Connecting the Dots in the Middle East

In the Middle East one piece of bad news follows another on the airwaves these days. The situation in Iraq is a mess and the only reason that country has not descended into a really bloody civil war appears to be that the US and it's allies are playing policemen on the scene, at least for the moment. Afghanistan is still problematical. The Palestinians and Israelis are nowhere close to resolving their differences. And now, Lebanon becomes the latest flash point as Israel and the forces of Hezbollah go head to head. At least in Lebanon, the guns and rockets have gone silent for the moment, at least.

When Seymour Hersh, the noted journalist, appeared last night on one of the cable news shows. His comments on one of his recent pieces that was run in New Yorker Magazine might help us to make some sense of everything that is happening in this most recent season of war. He suggested that Israel was encouraged [read bullied into] to resort to an ill-advised shock-and-awe display of air power in the recent days in Lebanon. This has the modus operendi of the hawks in the Bush administration in the Iraqi campaign.

Hersh also suggests that this was a way of sending a message to Iran and Syria not to meddle in Israeli-Lebanese affairs. If Ariel Sharon were still at the helm of Israel, would this have happened? Maybe and maybe not. But one suspects that Sharon would have been a little more savvy, than to believe that the air campaign in Lebanon was going to stop Hezbollah. The usually clueless Mr. Bush certainly believes that it did just that, as evidenced by his comments that Hezbollah was "defeated" in this last round of fighting. Indeed. In what alternate universe would that be even nominally true?

But Mr. Hersh goes one step further. He asserts that this destructive little skirmish was a test run for tactics that George Bush and his hawks want to employ against Iran in a preemptive strike to take out Iran's nuclear capability. Observers inside the Beltway are beginning to get the sense that Mr. Bush is laying the groundwork to indeed make a preemptive strike against Iran before the end of his term as President. It would come as little surprise if he did so even without the consent of Congress. This is a President who has opted not to enforce parts of hundreds of bills passed by Congress, because he believes that they are unconstitutional. And Congress and the Supreme Court have let him get away it. So why would it be inconceivable that he would believe he can start another conflict, simply because he and his advisors believe that it is a good idea?

Certainly this is just a "what-if" scenario being floated by one of the more intuitive reporters on the scene today. But the internal logic of Mr. Hersh's scenario certainly makes the confusing swirl of events in the Middle East begin to make some kind of sense. If we connect the dots and see where we will be drawing the next line, maybe we will begin to see that it is time we need to start demanding some hard answers of this administation as to where they are leading us. Maybe we should have done that a long time ago.