Is Israel really planning to invade Lebanon - not just a minor raid on a discrete target but a full-blown invasion and an occupation to follow? Are the Hezbollah militants really trying to blow up the chemical plant in Haifa? Are Syria and Iran really going to let this happen? Could Israel restrain itself from retaliating against not just the attackers but their sponsors?

All over the world, people are asking themselves: Could this really be happening? It seems like the inveterate foes of Israel's existence are gearing up for a shot at dream-fulfillment. And it seems like Israel is gearing up to take out the dreamers first.

This sensation of palpable prelude - is this how people felt in the summer of 1914, as the major powers played out the logic of mobilization and escalation? Will future historians draw parallels between the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the nabbing of the two Israeli soldiers across the Lebanese border?

There are at least two differences between the preparations for war in Europe 92 years ago and those taking place in the Middle East now. First, today's big powers are not locked in to escalation through alliances; one country going to war does not necessarily force another to follow. The world isn't even divided into hostile blocs, at least not to the same extent. Second, global institutions have been formed in the intervening century precisely to keep such scenarios from cascading.

.... there are two other facts that mitigate those differences and that draw attention to the similarities between 2006 and 1914. The major powers and the global institutions are just standing by. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan talks about putting a "stabilization force" on the Israeli-Lebanese border, but he has little leverage to impose anything meaningful. The G8 nations unanimously harrumph a resolution of concern and condemnation, but they take no action. President George W. Bush tells British Prime Minister Tony Blair that he thinks his secretary of state will make a trip to the Middle East pretty soon.

Israeli leaders seem to think that if they fight on for another week, they can strengthen their strategic position - and weaken Hezbollah's - so that when the international community does step in to impose a cease-fire, they'll come out significantly ahead.

However, another argument can be made that the longer Israel keeps bombing and shelling Lebanon, and unavoidably killing Lebanese civilians, the more its standing will diminish, regionally and globally. An editorial in today's Daily Star, Beirut's relatively moderate newspaper, is headlined, "Israeli onslaught will strengthen, not weaken, Hezbollah's popular appeal."

The opportunity for a nonmilitary solution (the phrase "peaceful solution" may be going too far) is golden right now but not for long. In a remarkable statement, the Saudi foreign minister criticized Hezbollah's cross-border attacks as "unexpected, inappropriate, and irresponsible acts." So did the leaders of Egypt, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Some criticized Israel's response as "disproportionate," or they urged "restraint." But these caveats seemed almost pro forma. Rarely, if ever, have Arab leaders so condemned other Arabs on an issue of conflict with the Jewish State.

Yet there's something else that binds those Arab leaders - they're all Sunnis, while Hezbollah, Iran, and (nominally) Syria are ruled by Shiites. This is another reason this fire needs to be put out as soon as possible. Otherwise, it might not only ignite the grand battle between Israel and its most fervent foes, but also feed the flames of the region's larger war between Sunnis and Shiites.

The point of shuttle diplomacy, when Henry Kissinger and James Baker conducted it, was to talk with leaders who can't talk with one another, shuttling back and forth conveying messages, feints, fears, and ultimately offers. One problem right now is that the United States - the would-be shuttle diplomat - has long cut off relations with Syria and Iran, both of Hezbollah's enablers (and thus potential disablers). If Bush doesn't reopen the lines, there's no point in sending Rice on the plane; it would be a shuttle to nowhere - and, short of sensational luck, a region sliding to war.

The wisest of all Israeli statesmen, Moshe Dayan, once made a prescient comment about the inexplicable nature of Arab-Israeli wars. "All our wars started when afterwards we needed very thorough research to explain and understand why they had started at all," he said in a closed Cabinet consultation in April 1973. Indeed, several months later, the Yom Kippur War took Dayan and the rest of Israel's political-military elite by total surprise.

Dayan died in 1981, but had he lived today, he would undoubtedly have repeated his age-old analysis. This summer started out as the best one that Israel has had since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada six years ago. Tourists filled Tel Aviv beaches, the stock market hit its all-time high, and the government, flush with unexpected budgetary fat, lowered taxes and discussed cutting defense and beefing up welfare programs that had been cut in previous years.

The road to war began in early June, when the tacit cease-fire between Hamas and Israel began to crack. Smaller Palestinian groups kept firing their Qassam missiles at the Israeli border town of Sderot. The IDF responded with targeted killings of suspected perpetrators, unfortunately killing innocent bystanders as well. Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, put the brakes on military plans to escalate the fighting, and so did the Hamas leaders. But on June 25, a small Hamas unit attacked a military outpost on the Israeli side of the border, abducting a soldier and killing several others. Olmert decided against exchanging prisoners and hit back at Hamas, aiming to crush its military wing, halt the Qassams and weaken the civilian Hamas-led Palestinian government, which, despite enormous external pressure, has refused to recognize Israel and forswear terror.

Olmert's decision to fight back was in part a result of his political weakness: Israel's new Cabinet, sworn in on May 4, is led by a freshman team lacking battlefield experience and hangs on a loose coalition. It is a byword of Israeli politics that weak governments tend to hit harder. A former war hero like Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin or Ehud Barak, "Mr. Security" at the top, could afford politically to be more flexible. But Olmert, who was smeared by his right-wing adversary Benjamin Netanyahu as a leftist weakling, could not. Along with the new defense minister, Amir Peretz, Olmert had to show the weary public and the military leaders that he had balls.

The world stood by as Israeli tanks returned to Gaza, and Washington intervened only to tell Israel to avoid hitting key civilian facilities (after the IDF destroyed Gaza's only power plant) and to spare Mahmoud Abbas, the powerless president of the Palestinian Authority and America's darling. But Israel has failed to this day to achieve its goals in Gaza. Its abducted soldier, Gilad Shalit, is still missing, the Qassams keep hitting Sderot, and the Hamas government has stuck to its positions despite the arrest of dozens of its ministers and legislators in the West Bank.

Olmert heard the news about the Hezbollah attack when he was meeting the parents of Gilad Shalit, the abducted Gaza GI. This was his ultimate leadership test. As he said later, "There is a moment when a state says: No." Decisive by his nature, he instantly resolved to hit back forcefully and use the opportunity to reduce Hezbollah's capability for "holding Israel hostage" through its arsenal of rockets.

This was not an easy decision. Olmert was putting at risk not only the abducted soldiers, but also the lives, property and welfare of hundreds of thousands of Israelis within the rockets' range. The country's hard-won economic boom and tourism revival were at stake too. But he sensed correctly that the public expected him "to hit the bastards" and therefore would support his actions, and that given the circumstances, Israel would receive unprecedented international backing even for forceful attacks.

The international community sided with Israel, stipulating only that it avoid killing too many innocent bystanders, and not topple the fragile Beirut government of Premier Fouad Siniora. G8 leaders, convened in St. Petersburg, Russia, put the blame firmly on Hamas and Hezbollah and all but halted the "diplomatic hourglass" to give Israel more time to finish the job. President George W. Bush's support for Israel is no surprise, but for key Arab states like Saudi Arabia to criticize Nasrallah, and then remain silent when Israeli warplanes destroy parts of an Arab capital is unprecedented.

If Israel succeeds in destroying Nasrallah's forces - and even in killing him - and a new international force dismantles Hezbollah's rockets and prevents a new buildup, then Olmert would be the clear winner in this round. Israel's economy will resume its growth course (even if defense cuts would be called off) and public morale will soar. If, however, Nasrallah walks out of his hiding place, shakes the dust off his beard, and still has thousands of rockets with their launchers - perhaps even replenishing them from Iran - he would be positioned as the king of "Arab resistance" against "the Zionists."

Everyone is wondering about the military objectives of the Israeli and Hezbollah leaderships, whose rash and immoral actions have brought their countries to this dangerous pass.

Beirut, of course, has taken the far heavier punishment, with dozens of buildings razed, massive bomb-produced potholes in the streets and frantic rescue crews carting away bloody bodies, mainly of civilians, including families and children. But Haifa is in greater shock, its inhabitants unused to taking direct enemy missile fire. Nor are they accustomed to seeing a bombed-out Israeli warship towed into the bay. The big international companies with offices not far from where the rockets landed include Microsoft, and the danger posed to Israel of capital flight in the billions dwarfs in magnitude the Lebanese losses of $100 million a day, mainly in forfeited tourism.

One option being entertained by the Israeli leaders would have the effect of turning the Lebanese capital into a fetid slum, swamped by hundreds of thousands of cowering peasants expelled north by a vast Israeli human engineering project. And if this project produces a civil war between Shiite Lebanese and the central government, as the Israeli high command and the Kadima Party who are considering this plan believe, then all the better.

Lebanon, however, is far more fragile than Jordan. It is a multicultural society, sometimes called a country of minorities. In East Beirut, Jounieh and points north, into Mount Lebanon, Maronite Catholics are the majority. Sunnis are important in the port cities - Tripoli, West Beirut and Sidon - as well as in the Bekaa Valley and in the far north. In the Shouf mountains live the Druze, hardy adherents of an esoteric offshoot of Ismaili Islam. The deep south down near the Israeli border is orthodox (or a "Twelver") Shiite territory, though they are also a majority in the Bekaa Valley to the east, with Baalbak a major center, and decades of immigration to the capital have created a southern ring of Shiite slums around Beirut. Poor Shiites are the constituency for the fundamentalist Hezbollah Party, though in opinion polls most of them do not report their main political commitment as Muslim fundamentalism.

Hezbollah emerged as the militarily most important group in Lebanon when 14,000 Syrian troops withdrew from the country in spring 2005. The Syrians had played the role of peacekeeper, or at least referee, during the Lebanese Civil War. When the warring factions made peace from 1989 forward, all the Lebanese factions disarmed their paramilitaries except Hezbollah, which was struggling against the continued Israeli occupation of the south. In the 1990s and early zeroes, a reduced Syrian force provided some security in the rest of the country at a time when the Lebanese army was being rebuilt. Following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which a UN investigation linked to Syria, a popular movement, known in the West as the "Cedar Revolution," led to a Syrian withdrawal last year. Although the anti-Syrian reformers did well in the elections held late last spring, so too did the Shiite parties, including Hezbollah and Amal, who together won 29 seats in the 128-seat parliament. Hezbollah became part of the government for the first time, but resisted demands that it disarm its militia in the south, maintaining that the continued threat of Israeli violence and renewed occupation made it necessary. It pointed out that Israel continues to retain control of the Shebaa Farms, a small border area claimed by both Lebanon and Syria. (If the Israelis had negotiated the return of this land years ago, it would have been much more difficult for Hezbollah to have justified not disarming.)

The Cedar Revolution was hailed by the Bush administration as a great achievement of democratization, but in fact it pushed the fragile Lebanese political system into a state of dangerous instability, in which the Lebanese ethnic factions no longer had a referee. As members of the reformist bloc such as Druze leader Walid Jumblatt began pressing for disarming Hezbollah, they threatened its prime source of political legitimacy and power. Within the arena of Lebanese politics, escalation of tension with Israel benefited Hezbollah at a time it was under this pressure.

On Sunday, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah delivered a disturbing videotaped speech in which he gloated over his party's missile strikes on Israel. He said that the attack on Haifa had not been for revenge but for the purpose of deterring Israeli assaults on Lebanon. He contrasted his strikes, which he claimed deliberately avoided targeting civilians, with Israel's, which he claimed had targeted civilians. Since his missiles are inaccurate, this was a self-serving lie: Any Katyushas he launched could (and did) kill civilians. He sanctimoniously pointed out that he could have hit chemical plants and fuel plants and produced a much worse disaster for the city, but had refrained from doing so for the moment. He also promised further "surprises" for the Israelis. Nasrallah, soft-spoken behind his white-speckled soft black beard, exuded an adolescent nationalism, taking pride in this "Arab" achievement of striking back at last against the Israeli cities from which the Lebanese Shiites had taken decades of bombings.

... Nasrallah's speech was full of delusions of grandeur. His goals appear to include giving aid to the beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza, claiming the mantle of the most important political and military leader in Lebanon now that the Syrians are gone, and forcing Israel to negotiate with him as an equal. None of these goals is realistic. He has raised Hezbollah's status with the Arab street, but has no way to translate that into actual power. His ability to help the Palestinians is nonexistent. His amateurish missile attacks, most of which have done no real damage, cannot possibly deter Israel from its military plans for the destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure. And after years of fighting the Israelis, he should have known enough about their psychology to know that nothing would guarantee a widening of the war more than menacing the descendants of victims of the Holocaust with poison gas.

There is no question that Israel has the right to defend itself against rocket attacks, and to respond appropriately to Hezbollah's illegal and immoral abduction of two soldiers and killing of others. A "proportional" response by Israel to Hezbollah's initial attack, of the sort demanded by international human rights lawyers, would have involved killing three Hezbollah fighters and capturing two down at the border between the two countries - and a heavier response directly specifically at Hezbollah could also have been justified. Instead, Israel has bombed, blockaded, isolated and crippled the entire country. Why? In preparation for what?

If it comes about, the forced transfer of the Shiites of the south would have several advantages for the Israelis. The depopulated territory would make it easier to search for and destroy all the Katyusha emplacements and the heavier missiles of which Hezbollah boasted on Sunday. With Hezbollah's approximately 5,000 fighters deprived of civilian cover, it would be easier to kill them. The Israelis clearly anticipate that a refugee crisis in Beirut will put pressure on the Lebanese government to turn on Hezbollah decisively and to intervene against it militarily. Finally, they expect Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, in the aftermath, to send the Lebanese army south to take up positions along the border and so form a buffer between Hezbollah and Israel.

Even if Lebanon's famously fractured political elite could come to a consensus that Hezbollah had to be curbed, it is unclear how they could accomplish that task. The reconstituted Lebanese army formed after the civil war is 60,000 strong, but most of the troops are green and many of the infantrymen are Shiites. The 5,000 battle-hardened Hezbollah fighters defeated the Israeli occupation with suicide bombings and guerrilla tactics. Even if the Shiite troops in the regular Lebanese army would fight their own, it is not clear that they could do so successfully.

... The Israeli plan to pressure the Lebanese government to take on Hezbollah will therefore likely fail. The Jordan precedent has no analogies here. The Shiites of Lebanon have played a role in contemporary Lebanese nationalism very unlike that of the Palestinian refugees in Jordan. Neither President Emile Lahoud nor Prime Minister Siniora command the respect, or have the steel, of Jordan's King Hussein, and the Lebanese army lacks the cohesion and loyalty that had characterized his Bedouin troops.

Instead, if Israel follows through on threats to create a massive internal refugee problem in Lebanon, they will further radicalize the Shiites, many of whom now support Hezbollah because of the services it provides or because it looks out for their interests rather than because they really want an Islamic Republic. If the Israelis manage to disrupt the party structure, as they appear to hope, they will simply remove any discipline over rank-and-file members and encourage small-group terrorism of the sort that has recently plagued Madrid, Spain, and London. Radicalized Lebanese Shiites can expect ongoing aid not only from Iran but from the newly liberated radical Shiites of Iraq, such as the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.

... the kind of large-scale injustice apparently being planned in Israel against tens or hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Shiites may profoundly affect the situation in Iraq. Many Iraqi Shiites entertain a profound hatred for the American and other coalition troops in Iraq, feeling humiliated by what they view as an infidel military occupation. Many have refrained so far from attacking the foreigners, however, because they have seen them as allies against Saddam Hussein and other Sunni Arab leaders, who persecuted the Shiites. Anger has grown in the Shiite south of Iraq against coalition troops, however, as witnessed by persistent attacks on the British in Basra and elsewhere. If the Iraqi Shiites decide that Britain and the United States are enabling Israel to crush the Lebanese Shiites, they may begin attacking the coalition in revenge. On Friday, Shiites demonstrated in the thousands in Baghdad against Israel's predations in Lebanon. The US and Britain have already had difficulty dealing with a vigorous Sunni Arab guerrilla movement, and the opening of a second front, with enraged Iraqi Shiites, could doom their enterprise in Iraq.

There are two most likely outcomes of the war. One is the collapse of the Lebanese government and the creation of another failed state on Israel's border, where desperation will breed terrorism for decades. The other is a strengthened Hezbollah, which will become the leading force in Lebanese nationalism, weakening the reformists. The maximalist option would likely turn Beirut into a poor Shiite city, reinforcing Shiite political power at the center. Destroying a few Katyusha emplacements in the south will not affect either outcome, and in both cases Hezbollah will probably be able to rebuild its arsenal.

The Israelis' current blank check will begin to be canceled by the world community, as the full scale of the destruction of Lebanon becomes apparent and humanitarian crises ensue. At some point it will be forced to cease its attack. Israel will not get the Lebanese government of which it dreams. It may get a UN or Lebanese buffer for a while, but it will not be effective, and the southern Lebanese clans are famed for nothing if not long memories and determined feuding.

If, as Abba Eban once said, the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, it is equally true that the Israelis, with their reflexive instinct to shoot first and negotiate later, never miss an opportunity to make a bad situation worse.

The Israelis have responded the same way to military threats for decades -- with overwhelming force. This is perhaps understandable, but each time they overreact they create future catastrophes for themselves. Just as their 1982 invasion of Lebanon and occupation of the south haunted them for a generation, they will be living with the blowback of their ill-considered war on hapless little Lebanon for decades to come. Tragically, the United States, as Israel's closest ally, will also have to suffer for its actions.

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.