JAMES KUNSTLER: Guns of August

[Tace]

James Kunstler -- Clusterfuck Nation

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.

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