During the Vietnam War, then president Johnson used to periodically announce the "escalation" of the American war effort. Johnson would send another twenty or fifty thousand men to fight or he would authorize a new group of targets for American planes. He never unleashed the full might of the American military because he only wanted to use just enough force to win the war; he did not want to go overboard and be accused of excessive force. It was an idiotic strategy which led to the deaths of many of the 55,000 Americans who died. (By way of comparison, this is almost ten times as many soldiers being killed as in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.)
As a result of memories of Vietnam, I still think of increases to military forces or changes in tactics as "escalations". We had just such an escalation in the Syrian civil war in the last few days. First, some 16 rockets were launched from Syria into Lebanon at targets in the Bekaa valley. For the most part, the rockets missed their targets, but this was still the first large scale rocket attack into Lebanon. While normally one would think of the Bekaa as a Shiite area and therefore aligned with Hezbollah and the Assad forces, we cannot be 100% sure that Shiites were actually the targets in the attack. The rebels do not have rockets for the most part, and they certainly do not have rockets to waste on meaningless targets in Lebanon. It is possible that the attack was actually done by the Assad/Hezbollah forces to incite the Shiites in Lebanon to support the efforts being made by Hezbollah in Syria. There also was a small scale attack on a Shiite holy shrine in Lebanon in the last few days. Only very minor damage took place, and the perpetrators remain unknown. Here too, this could be the work of Sunni forces or it could be a move by the Shia to raise the level of enthusiasm for the Syrian escapade of Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, America is doing nothing and the killing in Syria continues. There are now over 85,000 dead, at least twice that number wounded and at least two million refugees. But, as president Obama no doubt would say, "they're only Syrians, so they can't vote."
As a result of memories of Vietnam, I still think of increases to military forces or changes in tactics as "escalations". We had just such an escalation in the Syrian civil war in the last few days. First, some 16 rockets were launched from Syria into Lebanon at targets in the Bekaa valley. For the most part, the rockets missed their targets, but this was still the first large scale rocket attack into Lebanon. While normally one would think of the Bekaa as a Shiite area and therefore aligned with Hezbollah and the Assad forces, we cannot be 100% sure that Shiites were actually the targets in the attack. The rebels do not have rockets for the most part, and they certainly do not have rockets to waste on meaningless targets in Lebanon. It is possible that the attack was actually done by the Assad/Hezbollah forces to incite the Shiites in Lebanon to support the efforts being made by Hezbollah in Syria. There also was a small scale attack on a Shiite holy shrine in Lebanon in the last few days. Only very minor damage took place, and the perpetrators remain unknown. Here too, this could be the work of Sunni forces or it could be a move by the Shia to raise the level of enthusiasm for the Syrian escapade of Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, America is doing nothing and the killing in Syria continues. There are now over 85,000 dead, at least twice that number wounded and at least two million refugees. But, as president Obama no doubt would say, "they're only Syrians, so they can't vote."
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