Bad news of increasing hostilities continues to pour in from the Middle East, as Israel opens a second offensive against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. This comes on top of military action in the Gaza strip in response to a kidnapped soldier. Israel is ignoring entreaties for restraint from other world powers. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of the Palestianian Authority had an opinion piece expressing his people’s outrage in the Washington Post.
Will there ever be peace between these two groups that so viscerally hate each other? Sometimes I wonder.
Second on the list of Middle East conflagrations: frustrated world powers refer Iran to the UN over its nuclear ambitions. Let’s face the truth, folks…Iran can thumb its nose at the rest of the world for as long as it damn well pleases, because it knows it holds the world by its collective testicles on account of the West’s never-ending thirst for oil. Russia and China are lukewarm to the referral and will continue to be eager trade partners, strengthening Iran’s hand. Policy actions really seem quite limited…but before we cry too much, let us reflect on the fact that Iran is also partially a problem of our own making. What do you expect a country to do when it sees itself placed on the “Axis of Evil” short list and then witnesses its next door “Axis” neighbor invaded? Of course they’re going to build big nasty bombs.
Third is the never-ending sectarian violence in Iraq, the latest being two dozen civilians being grabbed from a bus and shot to death. The prime minister sounded helpless as he implored, “we all have the last chance to reconcile and agree among each other on avoiding conflict and blood. If we fail, God forbid, I don’t know what the fate of Iraq will be.” We know the probable end of this tale, and it probably will not be a unified Iraq. No matter what we do, this hatred of Iraqi vs. Iraqi is not going to stop. If only our own immoral invasion did not now carry the imperative to remain and try to fix an unfixable problem…but that’s the risk you take when you start wars.
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