(HT: WoC)

Interesting Stuff:

Along with some analysis on the Israeli response, Lebanese Political Journal, a Cedar-Revolution political site, claims that

According to a mid-level Hezbollah party member, the Hezbollah leadership was not expecting the attack to come right now, not expecting such a harsh Israeli response, and is currently scrambling to come to a plan.

Aww. Doesn’t that just make your heart bleed? You train a bunch of fascist psychopaths, and some of them go nuts on your carefully laid plans?

The rumor’s swirling:  will Hezbollah transfer its prisoners to Iran?  Interesting question.  Remember my previous Casus Belli post?

If the rumor

1. is true
2. and Iran accepts said prisoners
3. then it’s Game On and region-wide war.

Why is this?  It is this way because it’s public knowledge that Iran controls Hezbollah as a proxy agent, and sends anti-Israeli terrorists to southern Lebanon in order to engage in operations — since Iran can engage in nothing resembling plausible deniability (and indeed, does not seem to want to, so much as to get credit for everything that’s happening), Israel obtains full diplomatic cover to engage in order to try to rescue said soldiers.

The entire Hezbollah/Syria/Iran strategy is based on the assessment that neither the US nor Israel has the stomach for any real fighting, and is hopelessly divided politically.  Like most folks for whom the Press is simply an instrument of the State, these folks can’t separate signal from noise.  Notice the current lack of pious bleatings regarding Israeli restraint coming from Western Europe… the voices are there, to be sure, but they’re much fewer in number, and far more restrained than usual.  Stateside, even All Things Considered on NPR almost gave Israel a fair shake this morning. 

I hold by my original thesis:  somebody has miscalculated.  I know who my candidate is… we’ll see over the next couple of weeks whether I get to pass Go and collect $200.

You’re goddamned right it is.  And if there’s one word I’m coming to hate hearing, it’s “disproportionate response.”

You know why Cuba doesn’t start shelling Gitmo?  Because our response would be disproportionate.  In fact, we’d ruin his joke of a military and chase him into the Atlantic with dogs.

You know why Georgia doesn’t try to kick out the Russian troops occupying nearly a third of its territory?  Because Russia’s response would be disproportionate — they’d wipe the Georgian government off the face of the earth.

So why should Israel be limited to playing pattycake?  You mess with the big dog, he bites your leg off.  That’s life, folks…  and I’m quite comfortable putting this right in the face of those hippy freaks who somehow thinks that this is an immoral proposition.  Reasonable people don’t have to point guns at each other.  But nothing, and I mean NOTHING does more to guarantee peace in this highly unstable world full of evil schmucks than the threat of overwhelming, violent repercussions.

In fact, now that the Palestinian Gazans know that Israel will go to the mat for the sake of a single soldier… you can bet that once the current bitchslapping is done, that kidnappings are going to be considered a lot more carefully before they’re put into place.