We continue to sleepwalk through nightmares.

I made the mistake of reading through Charles "Kill 'em All" Krauthammer's column in the Post today. Krauthammer's main point, if you can call it that, is that Israeli Prime Minister Olmert didn't authorize enough force -- in the form of an all-out ground assault -- in the fight against Hezbollah, a fight that Krauthammer, true to his myopic track record, characterizes as the new prime front in the "clash of civilizations" between the West and the radical Islamic world.

Well, there's nothing new about Hezbollah and really, I think, Krauthammer's true agenda is that he's still fighting the Cold War, except now the Soviet Union has been replaced by the Islamic militants. He tells us as much through his opening anecdote:

At critical moments in the past, Israel has indeed shown its value. In 1970 Israeli military moves against Syria saved King Hussein and the moderate pro-American Hashemite monarchy of Jordan. In 1982 American-made Israeli fighters engaged the Syrian air force, shooting down 86 MiGs in one week without a single loss, revealing a shocking Soviet technological backwardness that dealt a major blow to Soviet prestige abroad and self-confidence among its elites at home (including Politburo member Mikhail Gorbachev).

So basically, Israel functioned as the pawn in a much larger game between two superpowers. And I'll give him that -- US support for Israel has much to do with its position near all the oil. Krauthammer continues that analogy in this latest conflict, where Hezbollah stands in for all of radical Islam -- but especially Iran, the neocons' favorite next target now that Iraq has soured on them -- and Israel stands for the West. He calls it a "proxy war," which is entirely indicative of his mindset and completely beside the point. In fact, it ignores the entire history of the region since the creation of Israel and more particularly since the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Hezbollah was formed in 1985. That's 21 years ago. We were still funding the Sunni-dominated Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and providing him with logistical support in his chemical weapons program. Perhaps that might help explain the Shia antipathy toward US...that and maybe decades of support for the ruthless totalitarianism of the Shah of Iran. Anyway, it's all water under the bridge and for the neocons, historical memory is very shallow indeed.

In fact, in Krauthammer's world, Israel is being supported -- if privately -- by the "moderate" regimes of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Is Krauthammer nuts? Well, yes, he is, but that doesn't keep the Post and other papers from printing his rantings. Get a read on this:

The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the United States to let Israel take down that organization. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but also against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West.

Like most neocons, Krauthammer consistently falls back on the old falsehood that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This line of thinking kept Pinochet in power -- even after his secret police carbombed a dissident right here in Washington, DC -- and kept the Shah in power; it funded Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein; it propped up Apartheid and gave crucial support to the death squads in Guatemala (under John Negroponte's watch). So now Krauthammer wants us to see the authoritarian regimes in these countries as our friends. So the Egyptian government jails its political opponents and features strong anti-semitic television programming as "entertainment." So the Saudis adhere to Wahhabism, a version of Islam that holds that all non-believers, including non-Wahhabi muslims, are infidels -- incidentally a belief system shared by Osama bin Laden and most of his buddies in al-Qaeda.

Oh, and speaking of al Qaeda, Krauthammer brushes that threat away: "With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march." Well, thank goodness we don't have to worry about that nasty Osama anymore. Apparently, that terrorist movement just withered away.

Krauthammer should realize that Israel's actions, far from damaging Hezbollah, have done nothing but strengthen it. Continued attacks on civilians -- and a ground war will only augment that aspect of the current conflict -- only undermines Israel's claims that it's either better than the terrorists its fighting or that it's actually only interested in Hezbollah. With each child killed via an airstrike or artillery shell, the chances that Hezbollah becomes the dominant force in Lebanon increases. That's a frightening prospect.