Steve Bannon

But first, here's my take.

For around 15 years, many American leaders, including all three presidents in that period, have believed that the country was too deeply entangled in trying to reorder the societies of the Middle East.

They felt the more pressing challenges were rebuilding America's industrial base at home and confronting the rise of China.

Yet here America is once again fighting a war to reorder a society in the greater Middle East.

And like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, this seems unlikely to turn out quite as its proponents hoped.

Lisa, you heard in the earlier segment, we're talking about how Israel says we're three weeks in, but we have three weeks to go.

I don't understand the continued excursion into Lebanon.

I don't understand the scale of the attacks into Lebanon.

I don't understand why it continues to widen.

Help me and help everybody else understand why is Netanyahu taking such an expansive approach to warfare in Lebanon?

Joe, it's a tough one to answer.

Israelis have bitter memories of Lebanon.

I watched as they rolled all the way to Beirut in 1982 and lived to regret it deeply for several decades.

An essayist who writes for The Atlantic magazine last weekend

wrote an essay on victory disease, the ways in which leaders and armies can become so stoked by one victory that they keep going beyond the limits of good sense.

Certainly, Donald Trump had a victory disease after his stunning success in Venezuela.

I think the Israelis, after the amazing successes of the last two years against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, have thought they just have to keep going, go all the way.

Lebanon has been a real quagmire for Israel, and I would expect that in the next few days you'll hear growing

All this talk about this war wasn't imminent.

Why did we decide now?