The series of events: abductions of Israeli soldiers by Hamas and Hizbollah, the Israeli air assaults on Gaza and Lebanon, the rockets fired by Hizbollah [corrected from ‘Hamas’: 7-17-2006] into Haifa and other parts of northern Israel, the Israeli artillery responding–all of these happenings and more now amount to the larger picture–a new Middle East war.
America supplies Israel with enormous airpower, and war jets (F-15s and the like) are able to destroy parts of large, visible targets like the Lebanon airport and the Hizbollah TV headquarters. But how much does this really further Israel’s war aims, and how much does it give Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his cabinet an exaggerated sense of power?
Did Israel overplay its hand due to its military reach and fall into a dangerous provocation? The attack on the airport near Beirut was followed by an attack on an Israeli warship off the coast, which has reported four sailors missing, Reuters writes, and continues:

“Israeli media have said the ship was hit by an airborne drone packed with explosives late on Friday. The army said the vessel was badly damaged and had been towed back to Israel.”

Hizbollah is definitely using some serious hardware in their attacks, perhaps with some connivance of official powers in Lebannon. Long thought of by some as a Shia proxy of Iran, it may have backing from the Iranians on some weaponry. If that is true, then bombing oil tankers and U.S. Naval vessels in the straits of the Persian Gulf would be like shooting, say, shooting fish in the barrel, by the way. Regardless, war mongers have found the war planets (Mars and stuff..) in line or something, and are cheering for more blood, like “Moonbat” Michael Ledeen here:

“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.”

America has enough to deal with right now, like overcoming the moralizing pretensions of chicken-hawks like Joe Lieberman and George W. Bush and withdrawing from Iraq (that, at least, is the view of this chicken-dove: that while America has unleashed a nightmare in Iraq, that is not what it was trying to do; so now, I do not envision that American power is working toward a compounded nightmare, however..you see where I am going with this), and any suggestion of attacking Iran or Syria because of this new war by the Mediteranean is stupid and absurd. Those trying to draw America into a third front (after Afghanistan and Iraq) should reconsider.
As for those directly involved in this mess–Israel, Hizbollah controlled southern Lebanon (and it’s hard to tell how much else of the country) and Hamas-administered Palestine–they should all realize that last month’s angry stalemate is better than today’s war. But many in all three places may doubt that, and those in Gaza must be wondering what all that talk of “withdrawal” was all about. But for all these groups, those playing them off each other are complicit in what is happening, including the attacks on civilians and disproportionate escalations.
This war is a proxy war to some extent–none of these groups could fund their military or paramilitary operations on their own, which sends a clear message: that all regional powers should stop arming them.
[photo: AP]