Levant Rant, Revisited

[Dear Hearts, it is the unwritten rule that one doesn't delete posts or edit them after posting, I guess you might call it the "Jack Kerouac Rule".

Well, I do make minor edits, correct spelling and typos. However, to redo an entire post I won't. Thing is I was going through my stuff and updated, by mistake an essay I already published here. Soo, I redo it here, hoping that it is more tightly written then the first.

I also hope, and you should also, that I am completely out to lunch on this topic, 'cause I'm talking WWIII here...]

The escalating conflict between Israel and Lebanon, not to mention Gaza will end, where? Hopefully soon, but holding your breath is not a life positive choice.

There is so much hypocrisy and lowdown meanness involved on all sides, it hardly seems worth the effort to portion it out – there is more than enough to cover everyone in shame.

Are Iran and Syria, one or the other – or both – the black hands behind Hezbollah’s provocations? Is the Israeli response measured against Hezbollah or are there other cookies in the oven? It’s hard to know and even less easy to speak about what is going on here. It could also be the crank up to long awaited action(s) against Syria and Iran.

Whatever, all sides are upping the ante...

I really don’t know. All I know this is the most dangerous situation in a long time, one which could lead to a world wide conflation of people who have a scores to settle and way too many weapons to do it with.

One man killed, almost by chance, in Sarajevo, set off the chain of events which led to the “Guns of August” and a generation of European youth thrown into the meat grinder. Oddly enough, or perhaps not all that odd, this was a talking point in the right-wing echo machine from the very start.

Should the present situation in the Gaza and Levant spiral into a larger conflict allowing that hulking and slavering Thing in the stage wings make its entrance, its cue will not have been the capture of first one, then two Israeli soldiers. In my book (the 21st Edition of the Absolute Truth) the long fuse to WWIII was lit with the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin. I may have missed some important footnotes, but it sure looks to me like it’s all gone downhill since then.

Something I never had understood is the fear-mongering that terrorists will get hold of a suitcase nuke or some other infernal device. Don’t people understand that all the bombs are in the hands of terrorists? Perhaps they do, but dare not say it for fear of being thought crazy. Well, I am crazy, so I got no problem here:

All the bombs are in the hands of terrorists!

Not only that, but it is plain common sense that those who have the most bombs who are the most likely to use them.

[Lest anyone doubt my patriotic feelings, let me add that, with the leaders we are presently burdened with, America will only go to war if we are forced to and even then only after all other options and avenues have been tried and exhausted, or at the very least paid a minimum of lip service..]