Say No to Sycophantism

I've been following closely events in the Middle East during the past week, and it is difficult to reach any conclusion other than this: there's going to be a major war involving Israel, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and the United States. The war will not achieve much of anything except more loss of innocent civilian life and destruction of cities. The war could be prevented if we had a half-competent administration which hadn't completely severed ties with the democratically elected government of Palestine, thereby giving up all leverage it had upon the situation. Mr. Bush has turned the United States State Department into the Israeli Foreign Ministry, mimicking all actions the Israelis perform. As we will see, that does not help any party involved, least of all the Israelis, who count on U.S. leverage with parties that they themselves ostensibly do not negotiate with to pull them out of self-destructive spiraling situations such as these. Juan Cole covers events in the Middle East like no other entity, online or off. He is a must read in these times.