seen as the only solution to every problem - there will never be peace in the Middle East, and neither the US nor Israel will be safe.