Let Slip the Dogs of War

Read the very excellent comment piece by Jacob Weisberg (editor of www.slate.com) in today's Financial Times re: Lieberman and the fate of the Democratic party.

Meanwhile, Israel's security cabinet voted to expand the ground offensive into Lebanon to meet the Litani River, and restructured ground command to sideline the (relatively) cautious Adam. Theoretically, this move will increase Israel's troop levels in Lebanon, strike a harder assault on Hizballah, prevent Hizballah from reaching Israeli territory with Katyusha rockets.

Theoretically, this move could also do the following:

Kill 300-500 Israeli soldiers (my guess is that this is a conservative estimate, as accurate death toll estimates don't tend to drum up civilian support for wars in democracies), and an unknown number of Lebanese civilians who are now trapped in southern Lebanon;

Further devastate the infrastructure of southern Lebanon;

Prompt Hizballah to use their supplies of longer-range Iranian missiles, escalating the conflict and exacerbating tensions between the West and Iran;

Recruit more Lebanese to the Hizballah cause, as the longer Israel stays in Lebanon, the more support Hizballah garners. There's a new generation of children who will have to make the choice between an ineffective national government and an effective, nationalist/Islamist extra-governmental army.

And what of the wider Middle East? Arab countries are not without their own problems, and many face internal tensions that are exacerbated by surrounding conflict. For example, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, a banned organization (that still holds seats in government), declared this week that they could send 10,000 jihadists to Lebanon to fight with Hizballah. Long-held tensions between the Palestinians and the Lebanese seem to be easing as leaders from both Fatah and Hizballah see Israel as a common enemy.

This change is dangerous, as Fatah held power as a secular party. Forgive my naivete, but a secular Palestinian political party aligning with an Iranian-sponsored Islamist movement signals a move towards the sort of ideologically irrational alliances made to marshal resources before a wider war. Desperation breeds strange bedfellows.