Lebanon and the Oil

Came across this interesting article on Juan Cole's blog . Too long to post but 
the question he is trying to answer is :-

" The wholesale destruction of all of Lebanon by Israel and the US Pentagon 
does not make any sense. Why bomb roads, bridges, ports, fuel depots in Sunni 
and Christian areas that have nothing to do with Shiite Hizbullah in the deep 
south? And, why was Hizbullah's rocket capability so crucial that it provoked 
Israel to this orgy of destruction? Most of the rockets were small katyushas 
with limited range and were highly inaccurate. They were an annoyance in the 
Occupied Golan Heights, especially the Lebanese-owned Shebaa Farms area. 
Hizbullah had killed 6 Israeli civilians since 2000. For this you would destroy 
a whole country?..."

His tentative conclusion is :-

"...It may be that that hawks are thinking this way: Destroy Lebanon, and 
destroy Hizbullah, and you reduce Iran's strategic depth. Destroy the Iranian 
nuclear program and you leave it helpless and vulnerable to having done to it 
what the Israelis did to Lebanon. You leave it vulnerable to regime change, and 
a dragooning of Iran back into the US sphere of influence, denying it to China 
and assuring its 500 tcf of natural gas to US corporations. You also 
politically reorient the entire Gulf, with both Saddam and Khamenei gone, 
toward the United States. Voila, you avoid peak oil problems in the US until a 
technological fix can be found, and you avoid a situation where China and India 
have special access to Iran and the Gulf.
The second American Century ensues. The "New Middle East" means the "American 
Middle East."
And it all starts with the destruction of Lebanon.
More wars to come, in this scenario, since hitting Lebanon was like hitting a 
politician's bodyguard. You don't kill a bodyguard just to kill the bodyguard. 
It is phase I of a bigger operation..."


Naturally , the answer involves the whole geo-politics of the region and China 
and India challenging for access to the oil resources and the use of much more 
mundane but politically convenient and acceptable pretext to justify the wars .

Scroll down for many additional interesting  comments by readers to the 
original article ( esp. those who say it may be Israel's quest for water that 
is equal to the US desire for oil ).

http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/one-ring-to-rule-them-wholesale.html

alan johnstone , edinburgh br 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]