When are Americans going to take the neocons seriously?

I'm not talking about the Republican Party here or the movement conservatives. I'm speaking specifically of the group that can be called the true neocons of the era: The PNAC signatories and their supporters throughout the rightwing think tank intelligentsia.

I've been writing about these guys online from practically the first moment I went online back in the 90's. My friends thought I was a tin-foil nutter and at times, I thought I was too. The sheer grandiosity of their scheme was awesome.

Despite a reputation for Straussian opacity, the truth is that they have always made their plans known. There is no mystery about what they are about. To a shocking degree they have successfully promoted their agenda within the Republican establishment for the last two decades. And in the last six years we have seen them act without hesitation to opportunistically advance their strategic goals, regardless of the price.

These guys have been around for a long time, but I honestly never thought they would ever be granted the kind of power they would need to do what they sought to do.

How foolish of me.

Neocons Resurrect Plans For Regional War In The Middle East

In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser (all later senior officials in the Bush administration) had a plan for how to destroy Hezbollah: Invade Iraq. They wrote a report to the newly elected Likud government in Israel calling for "a clean break" with the policies of negotiating with the Palestinians and trading land for peace.

The problem could be solved "if Israel seized the strategic initiative along it northern borders by engaging Hizballah (sic), Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon." The key, they said, was to "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions." They called for "reestablishing the principle of preemption." They promised that the successes of these wars could be used to launch campaigns against Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, reshaping "the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly."

Now, with the US bogged down in Iraq, with Bush losing control of world events, and with the threats to national security growing worse, no one could possibly still believe this plan, could they? Think again.

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, is still pushing this radical vision. He now uses the excuse of Hezbollah terrorist attacks - what he calls "Iran's Proxy War" - to push the United States deeper into a regional war against Iran and Syria:

We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions - and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement.

Perle has already weighed in in a June 25 Washington Post editorial decrying Bush's "ignominious retreat" on Iran. He, too, wants war. Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press this Sunday said we were already in World War III and that the US needed to take direct action against North Korea and Iran. Less well known pundits have flooded cable news and talk radio this weekend beating the war drums. Meanwhile, David Wurmser is ensconced in Vice-President Cheney's office, and his neoconservative colleague Elliot Abrams (the convicted Iran-Contra felon who urged war with Iraq in a 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton) directs Middle East policy on the National Security Council staff.

The neoconservatives are now hoping to use the Israeli-Lebanon conflict as the trigger to launch a US war against Syria, Iran or both. These profoundly dangerous policies have to be exposed and stopped before they do even more harm to US national security then they already have.

BUSH to Blair: "I think Condi is going to go (to the Middle East) pretty soon."

BLAIR: "Right, that's all that matters, it will take some time to get that together ... See, if she goes out she's got to succeed as it were, where as I can just go out and talk."

BUSH: "See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."

BLAIR: "Who, Syria?"

BUSH: "Right ... What about Kofi? That seems odd. I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically ceasefire and everything else happens."

BLAIR: "I think the thing that is really difficult is you can't stop this unless you get this international presence agreed."

BUSH: "I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen. We're not blaming Israel. We're not blaming the Lebanese government."

So, the whole blow-up is Syria's fault, for putting Hezbollah up to making mischief. No reference to Israeli actions in Gaza. No reference to, like, the wholesale destruction of Lebanon by the Israeli air force. And no blame for the Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora. And Bush thinks that Nasrullah of Hezbollah takes direct orders from Damascus. And he thinks that if Bashar al-Asad orders Hizbullah to stop firing its little katyushas and give back the two Israeli soldiers, everything will suddenly settle down.

It is an astonishingly simple-minded view of the situation, painted in black and white and making assumptions about who is who's puppet and what the Israeli motivations are. Israel doesn't appear as a protagonist. It is purely reactive. Stop provoking it, and it suddenly stops its war.

Since Israel is just being provoked and has no ambitions of its own, in this reading, it is useless to begin with a ceasefire. That treats the two sides as both provoking one another. Here, only Hezbollah matters, so you lean on Syria to lean on it, and, presto, peace breaks out.

It is a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth.

I come away from it shaken and trembling.

American public diplomacy has been virtually invisible on all this, at a time when it is more urgently needed than ever. I can understand this - you have to have a policy if you want to try to explain or defend it, and right now the Bush administration doesn't seem to have any policy at all beyond supporting Israel and issuing calls for "restraint" which Israel promptly and publicly rejects. And what administration official wants to subject him or herself to tough Arab questioning on live TV right now? The idea that Palestinian-Israeli relations could be cordoned off from wider Middle East questions was always misguided. It's now become actively destructive to all of our interests in the region.

The only reason I'm not calling more loudly for Bush to get involved and take a leadership role in the conflict is the expectation that he would probably do the wrong thing. But at this point, doing nothing is, in fact, doing something. The Bush administration right now looks weak, confused, and vaguely pathetic... which is better than batshit crazy (like the folks who are demanding that America either smile on or even join in a war with Damascus and/or Tehran), but not nearly as good as exercising actual grown-up leadership at a time when the world could really, really use some.

Where's the shuttle diplomacy? In any other administration, at least since Nixon's, the secretary of state would have flown to the Middle East days ago, would already have touched down in Tel Aviv, Beirut, and Damascus - maybe more than once - to hammer out a cease-fire, a settlement, or at least some sort of compromise to keep the conflict from expanding.

This is how Henry Kissinger and James Baker made their reputations (the good sides anyway). President Clinton and the first President Bush had a special Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, whose sole job was to put out local and regional fires the instant somebody struck a match.

Yet six days into Israel's most violent border conflict in nearly a quarter-century, President George W. Bush seems in no hurry to put Condoleezza Rice on a plane.

... Why the wait?

There are two possible reasons, neither mutually exclusive. First, Bush may not yet have decided what to do, and there's no point sending Rice - who would clearly be speaking with the president's authority - if she has no position to offer. Second, Bush may be in no hurry to put this fire out; he may want the Israeli government to gain more leverage, to twist Hezbollah's arm tighter, before pressuring them both to the negotiating table.

... in order to do what Bush himself sees is necessary to "make something happen," he needs to get some third party to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop firing rockets.

What kind of way is this for a superpower to behave?

Unless he wants to heighten the chances of a war that engulfs the entire Middle East, Bush needs to do what most presidents in far less dire circumstances would already have done: drop the moral posturing; resume diplomatic relations (not the same thing as friendship) with all parties; "get on the phone with Assad" himself (don't leave it to Annan, whose leverage is limited); and get Condi on that plane, not "pretty soon," but now.

Afghanistan: No less of an authority than the Voice of America reports that "daily violence" is now routine in Afghanistan, which is now suffering through its "bloodiest year" since the US-led invasion in 2001. More than two years after the president declared the Taliban "no longer ... in existence," Afghan officials said today that the group has taken control of two towns in the southern part of the country.

Palestinian territories: According to an AFP report, Israeli warplanes destroyed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building in Gaza today. At least 85 Palestinians have been killed in fighting that followed the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. Reuters says that the yellow flag of Hezbollah is "flying off the shelves" of stores in Gaza.

Iraq: Coordinated car bombs killed dozens of Iraqis at a Shiite market south of Baghdad today in what the Washington Post calls "one of the most brazen assaults in months of sectarian fighting." (Maybe it was more retaliation for what the New York Times called a "brazen daytime rampage" that killed more than a dozen Sunnis last week.) Meanwhile, three more American soldiers were killed in Iraq today, bringing the US death toll to about 2,552.

Beirut: Israel attacked Beirut's port and other targets across Lebanon today as Hezbollah fired rockets deeper into Israel. The U.N.'s Kofi Annan and Britain's Tony Blair are calling for an international force to help stem the violence, but the Bush administration seems to want no part of it. Pentagon officials say the United States is sending military vessels, airliners and cruise ships to help evacuate Americans from Lebanon as the president declares that all would be better if Syria would just get Hezbollah to "stop doing this shit."

Egypt and Saudi Arabia: The two countries joined Jordan and several other Arab states over the weekend in condemning Hezbollah for its "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts," but the condemnation comes, the New York Times reports, not from some movement toward democracy but rather from fear of Iran. "There is a school of thought, led by Saudi Arabia, that believes that Hezbollah is a source of trouble, a protégé of Iran, but also a political instrument in the hands of Iran," Jordanian sociologist Adnan Abu Odeh tells the Times. "This school says we should not play into the hands of Iran, which has its own agenda, by sympathizing or supporting Hezbollah fighting against the Israelis."

You need to understand the relationship among four pairs of actors to grasp the meaning of the escalating attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel in recent days. The four pairs are Hamas and Hezbollah; the Palestinian and Lebanese governments; Syria and Iran; and Israel and the United States.

Simplistically, President George W. Bush has depicted this latest round of war as a clash between good and evil, while the Israeli government has tried to blame Palestinians and Lebanese who only want to make war against a peace-loving Israel. The more nuanced and complex reality is that, collectively, these four pairs of actors play roles in the ongoing fighting, as we witness the culmination of four decades of failed policies that have kept the Middle East tense, angry and violent.

Hezbollah and Hamas emerged in the past decade as the main Arab political forces that resist the Israeli occupations in Lebanon and Palestine. They enjoy substantial popular support in their respective countries, while at the same time eliciting criticisms for their militant policies that inevitably draw harsh Israeli responses. We see this in Lebanon today as the Lebanese people broadly direct their anger at Israel for its brutal attacks against Lebanese civilian installations and fault Palestinians, other Arabs, Syria and Iran for perpetually making Lebanon the battleground for other conflicts - but more softly question Hezbollah's decision to trigger this latest calamity.

It is no coincidence that Israel is now simultaneously bombing and destroying the civilian infrastructure in Palestine and Lebanon, including airports, bridges, roads, power plants, and government offices. It claims to do this in order to stop terror attacks against Israelis, but in fact the past four decades have shown that its policies generate exactly the opposite effect: They have given birth, power, credibility and now political incumbency to the Hamas and Hezbollah groups whose raison d'être has been to fight the Israeli occupation of their lands. Israeli destruction of normal life for Palestinians and Lebanese also results in the destruction of the credibility, efficacy and, in some cases, the legitimacy of routine government systems, making the Lebanese and Palestinian governments key actors in current events - or non-actors in most cases.

Israel has this to show for its track record of being tough: It is now surrounded by two robust Islamist resistance movements with greater striking power and popular support; Arab populations around the region that increasingly vote for Islamist political movements whenever elections are held; immobilized and virtually irrelevant Arab governments in many nearby lands; and determined, increasingly defiant, ideological foes in Tehran and Damascus who do not hesitate to use all weapons at their means however damaging these may be to civilians and sovereignty in Lebanon and Palestine.

The United States for its part is strangely marginal. Its chosen policies have lined it up squarely with Israel. It has sanctioned and thus cannot even talk to Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, and it has pressured and threatened Syria for years without any real success. The world's sole superpower is peculiarly powerless in the current crisis in the Middle East.

George W. Bush is apparently open to scaling back his usual summer vacation in Crawford, Texas, in order to look more engaged with his job, but it seems that he'll take this whole hands-on presidency idea only so far. On a day on which Israeli airplanes hit the home and office of Hezbollah's leader, White House press secretary Tony Snow revealed that the president hasn't actually, you know, talked to anyone in the Israeli government about its widening military campaign in Lebanon.

Asked whether Bush has any plans to speak to Israeli officials, Snow said: "At this point - look, I think - the Israeli leaders have been consulted, and they've been consulted by the secretary of state and the national security advisor. And they'll continue their conversations, and there is no - I don't want to say there's no need, I'd just say the president has not expressed any plans to speak with the prime minister, but should it become necessary, he will." And with that, a member of the White House press corps asked Snow about the president's plans for a bike ride this afternoon.

Of course, this isn't the usual case of Bushian inattention. We assume that the president wasn't hoping for an attack on the United States when he brushed off a warning about Osama bin Laden in August 2001. And we'll presume that he wasn't looking forward to a disaster in New Orleans when he fiddled away the early days of Hurricane Katrina. But Bush hasn't picked up the phone to call Ehud Olmert precisely because he has nothing to tell him - or, at least, nothing he wants to be seen telling him. Bush approves of what Israel is doing in Lebanon, but the White House must know that Americans find new violence in the Middle East deeply unsettling. The best way to walk that line: Stay away from it entirely.

With the world's most perplexing problems weighing on him, President Bush has sought comic relief in a certain pig.

This is the wild game boar that German chef Olaf Micheel bagged for Bush and served Thursday evening at a barbecue in Trinwillershagen, a tiny town on the Baltic Sea.

"I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig," Bush said at a news conference earlier in the day punctuated with questions about spreading violence in the Middle East and an intensifying standoff with Iran about nuclear power.

The president's host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, started a serious ball rolling at this news conference in the 13th-century town hall on the cobblestone square of Stralsund. But Bush seemed more focused on "the feast" promised later.

"Thanks for having me," Bush told the chancellor. "I'm looking forward to that pig tonight."

This 13th-century setting and formal news conference may seem an odd stage for presidential banter. The 21st-century problems that Bush confronts often prompt him to attempt to defuse the tension in the room with a dose of humor.

Reporters from Germany and the U.S. peppered him with questions about the standoff in Iran, violence in the Middle East and flagging democracy in Russia. He answered all in earnest but leavened it all with pig talk.

"Apart from the pig, Mr. President, what sort of insights have you been able to gain as regards East Germany?" a German reporter asked.

"I haven't seen the pig yet," Bush said, sidestepping the question about insights gained from his two-day visit to this rural seaside region that once rested behind the Iron Curtain.

And when an American reporter asked whether Bush is concerned about the Israeli bombing of the Beirut airport and about Iran's failure to respond to an offer for negotiations, Bush replied with more boar jokes before delving into the substance of the questions.

"I thought you were going to ask about the pig," said the president. "I'll tell you about the pig tomorrow."

THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.

Q Mr. President, how are you?

THE PRESIDENT: I'm hungry and I'm going to order some ribs.

Q What would you like?

THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you think I'd like.

Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you simply haven't spent enough to keep the country secure.

THE PRESIDENT: My job is to secure the homeland and that's exactly what we're going to do. But I'm here to take somebody's order. That would be you, Stretch - what would you like? Put some of your high-priced money right here to try to help the local economy. You get paid a lot of money, you ought to be buying some food here. It's part of how the economy grows. You've got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat?

Q Right behind you, whatever you order.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm ordering ribs. David, do you need a rib?

Q But Mr. President -

THE PRESIDENT: Stretch, thank you, this is not a press conference. This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady's business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?

Q Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. What would you like?

Q Ribs.

THE PRESIDENT: Ribs? Good. Let's order up some ribs.

Q What do you think of the democratic field, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: See, his job is to ask questions, he thinks my job is to answer every question he asks. I'm here to help this restaurant by buying some food. Terry, would you like something?

Q An answer.

Q Can we buy some questions?

THE PRESIDENT: Obviously these people - they make a lot of money and they're not going to spend much. I'm not saying they're overpaid, they're just not spending any money.

Q Do you think it's all going to come down to national security, sir, this election?

THE PRESIDENT: One of the things David does, he asks a lot of questions, and they're good, generally.

It's not humor - it's inappropriate, sophomoric diversion designed to intimidate the reporters. It works. They are unwilling to come right out and say that Junior is an ill mannered, tasteless, middle aged delinquent.

How I long for the day when we might once again have a president with the maturity of someone who has already passed through puberty.

Bombs and mortars struck Shiite and Sunni mosques in the Baghdad area Friday, the latest in a week of tit-for-tat sectarian attacks that have killed more than 250 people.

The deadliest explosion came as worshippers left services at a Sunni mosque in northern Baghdad, killing 14 people and wounding five, police said.

The bomb, planted near the door of the mosque, exploded during a four-hour driving ban starting at 11 a.m. Fridays in the capital, aimed at preventing car bombs that have frequently targeted weekly prayers.

Earlier Friday, five mortar rounds fell near the Shiite Imam al-Hussein mosque in Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding six, provincial police said.

Shiite clerics, meanwhile, denounced Israel's attacks on Lebanon during Friday prayers, and hundreds of Iraqis demonstrated to show solidarity with the Lebanese. Israel began its assault after guerrillas from the Shiite group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a raid inside Israel.

Thousands of Iraqis also demonstrated in the Shiite district of Sadr City in Baghdad and the southeastern cities of Kut and Amarah, praising the leader of Hezbollah and denouncing Israel and the United States. Some protesters said they were ready to fight the Israelis.

"No, no to Israel! No, no to America!" demonstrators chanted in Sadr City.

"Let everyone understand that we will not stand idle," read one of the banners carried by the demonstrators. "Iraq and Lebanon are calling. Enough silence, Arabs," read another.

I was speaking the other day with Scott Pelley of CBS News's ''60 Minutes'' about the mood in Iraq. He had just returned from filming a piece there and he told me something disturbing. Scott had gone around and asked Iraqis on the streets what they called American troops - wondering if they had nicknames for us in the way we used to call the Nazis ''Krauts'' or the Vietcong ''Charlie.'' And what did he find? ''Many Iraqis have so much distrust for U.S. forces we found they've come up with a nickname for our troops,'' Scott said. ''They call American soldiers 'The Jews,' as in, 'Don't go down that street, the Jews set up a roadblock.'''

Is it time to get excited? I can't help the way I feel. For the first time in my Christian walk, I have no doubts that the day of the Lord's appearing is upon us. I have never felt this way before, I have a joy that bubbles up every-time I think of him, for I know this is truly the time I have waited for so long. Am I alone in feeling guilty about the human suffering like my joy at his appearing some how fuels the evil I see everywhere. If it were not for the souls that hang in the balance and the horror that stalks man daily on this earth, my joy would be complete. For those of us who await his arrival know, somehow we just know it won't be long now, the Bridegroom cometh rather man is ready are not.

... If He tarries, I will just have time to get my hair and nails done (you know let all I come into contact with know of my Bridegroom and what He has/will do). So I am all spiffied up for Him when He does arrive to take me home. No disappointment, just a few last minute details to take care of to be more pleasing to look at.

... I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what's going on in the M.E.!! And Watcherboy, you were so right when saying it was quite a day yesterday, in the world news, and I add in local news here in the Boston area!! Tunnel ceiling collapsed on a car and killed a woman of faith, and we had the most terrifying storms I have ever seen here!! But, yes, Ohappyday, like in your screen name, it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited, right there with ya!!

Ok fine. Religious fundamentalists are nutty.

But what do you make of someone who writes this: "Can you imagine being a hate-filled person that 'preaches' tolerance but really, really hates Christians when the rapture does happen. It must be sad to live like that. I feel sorry for them and feel we should pray for them. Their tolerance doesn't include anyone but themselves, and all they preach is hate."

Hey, I'm one of the tolerant haters. These folks can believe whatever kooky nonsense they choose. The world is full of fruitcakes. I do wonder, however, if Uncle Karl is calculating that George the Pig Slicer will cause the GOP to lose seats in the fall if he doesn't appear to be helping his base achieve the Rapture. That's got me a little bit worried.

Three days in, and it looks like Israel is losing the war.

Not militarily, of course - The IDF could turn Lebanon into a parking lot if it wanted to, and if it's willing to take enough casualties it can probably push Hezbollah away from the Israeli border and suppress the rocket attacks (or at least most of them.)

No, Israel is losing this war the same way it "lost" the October 1973 War - by not crushing its enemies swiftly and completely, and then rubbing their faces in their own impotence and humiliation.

Just the opposite: Today it was Israel that suffered the humiliation of nearly losing one of its missile frigates to a warhead-carrying Hezbollah drone - a threat the IDF apparently didn't even know existed.

... This should give an enormous boost to Hezbollah's prestige and popularity in the Arab world - just as the initial success of the Egyptian attack across the Suez Canal in '73 helped erase the humiliation of the Six Day War and made Sadat, for a time, a regional hero. That prestige, in turn, could make it more dangerous for "moderate" (i.e. U.S. dominated) Arab countries to move against the group or criticize it publicly. The same goes for Hezbollah's domestic enemies inside Lebanon.

... For the Israelis, all this only increases the urgency of delivering a knock out blow quickly - lest the voices of caution inside the Cheney administration prevail and Washington steps in and imposes a cease fire. It's possible, of course, that the opposite will happen: The Cheneyites may be just as rattled by Hezbollah's resilience as the Israelis, and may insist that the IDF finish the job, no matter how much time and blood it takes. After all, whatever raises Hezbollah's prestige also raises Iran's, and whatever raises Iran's lowers Cheney's. That may be more than the gang can stand.

... If I were the IDF general staff, I wouldn't count on having more than a few weeks to complete the operation - whatever it is.

But given how well Hezbollah is doing so far, it doesn't look the Israelis can deliver a knock out blow - not in a few weeks, or a few months and probably not even in a few years. And a Hezbollah that takes whatever Israel dishes out, and emerges not just intact, but with a few notches in its own gun, would be a Hezbollah that looks like a real winner.

There is something qualitatively different about the latest cycle of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although I'm having trouble in my own mind hanging a label on it.

Maybe it's the fact that the Israelis have more or less abandoned the pretense that they're fighting specific "terrorist" groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and are openly waging war on the Palestinian people (and now the Lebanese people) as a whole.

Maybe it's because the proximate triggers for the current fighting – the Palestinian raid on an Israeli outpost on the Gaza frontier and Hezbollah's ambush of an Israeli patrol just inside the Israeli border -- were both military attacks against legitimate military targets, instead of explicit acts of terrorism, like the 2000-2001 Palestinian suicide bomb offensive. This suggests a major change in both tactics and capabilities (although terrorism, in the form of rockets randomly shot into Israeli towns and cities, obviously remains a key part of the Hezbollah and Hamas arsenals)

Maybe it's simply the speed and scale of the escalation, which has progressed from a limited incursion in the Gaza Strip to the wholesale dismantling of the Hamas government to a full-scale blockade of Lebanon in just two weeks. If the Israeli expectation was that an initial display of overwhelming force would send a message to the other side that there are red lines that must not be crossed, then the operation has already failed. Indeed, the other side has sent some surprising messages of its own - one of which landed yesterday in downtown Haifa.

If I had to pin it down, I would say the big difference between this crisis and similar past episodes is how completely off balance the Israelis seem to be – lurching from reaction to reaction without any clear plan or strategy. The Gaza incursion was thrown together, more or less on the fly, which led to some embarrassing public squabbling within the Israeli cabinet. The attempt to decapitate Hamas's civilian leadership by arresting the entire Palestinian cabinet smacked of improvisation, and largely failed. Hezbollah's intervention clearly took Jerusalem by surprise, which is probably why the response has been so disproportionate: the Israelis are rather desperately trying to regain the initiative.

... I'm not passing moral judgments here. I've never been able to turn a blind eye to the war crimes of one side or the other – rationalizing the suicide bomb that blows a bus full of Israeli civilians to bloody bits while crying tears of outrage over the destruction of a power plant that provides clean water to tens of thousands of Palestinian mothers and infants, or vice versa. To me, the conflict has long since come to resemble a war between lunatics, and one doesn't pass moral judgments on the behavior of the insane, not even the criminally insane.

But it is clear to me that the Israelis, through their own actions (plus some help from their clueless allies in the Cheney administration) have put themselves in trap they can't escape. They've reached a strategic dead end, one that doesn't even leave them enough maneuvering room to turn and go back. A return to the pre-Oslo status quo – full military reoccupation of the territories – is out of the question. The peace process (a pointless squirrel wheel, but one that at least kept the squirrels, both Palestinian and Israeli, busy going through their paces) is dead. The Palestinian Authority is shattered; Fatah's legitimacy and President Abbas's credibility flushed down the toilet. And Hamas - the only viable alternative - has been officially defined as Public Enemy Number One by the Israelis, the Americans and the Europeans.

... In a sense, the crisis has been coming down the pike since last year's Palestinian elections unexpectedly put Hamas in charge of the PA. The Israelis never wanted the election, and only agreed to it because the Americans insisted. The Americans, in turn, relied on assurances from Abbas (underwritten by the Egyptians and the Jordanians) that the results were in the bag – or could be put there, if need be. Democracy boy, in other words, only embraced democracy for the Palestinians because he was sure the "right" guys would win, and I know what a shock that must be to the reader. But Fatah, being Fatah, couldn't stop its candidates from running against each other and splitting the non-Hamas vote, while Hamas smartly ran on a platform of honest government instead of endless holy war. In the end, the fix could only deprive Hamas of the even bigger majority it was probably entitled to.

If the Israelis had fully thought things through, I have to believe they would have defied democracy boy and vetoed the election. Why didn't they? In addition to the traditional desire to stay on the hegemon's good side, my guess is the Israelis in general and Prime Minister Olmert in particular were still too captivated by the dream of unilateralism. The whole point of disengagement was that it was supposed to make the other side irrelevant. Israel would decide what land and settlements it wanted to keep, build fences around the rest and let the Palestinians stew in their own poverty and rage. With that as the plan, the risk of a Hamas victory, while undesirable, may not have seemed catastrophic.

... In the past, no matter how bad things got in territories, Israeli governments always have had the option of backing off and leaving bad enough alone - relying on the Army or, post-Oslo, the PA to keep a lid on the situation. That was fine as long as the objective was to grow the settlements and quietly tighten Israel's control over the land and all its resources. But now that the goal is essentially a second partition, Israeli politicians are finding out the hard way that they no longer have the luxury of malign neglect. After six years of pretending they don't need a Palestinian negotiating partner, they've suddenly discovered, much to their horror, that they need one desperately - but have managed to eliminate all the possible candidates.