Ending the NeoCon nightmare

The NeoConservative Judeo/Christian War with NeoConservative Islam chugs on unabated. But more and more people are waking up to it's nightmarish results as Daniel Levy, a member of the official Israeli negotiating team at the Oslo and Taba talks and the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative, does in his opinion piece in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper.

Witnessing the near-perfect symmetry of Israeli and American policy has been one of the more noteworthy aspects of the latest Lebanon war. A true friend in the White House. No deescalate and stabilize, honest-broker, diplomatic jaw-jaw from this president. Great. Except that Israel was actually in need of an early exit strategy, had its diplomatic options narrowed by American weakness and marginalization in the region, and found itself ratcheting up aerial and ground operations in ways that largely worked to Hezbollah's advantage, the Qana tragedy included. The American ladder had gone AWOL.

Like every other theory ever conceived by mankind the NeoConservative one works... on paper. Unfortunately for the Afghanis, Iraqis, Lebanese and Israelis, and really for much of the rest of the world as the final repercussions of the Bush/Blair/Olmert blitzkrieg are likely still well off in the future.

Fresh evidence of how abjectly the NeoCon's military fantasy fails out in the real world comes via this piece from the British Observer newspaper.

At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed civilian targets in Lebanon as disquiet grows in the military about flawed intelligence, The Observer has learnt. Sources say the pilots were worried that targets had been wrongly identified as Hizbollah facilities.
Voices expressing concern over the armed forces' failures are getting louder. One Israeli cabinet minister said last week: 'We gave the army so much money. Why are we getting these results?'

Now why does that basic scenario seem so horrifyingly familiar? Ah... Iraqi WMD? Unarmored Humvees and soldiers buying their own armored vests? American forces being welcomed with rose petals and candies?

The fault lies with neither the IDF nor the American soldiers. They're just doing their jobs... following orders. Rather it's their civilian NeoCon bosses who are so desperate to enact their fantasy theory that the facts get swept aside and untold thousands of innocent civilians across the Middle East have paid with their limbs and lives. At least one senior IDF commander on the ground in Lebanon has suggested that the Israelis air forces might have commited "war crimes." It's a concern with no small degree of legitimacy. But if so then the real criminals in my opinion are wearing suits and surrounded by official body guards, not the guys and gals wearing uniforms and following orders to the best of their ability.