Lebanon, Again

The Israelis want another go
By Justin Raimondo

"The Israelis, stung by their defeat at the hands of Hezbollah, are aching for a rematch. There have been a number of border incidents since the IDF retreated and the blockade was lifted, the most recent – and most brazen – occurring when the Israelis crossed a security fence, purportedly to search for explosives planted by Hezbollah. They could – and did – use this pretext to launch an invasion, and, in the process, level half the country. The Israelis are merely waiting for the right moment, and that moment, I'm afraid, will come fairly soon unless they're reined in by Washington.

This last is highly unlikely, however: indeed, the dynamics run the other way. Last time around, the neocons in the administration reportedly egged the somewhat reluctant Israelis on, and were sorely disappointed when Tel Aviv relented. Next time, they'll go all the way to Beirut – and won't stop until the Americans get to Tehran.

Those who fear war with Iran had best look to Lebanon, where the first shots are being fired. It is, so far, a proxy war, with the Israelis as our stand-ins and Hezbollah allied with the Iranians. It is only a matter of time, however, before the proxies are dispensed with, and the Americans meet the Iranians on the battlefield.

This is what the American "surge" in Iraq is all about: the White House is preparing for a confrontation with the Iranians. Washington knows full well that, in answer to U.S. airstrikes, Tehran will target U.S. troops caught in the middle of Iraq's civil war. The President has authorized U.S. troops to go after the Iranians supposedly infiltrating Iraq, and the storming of that Iranian consulate in Irbil was not just a random incident. The timing of the crackdown on Shi'ite party militias is also no accident – or does it just so happen that Iran's staunchest Iraqi allies are being suddenly disarmed?.....

Israel's probing the Lebanese frontier is a deliberate provocation, one that will end, if all goes according to plan, in U.S. military action against Iran. Opposing the war in Iraq, now that it's clearly a disaster, is – oddly enough – beside the point. The present danger is the regionalization of the war, which is the real objective of the "surge" – and the clock is ticking. That's why the partisan bickering over how the debate over the anti-surge resolution should proceed in Congress is so dangerous – aside from the sad fact that these wise solons don't even realize what they're voting on. They think they're debating the escalation of the war in Iraq, when what's really going on is an attempt by this administration to extend the war to neighboring countries.

Crippled by their unwillingness to criticize Israel, antiwar Democrats will be sucked into supporting the opening shots of the coming U.S. attack on Iran. The rumblings in Lebanon are the premonitory tremors of a regional earthquake that will shake most of the nations of the Middle East. George W. Bush is far from finished with the long-suffering peoples of the Middle East. The great tragedy is that political resistance to the administration's war moves are too little, too late."

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