Ten eyes for one eye

There are two superb articles on the Israeli aggression aganst Lebanon in today's British papers.
I enclose a link to Mary Ann Seighart's piece in The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2279230,00.html
while in The Daily Mail, the historian Corelli Barnett contributes a timely piece on how the state of Israel was itself forged through terrorism, assassination and kidnapping enemy soldiers (the British). As Barnett points out, even after the Irgun terrorist group strung up two British sergeants from a tree in an orange grove and booby-trapped their bodies- it did not occur to the British authorities to impose the kind of savage collective punishment that Olmert's government is now visiting on the Arabs of Gaza and Lebanon.

And Stateside, there's a great piece by Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com. http://antiwar.com/justin/
Here's his view of what Israel's strategy is:

Step 1 – Seize a pretext, any pretext, to invade Lebanon.
Step 2 – Simultaneously denounce Syrian influence and a hidden "spy network" supposedly still remaining in Lebanon – this in spite of the recent bust-up of a Mossad cell by Lebanese intelligence, which had been responsible for several assassinations.
Step 3 – Restart the Lebanese civil war – and drag Syria into it.
Step 4 – Engage the enemy on two fronts:
A. Diplomatically, in the United Nations, by imposing sanctions on Iran and demanding inspections of its nuclear facilities. This long drawn-out ritual is meant largely for American and European consumption – to convince world opinion that every possible avenue for a peaceful settlement has been explored, before the second front is opened up.
B. Militarily, in Lebanon, and beyond. Bashar al-Assad is a pincer movement away from being deposed. A right hook from U.S.-occupied Iraq and a left from the Israelis would knock out the last remaining Ba'athists and open up a veritable Pandora's box of ethnic and religious conflicts long masked by the dictatorship of the Assads.
Step 5 – On to Tehran!
The hijacking of American foreign policy by a small but influential cadre of neoconservatives is no secret, nor is it a deep mystery that they have the president's ear. Whether the sound of their whispered advice will drown out the plaintive cries of ordinary Americans, who are hardly in the mood for yet another "cakewalk," is not yet known. In the case of George W. Bush, however, it is always best to count on him living up to one's worst expectations.

Finally, here are the views of the anti-war Republican politician Patrick Buchanan, who quite rightly points out that this is not America's war.
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=9375