According to JPost, the Israeli Army heard it from a senior Israeli, who heard it from a senior American official that Bush and Cheney would "really really like to bomb Iran, but Gates and Rice won't let them." Why now? Hezbollah!
Bush, the official reportedly said, considered Hizbullah's show of strength to constitute evidence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's growing influence. In Bush's view, the official said, "the disease must be treated - not its symptoms."Dude, Hezbollah is the last thing on Bush's brain right now. The consensus over here is that sooner or later, for good or ill, the Saniora government will fall, hezbollahis in parliament will get a better slice of the pie, and the world will not end. The Beirut street fighting doesn't even merit page 3.
What's really up is the bimensual banging of war gongs, or, as my neighbor Manav once said, "Dude, this is just dick-waving." Mahmoud calls Israel a stinking corpse; Bush calls Mahmoud Hitler. The Israeli Army, knowing that the President has no intention of living up to his rhetoric (maybe they read this Fred Kaplan piece in Slate?), calls Bush's bluff.
Nuhs is mad itchy with the trigger finger! Calm down...Like Slavin says, for various reasons, no one will start a shooting war. The whole point of seeking and exercising influence in politics is to conserve resources. When pragmatic Iranian conservatives say "We will not stretch our legs beyond our carpet," believe it! Much to the Jerusalem Post's chagrin, both the US and Iran realize that expending resources to gain influence is a losing proposition. (Cf. Budapest 1956, Prague 1968, etc.) And, as usual, dick-waving writers have no say in the matter...
"If Yeats had saved his pencil lead
would 'certain men' have stayed in bed?
For history's a twisted root
with art its small, translucent fruit
and never the other way round.
The roots by which we were once bound
are severed here, in any case,
and we are all now dispossessed…"
-- Paul Muldoon, "7 Midagh Street"
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