The Americans are...

Yesterday US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Israeli officials held a marathon 8-hour meeting in Jerusalem.  Afterwards Blinken announced Biden was coming to Israel on Wednesday for a full briefing from the Israeli government, and would meet in Jordan with King Abdullah, President Sisi, and Abbas. The US and Israel will find a way to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. We tried to for an hour to make ourselves think the news was bad. We couldn't do it. 

So now we know there will be no ground invasion until at least Thursday. Skirmishing continues with Hezbollah in Lebanon. We've suggested before that Israel could (should?) turn north and attack Hezbollah. They could do this while America, France, Britian, et al get their hostages out of Gaza. Tomorrow this matter will be discussed by Biden and Bibi. Maybe. Reminder, Israel has called up 360,000 reservists. The regular army is only 10 standing infantry, armor, and paratroop brigades. Exit question: where are those brigades deployed now? 

Speaking of...Via Hot Air, historian and ambassador Michael Oren argues rather persuasively a point we've made. 'Sooner or later, we will need to face the northern front. Yesterday, Hezbollah fired first. We have a golden opportunity to act, with support and legitimacy from the international community, to open a front against the organization.' As we have with the 1973 War, Oren compares the current conflict to the 1948 War, in which Israel shuffled forces between fronts. We strongly urge reader(s) to read the whole thing. The next Hezbollah War will be existential and apocalyptic. Hezbollah has hundreds of thousands of missiles. Exit question: is Iron Beam ready?

Moving on...Mark Judge talks about the Buddhist idea of Bardo, or moving on (heh), and why we should, 'Margaret Carlson, who probably covered the Civil War, is still writing her same liberal column. Nothing seems to stop these undead scribblers, nothing ever seems to make them want to write about any other topic than politics.' Which is one of the reasons we no longer publish military history magazine articles and write about politics less on this blog [But you miss your Russian gig-Ed]. We do. We do.