NB: DISCLAIMER: Your Uncle Wally does not endorse the contents of the
following article:

From the website:

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/

Guns of August

Jim Kunstler
July 31, 2006


Got that old 1914 feeling yet? This time the guns of August will be
different.

NB: DISCLAIMER: Your Uncle Wally does not endorse the contents of the
following article:

From the website:

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/

Guns of August

Jim Kunstler
July 31, 2006

Got that old 1914 feeling yet? This time the guns of August will be
different.

Back then, the armies of Europe marched almost gaily off to what they
thought would be a civilized little contest lasting a few months --
sort of
like Franco-Prussian War Two -- and found themselves bogged down in the

mechanized slaughter of the trenches for four years. Fifty thousand
British
troops died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Total
casualties
for both sides at the armistice of 1918 were 37 million.

This August, 2006, an aggrieved and energized Islam is mounting a holy
war, a Jihad, against its infidel enemies, starting with the Jews of
Israel
and the Great Satan (America), and wishing to move along as far as
Spain
now -- according to the recent tapes of al Qaeda's point man, Ayman
al-Zawahiri.

The current offensive, led by Islam's Shia branch with headquarters in
Iran, has stated its objective of "wiping Israel off the map." And yet
world
opinion affects to be shocked that Israel is fighting Iran's forward
troops,
Hezbollah, as though for its life.

Now world opinion is further shocked that dozens of children have been
killed in Israel's targeted bombings of Hezbollah missile emplacements
at
Qana, Lebanon. This is what happens when a fighting force uses little
bodies
for sandbags, which is what Hezbollah does when it hides its rocket
launchers behind its most defenseless civilians. Israel has at least
admitted to the tragic outcome of its actions there. Meanwhile, world
opinion has failed to notice something: Israel's weapons are at least
targeted at military objectives, even when tragic errors like this one
occur. Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets are not targeted at all, just fired

blindly across the border to land wherever they will, on hospitals,
grandmothers, kids, whatever.

It's interesting because it illustrates the fantastic childish
irresponsibility issuing from the sponsors and partisans of Hezbollah.
Israel, they say, made war on them for no reason. They don't seem to
remember crossing over into sovereign Israeli territory two weeks ago,
killing eight IDF soldiers while kidnapping two others, and following
up
with the first missile barrage of what is now over 1500 Katyusha
strikes.
Lebanese children and women get killed, along with innocent UN
observers,
but that has nothing to do with Hezbollah planting missile launchers
thirty
yards away. The Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Seniora complains that
his
country is being brutalized, but fails consistently to explain why his
government won't control the war-making activities of a vicious
paramilitary
operating freely within Lebanon's borders.

This world opinion can't face the reality of Islamic extremism.

World War Three probably started on September 11, 2001. The responding
campaigns by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven to be
inadequate
efforts at political containment via the nostrum of "democracy." The
Iraq
campaign especially has backfired because the US pretended it was about

something other than guaranteeing our continued access to Middle East
oil.
The ironic result a few years from now may be that oil fields of
Shia-dominated southern Iraq will come under the direct management of
Iran.
Whoops.

Another evolving reality may also be the end of the conceit that the US

controls Israel. Right now, the US is desperate to keep the Islamic
world
from exploding by reigning in Israel. But Israel is equally desperate
to not
be "wiped off the map." Israel may keep fighting in Lebanon longer than

America wants it to.

Israel's own public management of its war against Hezbollah has been
shaky. They sent Vice Premier Shimon Peres on CBS's "Face the Nation"
Sunday
morning, and the old guy's accent was so thick that his reasonable
explanation for all this was barely comprehensible. (Meanwhile,
Lebanese PM
Seniora's mendacious complaints were delivered, at least, in clear
English
over on CNN.) Beyond this is the state of the war itself. This beast of

world opinion seems to say that a failure by Israel to utterly vanquish

Hezbollah will be a victory for that group and its sponsors.

For all the havoc it has created in Lebanon, Israel's military
behavior appears less confident than it has in past conflicts with
Islamic
armies. So far, obviously, it has not overcome Hezbollah's despicable
but
effective use of civilian human shields to protect its military assets.

Israel appears to have dithered for two weeks about the use of ground
troops. The Katyushas keep raining down.

I'd guess that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has another week to stop the
Katyushas, or else his government will fall and be replaced by the
harder-line Benjamin Netanyahu (previously PM 1996 - 1999).

But Jihad, meanwhile, is on a roll -- or thinks it is, and that is not
a fine distinction for so delusional a movement. Events of the past two

weeks have evidently emboldened Iran. They will push harder in Baghdad,
they
will keep fresh rockets coming to Hezbollah. They will manufacture new
sob
stories of victimization for the masses of the so-called Arab Street.
And
they will keep toiling away in the labs to make an atomic bomb -- if
they
haven't already purchased one or two from North Korea.

One wonders what the leaders of the non-Shia Islamic nations are really

thinking about all this, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan. They despise
Israel,
too, and they have their own political fanatics, but they may be
troubled by
the specter of maniacs like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah
running
this third world war on their side.

America has been reduced in the current affair to something only a
little better than a nervous bystander. America's growing exhaustion
and its
inability to control events is on display for all to see. So is the
foolish
intransigence of our easy-motoring, suburban sprawl-building economy,
which
has made us psychologically the vassals of the Islamic oil-exporting
nations. We're doing nothing to prepare for the day when all that oil
stops
coming through the Strait of Hormuz. Most of the American public not
only
has no idea what trouble we're in, but they're strangely proud of their

cluelessness -- as they kick back and wait for "the market" to "come up
with
something."

But if the guns of August 2006 really do set something bigger off, and
the oil fields go up in flames, or the shipping lanes get shut down, or
if
any number of other things that can go wrong do go wrong, America will
have
a whole lot more to think about than Nascar and Jennifer Anniston's
love
life.

http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/3849/burningman13dh.gif

HOOROO

UNCLE WALLY

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