It's A Mid-Term Election Year, Let The Wars Begin

Is anyone really surprised by Israel's escalating violence in the Gaza Strip and its attacks against Lebanon? Can anyone explain what would possibly motivate Hezbollah to kidnap two Israeli soldiers, given the obvious retaliation Lebanon would face? It's not too difficult to see what is really happening.

George W. Bush has failed miserably with his attempts to demonize Iran as easily as he demonized Iraq. Bush needs a lot of help with this, and who better to help him than America's fifty-first state, otherwise known as Israel? Israel, which enjoys complete immunity and billions in annual welfare from the U.S., is a perfect fit. The United States owns Israel, and Israel owns the U.S. Congress. Teamwork is a beautiful thing, apparently. Now Team USAsreal will rescue Bush and drag Iran into the mess for him. Perfect!

It is also a midterm election year in the U.S., and Bush has managed to demonize Republicans more than demonizing Iran. Since the American public was so willing to swallow Bush's pretzel logic for the war in Iraq, you can bet that Republican strategy for the November elections was counting on this again and will center around a "terrorist/rogue nation/threat" scenario (and Bush wants Iran). The problem with this is that the closer we get to November without some major global event to spin and twist, the bigger an event the Republicans need, and the sooner the better. Hey, look, there goes Israel, bombing Lebanon. It's a major global event!

Bush enjoyed a free ride in sending the U.S. military into Iraq, cheered on by painfully gullible Americans, and he expected the same blind ignorance to support a run at Iran. Unfortunately, now that Americans and the U.S. corporate media are finally waking up, and Bush and his administration have long since run out of anything resembling credibility, someone else was needed to create a major crisis somewhere and play Wizard of Oz, conjuring a yellow brick road to Iran.

Hezbollah stood to gain absolutely nothing with the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers which predictably led to Israel's current attacks against Lebanon, but conveniently that's what happened, and a major crisis has erupted in the Middle East with Israel starring at center stage in this U.S. midterm election year. Imagine that, and just when things were not looking very good for Republicans as midterm elections approach. For five years now, Republicans have always scored big in the U.S. when they've had some major crisis to exploit, and the war in Iraq just isn't the flavor of the day anymore, so they really needed a major crisis in a very bad way. Imagine the Republicans' good fortune with this new major crisis in the Middle East, especially given that it involves Israel, which is continuously held up as being the only democracy in the region and therefore a friend (puppet) of the United States. Wow, right on time.

The icing on this cake would be Iran somehow being dragged into the fray.

Anyone want to put money on it?

Steven A. Hass
desert_vet@msn.com
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