Up the down escalator

Israel Hits Hezbollah's Beirut Offices, Damascus Road, Escalating Conflict reads the headline on today’s Bloomberg page. If you read the article you’ll also see that Hezbollah has been launching a flotilla of inaccurate ballistic missiles into towns, cities and villages because to them there is no difference between civilians and soldiers unless of course the direction of fire is reversed. Yet we read that a directed and precise attack against Hezbollah offices and facilities is “escalation.”
All the pictures on CNN show Lebenon in flames, you have to search to find the parts about the scores of rockets hitting Israeli towns and ships and the pictures are scanty at best.

Maybe I’m prejudiced. None of us are free from bias, but by such definitions, the Allies escalated WW II by invading Normandy.

All the presidents I can remember refer to Israel as an ally. I wonder whether other allies don't wonder what would happen to them if neighboring countries launched missile barrages against civilian targets - for years. Would they expect America to stand by and advise restraint while huge armies invaded them as we seem to do with Israel?

When Hezbollah has attacked our military installations and war ships without provocation we did nothing much and when the same groups attack our "ally" we ask for "restraint." How at odds with the usual bellicosity and bravado of the Bush administration, how strange. Can our other allies like Japan or South Korea expect us to protect them against a North Korean attack or advise restraint to the survivors?

The answer to the question of American commitment to its friends depends of course, on how much oil they have.