Civilian notes and military presumptions

Couple of snapshots that make me wonder if civilians are being given one final chance to clear Southern Lebanon before it becomes a battleground...

From Beirut

Families are being displaced from the heavily targeted areas seeking shelter in school buildings. Effective early this afternoon, our Beurit Baptist School opened its doors offering temporary shelter to 200 Muslim people (around 30 families) from southern Lebanon. Upon arrival we offered them food and drink; yet we have no notion of how temporary will this situation be. We live each day at a time and trust God for his intervention."

From somewhere in Lebanon...

Guess what? I'm leaving. Yep. Me.

Where am I going? Syria. Didn't want to, but I have to. The people we marched against are the ones you sent us begging to. The people who assassinated our leaders, kept us from having an operating democracy, and who armed Hezbollah are laughing it up because they've won the game because of you.

Bashar Assad said Lebanon would be destroyed if he left. I didn't know the Israelis would play into his game. It's not surprising that Syrian-allied Hezbollah started the mess, but you guys are just vicious.

All my Hezbollah supporting friends are sticking around. They call the rest of us cowards. I guess we are. We want to do scientific research. We want our children to learn how to play the piano. We want to watch our stock porfolios burgeon. We can't do that here any more.

I tried to sympathize with you. I didn't support Hezbollah, and if you look at the posts before this conflict began, I was maligning the political parties that oppose Hezbollah for not doing enough.

From what I'm reading, this may be a move from the frying pan to the fire.

Check this out (Times of London)...

Artillery, rockets, tanks and Humvees are massing on Lebanon’s southern border as Israel reveals the true extent of its ambitions. It is determined not merely to punish Hezbollah, but to destroy it once and for all as a military threat.

Unperturbed by international criticism, the Government of Israel continued to pound Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, destroying roads, bridges, fuel dumps and mobile telephone installations as well as Hezbollah targets, including a Beirut radio station.

It believes that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Shia group, badly overplayed his hand on Wednesday by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in a daring cross-border raid and killing eight others.

Israeli generals and diplomats are now arguing that their attacks are simply a belated effort to achieve what the Lebanese Government and United Nations have consistently failed to do: implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for all Lebanese militias to be dismantled.

(Via John Robb's Weblog.)

Where have we heard this before? The UN said it should be done....nobody else seems to be doing it....so we will!
Viola!
What we are about to do is therefore legitimate!

Later...

This is not looking good.

Initial information indicated the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces. But the army's investigation showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

"We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Sabres are rattling. Some quarters are salivating.

...the situation is quickly escalating out of control and we must act soon to contain it. If not, we will soon be drawn into a full-fledged war in the Middle East.

"We...???"

Pleeease, Brer Fox, Pleeeease don't throw me in that briar patch!!!