War down the street

Is it making you guys back home as edgy as it is making us to read the news about the what's happening in the middle east? Not Iraq, we've been pushed back to page 3. Being deployed out here and reading about the largest Israeli offensive to happen in 24 years taking place only a couple of hundred miles from where I'm sitting is a bit disturbing considering the powder keg that we are sitting on. What I'm saying here isn't anything you can't read out just about any paper but I'm viewing it as a common Joe on the ground. These are merely my views, not the views of anyone else out here, we could be at a cusp of a possible Holy War, it's not the first time the world been here and not the last but the weapons are getting bigger. Countries shooting at each other, money and weapons flowing back and forth over borders, polarized populations who want that want to wipe the other off the face of the earth and these folk are all surrounding me? Am I wrong to be a little spooked?

How do I view what's going on down the road? If you keep poking a tiger in the eye with a stick from the other side of a wooden fence, eventually that tiger is going to get pissed and knock the bloody fence down and eat you. I'm not saying if making the decision to start this offensive is right or wrong but with anybody there is a point when the last straw is tossed on the camels back and when the line in the sand has been crossed too many times. Every time I see a cease fire announced, it makes me think about the story of the turtle and the scorpion crossing the river, "it's my nature".

Hezbollah and Hamas have been poking this tiger for a while, wanting it to strike back so they can get more people of like mind involved. Only this is a tiger that's been fed with the best of American arms, training and has been backed into a corner without a place to retreat to. American armed forces whom many consider the worlds premiere fighting force use many lessons that they have picked up from the Israelis. If we equipped our passenger jets like theirs, 9/11 would never have happened. Many of our cool new medical products were developed and used first time in combat in Israel. Books written by their generals are on most military reading lists, specially lately with urban warfare tactics being used, these guys know how to make war.

Israel has the highest percentage per capita of military people in the world. Their intelligence forces are the boogie men of the spy world and they've been sharpening their knives and taking down names for half a century. The places they've bombed this week? They have probably been on a battle plan "A" for years. The reason why they don't have troops to Iraq for either Gulf War? Because the rest of the world didn't want to open up Pandora's Box, bad things will happen. Saddam shot a bunch of scuds at them during the first gulf yet they held their peace when they could have laid waste to much of the this country. Now something has set them off, watch the news, hopefully those bad things that I'm imaging don't happen. I'm keeping my fingers crossed because there's a world of difference between being in this war and being in that War.