The Neocon Resurgence and Israel Lebenon Crisis

Today I have found an intersesting piece in "The Hindu" about Israel-Lebenon war.Every one knows Israel is a program sponsored by US. And almost all the US media is strongly biased towards Israel.According to them Israel is a civilized society and they would not do cheap tactics like extraditions which they are ascribing to Hizbollah.I am not going to state Hizbollah is a legitimate troupe.But we can't deny the fact that it's a very much accepted wing in Lebenon. It has a military wing as well as a political wing.

All these current problems happened due to the kidnapping of Israel soldiers buy Hezbollah.But nobody in US seems to be aware about the facts that lead Hezbollah to do so. According to Hezbollah sources,they are forced to do so as a bargain tactic to release the Lebenese women and kids from the Israel prisons. When somebody raised this point,I have seen comments from Americans in US forums alleging these women and kids as supporters of terrorism.

In this context the article which was originally published in gaurdian will be worth a read.
Have a look ..

ONCE AGAIN the Bush administration is floating on a wave of euphoria. Israel's offensive against Hizbollah in Lebanon has liberated the utopian strain of neoconservatism that had been traduced by Iraq's sectarian civil war. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has propelled herself forward as chief cheerleader. "What we're seeing here," she said, "are the birth pangs of a new Middle East." At every press conference she repeats the phrase "a new Middle East" as though its incantation is magical.

Her jaunt to the region is intended to lend the appearance of diplomacy in order to forestall it. As explained to me by several senior State Department officials, Ms. Rice is entranced by a new "domino theory": Israel's attacks will demolish Hizbollah; the Lebanese will blame Hizbollah and destroy its influence; and the backlash will extend to Hamas, which will collapse. From the administration's point of view, this is a proxy war with Iran (and Syria) that will inexplicably help turn around Iraq. "We will prevail," Ms. Rice says.

The administration has traditionally engaged in threat conflation — Al-Qaeda with Saddam Hussein, North Korea and Iran in "the axis of evil," and now implicitly the Shia Hizbollah with the Sunni Iraqi insurgency. By asserting "we" before "will prevail," Ms. Rice is engaging in national interest conflation.

This week has seen the publication of Fiasco, by Thomas Ricks, the military correspondent of The Washington Post, devastating in its factual deconstruction. The Iraqi invasion, he writes, was "based on perhaps the worst war plan in American history." The policy-making at the Pentagon was a "black hole," and resistance by the staff of the joint chiefs to disinformation linking Iraq to 9/11 was dismissed. After the absence of a plan for post-war Iraq, blunder upon blunder fostered the insurgency.

In one of its most unintentionally ironic curiosities, the Bush White House has created an Office of Lessons Learned. But the thinking that made possible the catastrophe in Iraq is not a subject of this office. The delusional mindset went underground only to surface through the crack of the current crisis.

There are no lessons learned about the blowback from Iraq; about Iraq's condemnation of Israel and its sympathy for Hizbollah; or about the U.S. unwillingness to deal with the Palestinian Authority that made inevitable the rise of Hamas; or the counter-productive repudiation of direct contact with Syria and Iran.

Indeed, Ms. Rice is ushering in "a new Middle East," one in which the U.S. is distrusted and even hated by traditional Arab allies, and its ability to restrain Israel while negotiating on behalf of its security is relinquished and diminished. —