More war needed

There's a story on Talking Points Memo today about the weekend's events in Lebanon.

Josh Marshall quotes a line from Sunday Jerusalem Post article:

[Israeli]Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

and then links to a Haaretz.com article containing this quote:

...this is the true surprise - a surprise of statesmen and not of intelligence - of the campaign in the north: no American red light, no flashing orange light, and not even a mere green light, but the blaring siren of the sheriff's car sitting behind the hesitant driver at the intersection urging him to get moving.

As you have no doubt read, the current U.S. position is to oppose a cease fire in Lebanon, because... well, because why? A cease-fire would appear to benefit all sides. Israel is still being hit by Hezbollah rockets, Hezbollah is still being hit by Israeli airstrikes, and Lebanese civilians are still being caught in the crossfire.

And our official position on this is that we're not ready for it to stop.

Marshall, who as a DC current events/politics blogger knows way more about what's going on behind the curtain than me, has his own take on what's really happening, which has to do with what he sees as a 'double or nothing' mentality the administration has toward turning around the mess in the mideast.

But here's something else that caught my attention: the sudden chorus of punditry referring to this as World War III, which it is not now and probably won't become. But the drumbeat is there: World War III. This is World War III.

Here in the US, November elections are looming and GOP prospects look bleak. (Not in Oklahoma, of course - we're still deprogramming ourselves from the notion pounded into us by two generations of Gaylords that grouchy rich white authoritarians rule by divine right.) Two years ago, Republicans 'energized the base' and held onto the White House.

So, my deepest paranoid fear now is that the administration is deliberately trying to spread the war to neighboring states and escalate the bloodshed and death to stir up the premillenialist wingnuts who think all-out war in the mideast will bring the rapture.