Alas Lebanon

Everybody loves war. Once the shooting starts you don’t have to make sense any more and making sense can be a problem when you’re a politician. I’ve accused this administration of seeking a war for the sole purpose of increasing and consolidating power in the hands of a small group of oligarchs and I still stand by that story.

Now we hear from Mr. Gingrich who wants Bush to declare WW III. Of course only Congress can declare war and Gingrich hasn’t told us with whom we are at war, but the fact that someone set off some bombs in India, North Korea tested some missiles without warheads, etc, is sufficient unto him. And why should we do this? Because if we can say there’s a war on, we can do anything and in fact anyone can do anything – because there’s a war on and all’s fair therein according to Shakespeare ( or was it Smedley?).

And just what would Mr. Gingrich have done in the world pursuant to the new doctrine of anything goes? Well it doesn’t look encouraging for Lebanon, at least in the short term. Newton thinks Israel should just take it over.

"Israel wouldn't leave southern Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean them all out, and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring missiles to resupply them would be shot down. This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts."

The only difference between this and Bush’s “strategy” in Iraq is of course that Iraq never attacked us and could not have had they wanted to. The cost of “Victory” is left out of the equation.

Of course Newt’s forked tongue is planted firmly in his cheek, what he is doing is delineating a marketing strategy for the GOP in November. Declaring war simplifies thinking and that attracts simple minds and patriotic votes. Public opinion is tiring of War Without End but quoted in the Seattle Times yesterday, he suggests that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message becomes "OK, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"

Forget about red and blue, all we can see is black and white. There’s a war on. Win or lose and forget all other considerations. Will this be the GOP message this fall? Will prophesying war become self fulfilling? When George Bush begins to seem like a moderate, I begin to worry. Speaking to Tony Blair in private before the G8 meeting today, he was overheard saying.

"See, the irony is what they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit."

He might actually be right. We may be better off without war and that goes for Lebanon and Israel and everyone else. Somebody needs to stop this shit.