Martini Republic » The Captain and Howie punch at straw men: ". . . Obviously, fault for the current conflagration must lie squarely at the feet of those who started it, Hamas. They crossed the border and killed and kidnapped the Israeli soldiers, apparently to precipitate the current fighting. To the extent that Israel’s actions were excessive (this point is being argued to death, and it is not the point of this post to address this argument) one can apportion to Israel responsibility for widening the conflict. And surely Iran and Syria have responsibility as well, to the extent they are fomenting attacks within Israel’s borders.
But that apportionment of blame does not absolve the Bush administration of its contributions to the crisis. To a considerable degree, Bush’s policies have depleted our diplomatic, economic, and military resources in the region by invading Iraq, a move which has created a highly unstable state in the Middle East, and which has become a training ground for terrorists, even as our occupation is a rallying cry for jihadist recruiters. As I detailed here, our creation of a Shiite Islamist dominated state friendly to Tehran on Iran’s border in the place of a hostile, secular dictatorship — at enormous cost to our treasury, military and diplomatic assets — has strengthened Iran’s position vis-a-vis our allies and our own, and may have emboldened Tehran in terms of its willingness to push the current conflict, even to the point (reportedly) of providing military advisors to Hezbollah. Just as surely, the isolationist approach Bush has taken with disfavored regimes in the Gulf has dissipated already limited diplomatic avenues which might be used to intervene. . ."
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