How Close Are We To World War III?

I don’t know if you’ve bothered to notice, but there’s still a war going on in the Middle East. Indeed, the war is not only almost a year old, but now includes more countries and combatants than when the fighting first erupted last October with an attack by Hamas on a kibbutz located about 3 kilometers from the Gaza Strip.

Israel is now not just fighting against Hamas; it’s also fighting against Hezbollah. And the violence not only is occurring both within Gaza and Israel, but has also spread into Lebanon, with warlike noises also coming out of Iran.

Taken together, the countries which are to a lesser or greater degree involved in this conflict cover an area of some 6,000 square miles with a total population of some 280 million, give or take a few million here and there.

Maybe this doesn’t quite make the current conflict into a world war, but it will do as a serious conflict, nonetheless.

Where does the U.S. stand in all this mess? Notwithstanding Donald Trump’s usual stupidity about how he could end the whole conflict in a couple days if not just a few minutes, there are still 7 Americans being held hostage in Gaza or somewhere by Hamas, and if we have a plan for locating where they are and getting them out, it’s a plan being kept very quiet and not being acted upon at all.