It doesn't make any sense.
Moreover, the Lebanese government elected last year was pro-American! Why risk causing it to fall by hitting the whole country so hard?
I've had a message from a European reader that leads me to consider a Peak Oil Theory of the US-Israeli war on Lebanon (and by proxy on Iran). I say, "consider" the "theory" because this is a thought experiment. I put it on the table to see if it can be knocked down, the way you would preliminary hypotheses in a science experiment.
The presentation got kind of freaky then. He said the US government wanted to stop state-controlled Iranian or Chinese (or Indian) companies from controlling the oil. JFR says the US Government is convinced that this battle will decide the future of the world. It sounded like he was talking about 'the one ring' in lord of the rings. he who controls Iran controls them all.'
China and India could get Iran, and Iran could get Lebanon, and as non-OPEC energy production decreases, the US and Israel could find themselves out in the cold on the energy front.
It may be that that hawks are thinking this way: Destroy Lebanon, and destroy Hizbullah, and you reduce Iran's strategic depth. Destroy the Iranian nuclear program and you leave it helpless and vulnerable to having done to it what the Israelis did to Lebanon. You leave it vulnerable to regime change, and a dragooning of Iran back into the US sphere of influence, denying it to China and assuring its 500 tcf of natural gas to US corporations. You also politically reorient the entire Gulf, with both Saddam and Khamenei gone, toward the United States. Voila, you avoid peak oil problems in the US until a technological fix can be found, and you avoid a situation where China and India have special access to Iran and the Gulf.
The second American Century ensues. The "New Middle East" means the "American Middle East."
And it all starts with the destruction of Lebanon.
More wars to come, in this scenario, since hitting Lebanon was like hitting a politician's bodyguard. You don't kill a bodyguard just to kill the bodyguard. It is phase I of a bigger operation.
If the theory is even remotely correct, then global warming is not the only danger in continuing to rely so heavily on hydrocarbons for energy. Green energy--wind, sun, geothermal-- is all around us and does not require any wars to obtain it. Indeed, if we had spent as much on alternative energy research as we have already spent on the Iraq War, we'd be much closer to affordable solar. A choice lies ahead: hydrocarbons, a 20 foot rise in sea level, and a praetorian state. Or we could go green and maybe keep our republic and tame militarism.
"Taming militarism" is the key. As long as there is megabucksandpower in oil, it will be very, very difficult. The above is today's recommended read.
Update:
The Last Chance Democracy Cafe
Could Bush and the neoconservatives really be that cruel - destroying an entire country as nothing more than a chess move in the Great Game? Real men and women and, of course, real children too - lots of them - their lives spent as part of a Machiavellian scheme that is sure in the end to blow up in our faces anyway, just like everything else these would-be Churchills touch.
This would be so much crueler than even Iraq; the same pattern of lies, to be sure, but at least in Iraq they could claim to be trying to bring a better life to the Iraqis, even if that was never the actual goal. But how is Lebanon supposed to benefit from this? Where’s its supposed payoff for having its infrastructure (and citizens) blown to hell?
Could the neocons really be that cruel?
And if they are, when does bad policy at last become something more than bad policy? When does it become a crime? (my em)
It has already become a crime. The question is, when do they get held accountable for it? It better be soon.
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