“You wanted open warfare, so we are going for open warfare and we are ready for it, a war on all levels, that will reach Haifa and, believe me, beyond Haifda and beyond beyond Haifa. We will not be the only ones that will pay the price, nor will our homes be the only ones that will get destroyed, nor our children the only ones that will get killed, nor our people the only ones that will get expelled. That time is over. That time was before 1982 and before 2000. That time is over. I promise you that that time is over. Consequently, you, too, should bear the responsibility for what your government has done and it has accomplished. From now on, [and since] you wanted open warfare, let it be an open warfare then.”
Well, Nasrallah is definitely far more charismatic and eloquent than Saddam has ever been, but no less foolish. He will get the entire Arab street on his side, just like Saddam had done before, but most Arab governments will stand against it. True, Syria and Iran and Hamas will try to support it, that and its arsenal of missile and rockets, is its trump card, but one that can be rendered useless, if the Israelis decide that it is all worth it, and if they act in coordination with the US, which is more likely than people think.
No one shies from war anymore, so long as the only real existentialist threat they could pose is a pospect that, in the final analysis, only “lesser players” would have to deal with. We are those players. When will our glorious leaders ever understand that? Not until they make us even less, I guess. Which won’t be long now.
Our romantic adventurers will take us there with their dreams of past glory and messianic visions of the future. Our corrupt shepherds will guide us there as they continue to follow their baser instincts and remain willing slaves to their insatiable appetite. The powers-that-be in this world will get us there with their single-minded pursuit of their perceived interests. We will get there, because we are helpless, silent, foolish, cowardly, ignorant, sheepish, downtrodden naves. We will be smaller than we are now, much smaller, and our challenges far more gargantuan.
But, and on a more optimistic note, there is a slight chance that the emerging consensus in Arab World against such “adventurism” might still amount to something that is slightly less than total bullshit and might, therefore, be able to stem the rising tide of violence and provide a diplomatic solution for the current crisis. Right! And something sensible might actually come out of Bashar’s mouth within the next one hundred years.
