You guys might want to look at Wretchard's post from yesterday (and his referenced link to Adventures Of Chester).
Basic theme is that to take out Hezbollah, you need to take out Syria, which means you need to take out Iran, which will causes big problems in Iraq, etc etc etc.
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/07/dark-crossroads.html
The Dark Crossroads
[snip]
Taking on the Hezbollah may imply the necessity of restarting the Lebanese Civil War to create an end state where Hezbollah or groups like it are permanently driven from the scene. The same will go for Syria but on a far larger scale.
This of course is a recipe for a wider war, one which will leave not a single Arab regime, and possibly not a single country on earth unshaken. It's a dizzying prospect.
Very interesting and a great analysis, as usual. But actually, I think this situation would have arisen even without Israel.
The ME is like a giant pile of stones that is eventually going to come tumbling down at some point or another, although for awhile, you can get by if you just stick in another stone here and there or shore it up in some other way.
Islam is not a sustaining basis for a functioning society. Once upon a time, conflicts could be a little more local; but now there is no way of distancing ourselves from Islamic insanity. The same goes for Islamic countries, because they are equally are forced to come into contact with us. But instead of making them want to create a more functional society, the contact enrages them and makes them want to destroy the thing they cannot have.
By a terrible fluke, their countries are located in a place with a resource that gives them money without their having to do much more than just sit there. Even though they are dysfunctional, their resulting capacity to buy technology developed by the West and by its Asian imitators - and the only technology they really want is destructive technology - now means that when that pile of stones collapses, it will bury us all. Our only solution, IMHO, is to take it apart before it collapses.