Sadly, David Kaiser seems more right now than ever...

This post by David Kaiser has, among other things, an interesting and insightful comparison between US policy today and Imperial German policy in the early 20th Century:

But the political atmosphere within the US, I regret to say, has many parallels to what developed in Germany from 1914 through 1918, and this does not bode well for our future.

In watching the news today, the same parallels are coming back to me. Watching the Israeli air strikes into Lebanon, I am reminded of the Austro-Hungarian pretext for escalating a crisis in the Balkans into World War I. Israel is bombing Lebanon because it cannot control the Hizbullah elements inside its own borders. Just like A-H wanted to invade Serbia for Serbia's inability and/or unwillingness to control radicals in its own borders.

This whole thing is worse than that too. It troubles me, it troubles me that Israel is now prepared to trade the last shred of moral justification - i.e.: that suicide bombers are indiscriminate while Israeli air strikes are somehow targeted. These strikes today into Lebanon are just random attacks on civilian targets. The civilian airport? Come on, that's no different than a civilian bus in Tel Aviv. Whatever moral legitmacy Israel had, has been traded away today for a punitive attack that did nothing for anyone.