While our friends at the Times are telling us about the new force in Lebanese politics and life (hint: it’s called “Hizbollah”) who has promised rebuilding aid with its bulldozers and a blank check drawn on Iran, it seems that our President was giving his own spin-account of how Israel has managed to crush… Hizbollah. I’m trying to think of who it is I’m reminded of…

Fellow New Yorker Julia hits it out of the park with this observation (and remembrance of things past) about the (shall we say) propitious timing of the recent announcement of the thwarting of the purported terror plot involving U.S. bound airliners from Britain. It seems that British and American officials were in a most heated debate about when and whether to “pull the trigger” and announce the interception and thwarting of the current plot. The British officials noted that many of the perpetrators weren’t ready; passports hadn’t been obtained, for example, among numerous other logistical issues. Further, the British believed...

The United States Department of Homeland Security went to its vaunted (and long-awaited) “red alert” for the first time after British authorities thwarted a plot to blow up a number of U.S. bound airliners using liquid explosives, apparently intended for Heathrow based flights on American, United and Continental Airliens. The red alert applies to certain U.S. bound flights. Air traffic on both sides of the pond, especially London’s Heathrow, slowed down to permit additional security measures, including a virtual ban on all carry on items (save insulin and baby formula). American authorities seemed quite willing to jump to the conclusion...

The Grey Lady treats us to this discussion of increasing violence in Baghdad , where it appears that a reduction in American operations has been followed by an increase in violence. Why? Draw your own conclusions. The correlation of these events seems clear enough for American commanders to double the American presence in the capital city from around 7,000 American troops to around 14,000 for what is described as a city of 7,000,000; I should note that I had previously seen Baghdad’s population described as around 5,000,000. (That alone should tell you something– our occupation levels in Germany, for example,...

And so it continues… the insane Israeli bombardment of Lebanon continues with attacks against Christian-dominated areas north of Beirut, following over 100 Hizbollah rockets fired into Israel (killing at least 8), and for good measure, a rather large protest against Israel and the United States took place in Baghdad. I realize that not merely as an American Jew, but as an American, neither I, nor anyone, is to question the actions of Israel (or of course, the United States). But things have gone way too far now: the ordinarily savvy Israelis (say what you will, but up to now, their...

The Grey Lady informs us that the voters from Kansas have thrown out the members of the State School Board who imparted “intelligent design” to the state’s science curriculum. It appears that the primary voters of Kansas (at least a majority of them) have reconsidered, and perhaps realized that condemning their public school children in this ever more competitive world to a science curriculum at odds with the best rational scientific evidence available was not, as a curriculum matter, “intelligent design”. The new board wiill be primed to reverse Kansas’s current foray into the arguably unconstitutionally theocratic. It would probably...

This morning’s WaPo gives us this analysis of Middle East events. There are some great money lines (I’ll give you some in a second), but the premise seems to be that the immaturity and stupidity that thinks that Middle East problems have been intractable for something and therefore “something” has to be done, or even “something different,” no matter how shortsighted or irresponsible, has put the United States, and in this case, Israel, in about as isolated and untenable position as they have been in… well, anybody remembers. One money line calls what will happen in Lebanon now, especially after...

Oceania’s favorite comedy duo, our beloved President and Airstrip One’s regional premier Tony Blair, got together to offer their pathetically inadequate and untimely proposal to handle the current internal crisis raging in Western Eurasia, by proposing an international buffer force in Lebanon. I’ve already alluded to our complete loss of an honest broker role, having more or less permitted Israel to open fire, damn the consequences. The problem as noted in numerous posts by Billmon is that Israel’s military has fallen pray to the American maladies of becoming bloated on overfunding while fearful of casualties from ground-fighting and hence not...

Yes, shocked I tell you to find that the Arab street has wholeheartedly embraced Hizbollah as the battle between the well-armed militia/terrorist group within Lebanon and the Israeli state continues into its third week. For its part, Israel has evidently decided against expanding the conflict beyond its current (pretty damned wide) parameters. Hundreds of Lebanese (and dozens of Israelis) have been killed in the fighting, with many times that wounded. It appears that Israel has recognized that it is unlikely to eliminate Hizbollah, with its thousands of rockets and millions (well, over a million, anyway) likely supporters in Lebanon, and...