NEWT & ISRAEL'S GROUND INVASION??

To the fore comes the portly silverhaired Field Marshall Newt Gingrich agleam over Israel's latest if not 'final solution' for the Lebanese civilians who coddle the very Hezbollah the Israelis themselves with their vaunted state of the killer-art failed to vanquish in its brutal invasion of Lebanon twenty years prior-- Aroused from his mahogany foxhole where he has been holed up with the demons of his Iraqi misadventure by the Israeli decision to attack the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon to

• A.) Show the world they the Eternal Victim could kill civilians with the best of them: Al Quaeda, Sunni Insurgents, Shia Insurgents, The United States, Britain, Russia, Muslim Brotherhoods, Tamil Tigers, etc.
• B.) Bomb Lebanese civilians until Hezbolla returns their captured soldiers
• C.) Start World War Three replete with repetitious black and white newsreel footage of Newtie himself mounting the deadly lecturn to proclaim infamy and/or the latest Third Wave of something and/or to claim once more some bona-fide revolutionary status--
• D.) Destroy Lebanese rebuilt economy and tourism industry (popular among french travelers) in retribution for France's failure to collaborate with Shock & Awe and also for the Intifadas having ruined Israeli tourism--
• E.) Confront and then project their own self-hatred and force America to accept its own Inner-Israeli
• F.) To conflame the entire Middle-East fullfilling the fantasies of the neocon Final Days brigades
• G.) All of the above and everything else not listed

Newt positively beaming declares World War III is up and running-- The Israeli attacks have roused many other despondent neocons from the lethargies of their depressed hubris -- Thwarted by their Iraqi quagmire and the surrogate resistance to attacking Iran from the Retired Generals the necon criminal cabal may have tried to start WWIII with their proxy air-blitzkrieg by Israel in Lebanon-- Obviously hoping Iran and Syria will join the fray and induce full scale American participation Israel has brutally opened its pandora's box--Like the adrenalized Newtie op/ed pages across the nation have open space for any and all Israeli guest support and commentary-- These pandering editorials bespeak the same shock and awe type hubris so prevalent at the beginning of the Iraq conflict-- Victory in a Week-- Bring It On-- We'll be welcomed as liberators-- One nostalgia-stupified guest on the Israeli op/ed pages of the Wall Street Journal positively gushed how the aerial onslaught was bringing back the good old days and the glories of six-day wars instead of the neutering intifadas-- Letters and guest columns media-wide proclaim "We are all Israelis now"-- Oblique policy announcements from D.C. hint that 'It will require only a week to disarm Hezbollah'-- 'Condi will go to the Region next week'-- "Israel must be allowed to defend herself"-- No one stops to ask how many moderate Lebanese boys rendered homeless in the Israeli air assaults will take up the tools of terror as a result--

Wake Up!!-- Israel's first push into southern Lebanon was repelled by fierce and sophisticated resistance in difficult terrain(Israeli words) and at least one IDF Commander expressed embarassment-- Hezbollah has laser guided tank-killing weapons and once more for those who mock intent faith a real martyr's will to fight and in this case does not have to triumph outright only live to fight another day-- Instead of offering connecticut/texan type bravado and continuing an assault under-manned and under-armored like boy George and his sec-def genius Rumsfeld, Israel retracted and called up its reserves to mount a reinforced attack or so it says-- Israel already admits that the bombing campaign won't succeed in and of itself but here a smidgeon of doubt creeps into the undercurrents of their macho invasionary rhetoric-- A full scale ground attack while it sounds impressive harkens memories of the extremely costly twenty year occupation of Lebanon which actually gave Hezbollah its genesis as an outcome of all that heady pre-attack optimism in the early eighties-- It also echoes Vietnam in the military minds of Israeli high command and, of course, not to mention the glaring example of quagmired ally Gulliver presently in Iraq--Time though doesn't appear to be on the Israelis' side currently-- If they wait for a re-intensive bombing campaign to sufficiently de-fang Hezbollah the wait may exacerbate the fear-induced slowing of economy in places like Haifa adding the pressure of a deadline sense of urgency to the situation-- If bombing won't do or fails to do the job (exterminate Hezbollah)by Israeli definition the financial expense of the operation jet fuel and military ordinance and jet maintenance only ante up the stress of not meeting its objective-- Israel's economy before the air assault was in the doldrums-- WHO WILL PAY THE BILL??-- Bush prematurely may have already grabbed the tab quite deficient in the knowledge that interest payments through the American taxpayer go to China who makes its oil payment in the circle game of growth capital to none other than Shiite Iran-- 'Duh, They got a Big Country too?'-- Our soldiers continue to bleed while Iran doesn't seem to fire anything but rhetorical ghost guns--

So much for the brilliance in our goat's head strategery-- Israel in vowing to completely destroy Hezbollah may have failed to define an achievable objective, may also have drawn a deadline it won't be able to meet and may have crossed a line in the sand history intends to keep dissolving into more confusion-- Wars like the neocon Bushies should have learned (one hopes but remains confoundingly skeptical) are much easier to start than finish-- The aggressor must succeed as the outcome's victor and so far it appears Bush isn't (Maybe his job was just to get the ball rolling as his signal performance at the G8 belies much ongoing depth of interest--Just wait!!) and his buddy Olmert is in danger of following suit-- Acting in terrain on timelines of other's making make for many mistakes and the contagious possibility of unimagineably (on second thought very imagineably) serious disaster may accompany those mistakes--

Contemplate the possibility of complete U.S. retreat from the Middle East-- A remote proposition less so than a year ago William F. Buckley recently branded unthinkable but in so doing squarely broached and entertained the idea-- Unimagineably especially for those whose province of swagger and myopic hubris 'didn't have to execute such missions or bury the results'-- Unfortunately for the rest of the destabilized Middle East the democratic government of Lebanon announced that if Israel invaded southern Lebanon it would use it's obviously less than first class army to defend not Israel but Hezbollah as it continued to plead the so called world community for a cessation of the ruthless dismemberment of its country its people and its economy--This won't strike great fear into the Israeli military obviously but it does show others where its once moderate loyalties lie and may inspire a less than rose-colored pollyanna view of the one-week war prognostication--(The Bush administration has added another week of carte-blanche to the Israeli assault)-- If the moderates are willing to defend with their own blood Hezbollah what might the immoderate elements have in mind?-- In street demonstrations through the slums of Baghdad Moqtada Sadar's militia vowed to support Hezbollah--

If Bush and his neocon cabal are still drunk on the ambrosia of easy victory everywhere in their re-made Middle East they have probably refused to entertain less than easily optimum outcomes to their rosy scenario--Planning for success and/or failure having demonstrably proven to be their achille's heal, might an even slightly plausible scenario potentially devolve the Al Sistani Shia Nation's up to now patient hospitality toward truck convoys snaking out of Kuwait up through southern Iraq to re-supply and re-arm the American Occupation and what could become its fortuitously fortified but somewhat less secure and possibly very hungry Green Zone--Currently the convoy drivers are mostly Turks who should be, it must be surmised, not just fractionally uneasy about driving into the crosshairs of Shia snipers or their less precise but still quite lethal rpg's not to mention new 4gw weapon of choice nowadays the IED roadside bomb-- Close still counts in horshoes and grenades-- Will the Shiites of Iraq refuse to respond to a full scale ground offensive by Israel intent on 'exterminating' Shiite Hezbollah??-- The Shiites of Iran??-- A question ain't really a question if everybody knows the answer-- Over a proverbial barrel (of oil) a fact even a Newtie should know--