I’m generally ambivalent about Andrea Mitchell and David Ignatius, but they had an interesting discussion on yesterday afternoon’s Hardball. It might be that they sounded unusually balanced and intelligent because of the quality of the other guests. But I’m pasting in some of the transcript, anyway (emphasis added).

MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much Karby Leggett who is on the phone from Jerusalem. Great piece in the “Wall Street Journal” today Karby. Let‘s bring in NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell and “Washington Post” columnist David Ignatius. Andrea, you‘re always on top of these things. Is there something to be on top of right now? Is there a real peace effort at this point?

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: There isn‘t a peace effort from the United States and not from Israel because, the real goal of Israel, as stated very publicly, is to take out those Hezbollah rockets, particularly the larger and longer range missile that they have long feared, they claim that they took out one rocket with a 1,200-pound warhead that has a 65-mile plus range, which could reach Tel Aviv. They say they did it. U.S. intelligence said don‘t disbelieve that.

In other words, we don‘t have hard confirmation on the ground. So far, they have found that Israel‘s claims have been correct on these matters, that Hezbollah has this increasingly large and lethal arsenal, supplied by Iran, and unless and until the Lebanese government can control that southern Lebanese area, that border area, and a considerable buffer zone to that area, Israel will continue this.

MATTHEWS: Not to be demoralizing to the Israeli cause in terms of their perspective, but what stops one of the allies of Hezbollah to simply replace any rockets destroyed by Israel?

MITCHELL: That‘s exactly why Israel has been bombing every access to Lebanon, the port, the bridges, the airport, the roads from Damascus. They have tried to stop that resupply, as well as stopping any exit for those captured soldiers that could be brought across the border to Syria.

MATTHEWS: Let me go to David Ignatius. You‘ve always struck me as somewhere in the middle politically in trying to understand this Middle East crisis that never seems to end. Do you think this one will have an ending in the near term? Will there a peace cease fire, based upon mutual purposes here?

DAVID IGNATIUS, “WASHINGTON POST” COLUMNIST: It is entirely likely there will be a cease fire down the road. I think Israel wants to keep shooting, wants to keep attacking, having gone in until it really has degraded Hezbollah‘s military capability. The problem, what worries me is that the real consequence of what‘s happened over the last week is that the Lebanese government, in which the United States has a big investment, this was one of the few U.S. success stories in the region, really is going to have trouble recovering the idea that it can easily assert authority again, take control, disarm Hezbollah, which Israelis talk about as their goal. It‘s a wonderful idea, I just don‘t see it happening as a consequence of this war.

MATTHEWS: Dan Ayalon was just on. I want you both to respond to this. Dan Ayalon, of course a well known ambassador in the United States from Israel, says that he believes the heart and mind of the Lebanese government is to try to get rid of Hezbollah but they are afraid to say anything until they‘re crushed. Is that accurate, Andrea?

MITCHELL: Well, I think that was initially the heart and mind of the Lebanese government but they have now seen the infrastructure of their country destroyed by Israel. That‘s exactly what David Ignatius‘ just said is the real risk. There‘s a tipping point here.

This government couldn‘t control its own social services. Hezbollah had gradually become the most popular political force, Shia political force in Lebanon as it was and actually crossing sectarian grounds there by providing social services, by controlling some of the domestic ministries, by electing people to local officials and to parliament. They were a government force on the civilian side, as well as controlling those militias that are supported with great amounts of money from Iran. There is a real risk here that this government will collapse and you will have a civil war. Exactly what David is outlining.

MATTHEWS: OK, let‘s look right now and move to a somewhat lighter vain, potentially. Let look at what President Bush said today in the meeting when he was still over in Saint Petersburg.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY BLAIR, PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN: I think the thing that is really difficult is you can‘t stop this unless you get the international presence agreed.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She‘s going. I think Condi‘s going to go pretty soon.

BLAIR: Well that‘s all that matters, if you see, it will take some time to get out of there. But at least it gives people …

BUSH: It‘s a process I agree. I told her your offer too.

BLAIR: Well it‘s only, or if she‘s gonna or if she needs the ground prepared, as it were. See if she goes out, she‘s got to succeed as it were, where as I can just go out and talk.

BUSH: See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this (EXPLETIVE DELETED) and it‘s over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Well, skipping the expletive, Andrea, what does it mean to get Syria to stop Hezbollah from doing what it is doing. Is that as simple as he made it sound?

MITCHELL: Not at all. Because he may be correct that there has been not enough pressure from Kofi Annan and others with relationships with Damascus, but, I mean, let‘s look back. Warren Christopher went 33 times to Damascus and was criticized for a rather ineffectual show of diplomacy. But, we have no relationship with Damascus for a lot of reasons on both sides.

This administration has basically put off limits direct talks with Syria or Iran. We have no leverage with either party. We have to rely on others. And to get Syria now to back off? Why would it be in Syria‘s interests to back off when in fact Hezbollah is its proxy?

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you David, I‘ve been reading your columns for years. You‘ve got contacts in the Druze community and all those people over there. Are they all anti-American now? Anti-Israeli?

IGNATIUS: No Lebanese like to see their country pounded. And you wouldn‘t want to go around waving an Israeli flag in Lebanon. There are many Lebanese who are sick of Hezbollah. The idea of this militia, which has pitched Israel across the border, taking out bridges, power stations, making life miserable. That upsets people. And they‘re sick of it. I think the key here is to have a more aggressive, engaged U.S. diplomacy in this part of the world.

As Andrea said, we don‘t even have an ambassador in Damascus who could start this process. If we want to build up the Lebanese government so that it someday can control all the territory of Lebanon, make it safer for everybody, for Israelis, for Lebanese, for everybody, we‘ve got to get more involved. That‘s not going to happen and President Bush in that comment that was picked up by the microphone, talks as if diplomacy is a little spigot you can turn off and on. Let‘s send Condi. Let‘s pick up the phone and let‘s have Kofi do this. It doesn‘t work that way. It requires sustained engagement over time. And that‘s been missing. We‘re paying the price for it.

MATTHEWS: Why is he so different than his father?

IGNATIUS: Dr. Freud needs to come in on this I think. His father was a person who knew the Middle East deeply. He traveled and he knew the leaders. He knew it from an intelligence standpoint. He had run the CIA, the texture, the feel on your fingertips of the Middle East, the father had. The son never really has had that. To him, I think, as to many Israeli leaders, this is really about toughness. About standing up to adversaries. It is not about the feel and texture of diplomacy.

MITCHELL: In fact, Chris, if I may, second that. The only foreign trip that George W. Bush took before becoming president was to Israel. And Ariel Sharon, this was when he was defense minister, I believe or housing minister in charge of settlements, not when he was prime minister even, took him north in a helicopter to see the proximity of that border there.

MATTHEWS: I know that trip very well, I‘ve been on it. It is called the Likud trip. I know that trip.

MITCHELL: And that is to toughen up American politicians and other visitors to just how vulnerable Israel really is. But, he had not been to Europe. He had not been, aside with from as a kid with his father to Asia, when his father was the special envoy in Beijing, he had not been anywhere else in the world. His sole experience is through an Israeli prism.

MATTHEWS: We‘ll come right back. It is getting very interesting here. Andrea Mitchell and David Ignatius are staying with us. And when we do return, we‘ll get an update on the evacuation of Americans trapped in Lebanon right now. This is HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. As the fighting rages on between Israel and Hezbollah, 25,000 Americans remain in Lebanon. Tonight plans are underway to evacuate them, to get them out. At least those who want to get out. NBC‘s Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski joins us now with the latest.

JIM MIKLASZEWSKI, NBC PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Chris, the State Department estimates that of the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon, 24,000 of those have dual citizenship, Lebanese and U.S. and they estimate that only about 5,000 of those may want to get out of Lebanon and fast. So far, U.S. military helicopters have air lifted only 63 Americans out of Lebanon to the nearby island of Cyprus. At that rate, it would take forever to evacuate all 5,000 or so.

So beginning tomorrow, the U.S. has chartered a Greek cruise, The Orient Queen, to begin ferrying Americans, 750 at a time, for the five hour sail from Lebanon to Cyprus. Now the U.S. warship the USS Gonzales, a destroyer, will accompany and escort the Greek cruise ship and provide force protection. And within days some 2,200 marines, an amphibious task force, including the air craft carrier Iwo Jima, are expected to arrive in the area, again to provide force protection if need.

But U.S. military and Pentagon officials say those warships will maintain a discreet distance from the shoreline of Lebanon, so as not to provide any provocation or targets. Because after all, it was in the early ‘80s that the U.S. was attacked twice by Hezbollah when they bombed the U.S. embassy, and the marine barracks at the Beirut International Airport, killing 241 marines. Chris?

MATTHEWS: Thank you, NBC‘s Jim Miklaszewski at the Pentagon.

We‘re back right now with NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell and “Washington Post” columnist David Ignatius. Listening to Dan Ayalon today, the Israeli ambassador, I thought I was listening to a Bush administration official, Andrea, because he kept talking about how everybody who is opposed to us or Israel in that whole region of the world is basically the same person. They‘re a terrorist. Are they sort of aping our line or we‘re aping their line, what is it now?

MITCHELL: Well I think there is a confluence of interest here between the United States and Israel. The U.S. would not mind at all and is permitting through this green light diplomatically, permitting Israel to go after Hezbollah because the U.S., this administration clearly wants Hezbollah wiped out, wants to be able to also deal an indirect blow to Iran, its chief sponsor, and wants to try to stand up that democracy.

But as David and I were discussing with you just a minute ago, the real problem is whether that Lebanese fledgling democracy, which was created with the withdrawal of Syrian forces 18 months ago can really stand up, with having been beaten down so far and with the infrastructure of Lebanon so badly destroyed.

MATTHEWS: David, the same question. Are we speaking the same language? The government over there, which is sort of a combination of Likud and some more moderating forces and this administration. Are they speaking the same world view here?

IGNATIUS: You know increasingly, it the same language, which I have this weird sense of deja vu, Chris. I was in Beirut in 1982 when the Israelis invaded. That was another big roll of the dice. It was an effort to transform the situation. That time the terrorists were the PLO and Yasser Arafat.

Israelis rolled the tanks all the way to Beirut thinking we‘ll finally crush them in their lair. That proved to be a strategic disaster for Israel by the account of every Israeli I talked to. And I worry that in a sense, Israel may be repeating the same mistake. It‘s understandable they want to go after the people who were firing rockets at their cities, who were kidnapping their soldiers.

The question is whether they‘ve taken the bait of this adversary. You know, Lebanon swallows up invaders, as we have found, as the Israelis found. It is a merciless kind of battlefield. And I just worry that at the end of this mini war, whatever you want to call it, Israel won‘t really be very much more secure than it was before it started. And that should worry everybody.

MATTHEWS: David Ignatius of the “Washington Post,” Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, our chief foreign affairs correspondent. When we return, we‘ll get back and give you the latest from Haifa, where Israelis continue to live with the threat, in fact the reality of Hezbollah rockets. This is HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.

Elsewhere:

UN Ambassador Bolton says there is no “moral equivalence” between Israeli civilians killed by terrorist attack and Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli bombs. However, there may be a moral equivalence between Bolton and a cockroach. (See also Shakespeare’s Sister.)

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow accused Helen Thomas of representing “the Hezbollah view.”

Taylor Marsh writes that, at the G8 Summit, President Bush groped German Chancellor Andrea Merkel. She’s got the photos to prove it. See also Steve M. Gross.

Philip J. LaVelle writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean accused President Bush last night of being weak on national defense and absent in the escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

In remarks at San Diego State University, Dean urged activists to fan across the nation – including deep into the heart of Republican-rich “red” states – to tell voters that Bush has failed as president – including in national defense, which Republicans tout as their core strength.

“There are a lot of things we can say when we knock on the door (of voters),” Dean told hundreds at San Diego State’s Open Air Theatre.
“You know, people say the Republicans are tough on defense. How can you be tough on defense if five years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still at large, the Iranians are about to get nuclear weapons, North Korea’s quadrupled their nuclear weapons stash. . . .

“Explain to me how it is that this president is tough on defense? I think this president is weak on defense and he’s hurt America because he hasn’t done the right thing,” Dean said.

(Rightie heads explode. )

Dean was especially pointed in an area the Bush administration has long claimed as its home turf – a muscular national defense.

Dean said the Bush administration’s decision to go to war against Iraq and its overall foreign policy have hurt America’s standing in the world.

“This country is in the worst shape since Richard Nixon, and probably before that,” Dean said.

“We’ve lost the high moral high ground everywhere in the world. We want to be respected around the world again.

“We want our moral authority to be restored, because part of defending America is not just well-armed troops; it’s having the high moral ground.”

In an apparent reference to Israeli military action deep inside Lebanon, Dean said:

“If you think what’s going on in the Middle East today would be going on if the Democrats were in control, it wouldn’t, because we would have worked day after day after day to make sure we didn’t get where we are today. We would have had the moral authority that Bill Clinton had when he brought together the Northern Irish and the IRA, when he brought together the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

Righties commenting on this story made the usual juvenile excuses, but the fact remains that the President of the United States was prancing around Europe and Russia, riding his bicycle and making smarmy jokes about pig slicing while the Middle East blew up in his face. The best excuse a couple of righties came up with is that the current crisis would have happened anyway, no matter who was President. So (I counter), if the President of the United States is, in fact, impotent to effect change in the Middle East, why are we in Iraq?

Past presidents of both parties would have been actively — hell, pro-actively — engaged in the current conflagration. Bush doesn’t appear even to be trying. Other than his lame statement that Israel has a right to defend herself — which of course she does, but that’s not exactly the issue at hand — he’s sitting the whole mess out.

Oh, correction — Bush cursed Hezbollah yesterday during a G8 lunch — he didn’t know the microphone was on —

Bush expressed his frustration with the United Nations and his disgust with the militant Islamic group and its backers in Syria as he talked to British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the closing lunch at the Group of Eight summit.

“See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this (expletive) and it’s over,” Bush told Blair as he chewed on a buttered roll.

He told Blair he felt like telling U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who visited the gathered leaders, to get on the phone with Syrian President Bashar Assad to “make something happen.” He suggested Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice might visit the region soon.

In other words, Bush is whining that Kofi Annan should do something. The righties ought to love that.

So far, righties aren’t bothered by President Bush’s inaction; they’re just upset that Howard Dean called Bush a weenie. So this genius blames the current crisis on Bill Clinton (I guess if he’d just left well enough alone, the Israelis and Palestinians would be buddies now), and this one complains that the Dems have “No solutions, plans, or solutions, etc.” But I don’t see why that’s a slam on the Dems, since it’s obvious Bush doesn’t have solutions, plans, or solutions, either. He’s a whiz at slicing roast pig, though.

An ankle biter proclaims that we don’t need no respect.

And when did “high moral ground” and “respect” of others ever win a war? I’m not saying these are bad things, but the world is a place in which might, power, and the ability to rout another are far more relevant. I don’t think what keeps Kim Jong Il, the nut in Iran, and others like them from striking at us is our “high moral ground”, but rather our overpowering military force.

Clue: Our “overpowering military force” is, um, rapidly becoming as impotent as the rest of Bush’s foreign policies, thanks to Iraq. And these days the smart guys are talking about Fourth Generation warfare, which is all about pulling “opposing states apart at the moral level,” says William Lind. Thinking of war as only applying firepower to targets is so over. It’s way pre-9/11. See also Tom Engelhardt on why force ain’t what it used to be.

As a public service for other bloggers writing commentary on President Bush’s foreign policy, I dug out the thesaurus to find synonyms for impotent. Here are some: powerless, helpless, inadequate, ineffectual, incapable, inept, weak, lame. Or, just stick with weenie.

Dean and the Dems should be running a split screen ad — on one side, Bush making sliced pig jokes and getting slapped around by Vladamir Putin; on the other, the Middle East going up in flames. Scrolling across the bottom of the screen: This is being tough on national security?

And they could replay the “mission accomplished” clip a few times, while they’re at it. The scrolling message should be something like He acted like a hot dog, but he’s only a weenie.

Update: See also Michael Stickings.

Larry Johnson writes that “Israel Took a Stupid Pill.”

Apparently not content to let the U.S. do a self-immolation act in the Middle East by itself, Israel decided to set itself on fire by invading Lebanon. Burn baby burn? Like George Bush, Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, never served in a combat unit and launched military operations without thinking the matter through. In fact, Olmert reportedly never even served in the military. I raise this because there is one simple question Israel cannot answer about the current operations–what is their strategic military objective. Olmert has somehow persuaded the Israeli military to ignore strategy, think tactically, and in the process become really stupid. The events in the next several weeks will expose as myth the canard that you can secure a nation by killing terrorists. No you can’t.

Killing “terrorists” has a place in policy but it is not a strategic military objective. It is a tactical objective and may serve political purposes, but achieves little in terms of securing Israel. Israel is attacking targets in Lebanon like a drunken sailor in a bar fight. Flailing about, causing significant damage, hitting innocent bystanders, and generally making a mess of things. This is not the Israeli military that pulled off the brilliant and daring raid at Entebbe.

But maybe the primary objective isn’t killing terrorists. At the Washington Note, Steve Clemons writes that the objective may be to constrain U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

My view is that three broad threats were evolving for Israel from the American side of the equation. One one front, the U.S. will be attempting to settle some kind of new equilibrium in Iraq with fewer U.S. forces and some face-saving partial withdrawal. To accomplish this and maintain any legitimacy in the eyes of important nations in the region — particularly among close U.S. partners among the Gulf Cooperation Council states — America “might have” tried to do some things that constituted a broad new bargain with the Arab Middle East. The U.S. had even previously flirted, along with the Brits, in trying to get Syria on a Libya like track and out of the international dog house.

There was also pressure building to push Hamas — or at least the “governing wing” of it — towards a posture that would move dramatically closer to a recognition of Israel. Abbas was becoming increasingly entrepreneurial in creating opportunities for the constructive players in Hamas to squirm towards eventual negotiations with Israel that could possibly be packaged in terms of “final status negotiations” on the borders and terms of a new Palestinian state. George W. Bush is the first President to actually call the Palestine territories “Palestine” and may have eventually come around on trying to pump up Abbas’s legitimacy as the father of a new and different state. I am doubtful of this scenario — but some in Israel had serious concerns about this unfolding.

Lastly, despite lots of tit-for-tat tensions and enormous mistrust, Iran and the U.S. were tilting towards a deal to negotiate about Iran’s nuclear pretensions and other goals.

If Mr. Clemons is right, somebody should have told Israel they needn’t bother starting a war to constrain American foreign policy. The Bush foreign policy “team” is, um, self-constrained. As in can’t negotiate their way out of a wet paper bag.

Some in Israel viewed all three of these potential policy courses for the U.S. — a broad deal with the Arab Middle East, a new push on final status negotiations with the Palestinians, and a deal to actually negotiate directly with Iran — as negative for Israel.

The flamboyant, over the top reactions to attacks on Israel’s military check points and the abduction of soldiers — which I agree Israel must respond to — seems to be part establishing “bona fides” by Olmert, but far more important, REMOVING from the table important policy options that the U.S. might have pursued.

Israel is constraining American foreign policy in amazing and troubling ways by its actions. And a former senior CIA official and another senior Marine who are well-versed in both Israeli and broad Middle East affairs, agreed that serious strategists in Israel are more concerned about America tilting towards new bargains in the region than they are either about the challenge from Hamas or Hezbollah or showing that Olmert knows how to pull the trigger.

Another well respected and very serious national security public intellectual in the nation wrote this when I shared this thesis that Israeli actions were ultimately aimed at clipping American wings in the region. His response:

the thesis of your paper is right-on.

whether intentional or coincidental, that is what is being done right now.

I share these other views only to establish the fact that there is not a consensus either in support of or opposed to Israeli action — but some are beginning to scrutinize what Israel is seeking to achieve with such flamboyant displays of power that are antagonizing whole societies on their borders.

Keeping America from cutting new deals in the region — which many in the national security establishment thinks are vital — may actually be what is going on, and the smarter-than-average analysts are beginning to see that.

If true, this is a fascinating as well as perilous development. The Bushies continue to support Israel even as, allegedly, Israel deliberately is undermining the United States. And why would the Bushies do that? The obvious answer, IMO, is that to do otherwise would alienate what’s left of Bush’s base. The hard-core righties are solidly behind Israel.

So, foreign policy be damned. All that matters is appeasing the Bush base.

Steve Clemons also wrote,

To take one moment though and argue a counter-point to this, one serious analyst I spoke to this morning who stopped by to talk after attending synagogue raised a good point. He said that he thought that Olmert’s insecurity about military management was driving the over-reaction.

But he also said that the QUALITY of the attacks against Israel were freaking out the Israeli military and intelligence leaders. Complex incursions that included abductions along with a successful attack on an Israeli gunship show that the enemy is no longer an unimpressive, rag-tag lot. Training and armaments have been improved, and Israel is scrambling to figure out how this happened.

To which Billmon added,

In A Bright Shining Lie, Neil Sheehan talked about the difference between the U.S. generals he knew in Vietnam and the ones who fought and won World War II. That earlier generation, he said, had been keenly aware they could lose — after all, just a few years earlier they’d been conducting training exercises with soldiers armed with wooden guns and trucks pretending to be tanks, and here they were taking on the most famously competent military establishment in the world. And because they feared their enemy, and feared failure, they were tough on themselves. Losers — like the general who blundered into a German trap at the Kasserine Pass, were quickly cashiered. Winners were promoted, even if they were eccentric flakes, like George Patton. The Army that fought its way into Germany in 1945 was far from perfect, but the guys at the top never took victory for granted, and rarely underestimated their opponent. When they did, as in Operation Market Garden, their soldiers paid dearly for it.

By Vietnam, though, two decades of superpower status, and the budgets that went with it, had changed the mentality. The generals in charge were acutely aware they controlled the most powerful military machine in the history of the world. And they saw their enemy — particularly the Viet Cong irregulars — as hopelessly inferior ….

… It’s beginning to look as if the Israeli Defense Force (if not the entire Israeli political and military establishment) may be suffering from the same syndrome — the disease of hubris. This isn’t the army of ’67, or even ’73, which believed the country’s survival was at stake and constantly worried that Israel’s qualitative edge might be too narrow to outweigh the quantitative advantages enjoyed by its enemies. The years of U.S. largesse and bloated procurement budgets, the state-of-the-art tanks and fighters, the fascination with technology and push-button war, plus the pitiful state of the Syrian Army and Air Force — Israel’s remaining conventional front-line foes — all appear to have infected the IDF with the arrogance and complacency that plagued the United States in Vietnam.

Which is not to say that Israel won’t prevail in the current military action. But yesterday Hezbollah rockets struck Haifa again, killing at least nine Israelis, and residents of Tel Aviv have been put on alert. Did Israel understand the risks to her citizens when she initiated the current assault?

I’m going back to Larry Johnson now (emphasis added) —

While most folks in the United States buy into the Hollywood storyline of poor little Israel fighting for it’s survival against big, bad Muslims, the reality unfolding on our TV screens shows something else. Exodus, starring Paul Newman, is ancient history. Hamas and Hezbollah attacked military targets–kidnapping soldiers on military patrols may be an act of war and a provocation, but it is not terrorism. (And yes, Hezbollah and Hamas have carried out terrorist attacks in the past against Israeli civilians. I’m not ignoring those acts, I condemn them, but we need to understand what the dynamics are right now.) Israel is not attacking the individuals who hit their soldiers. Israel is engaged in mass punishment.

How did Israel respond? They bombed civilian targets and civilian infrastructure and have killed many civilians. Let’s see if I have this right. The Arab “terrorists” attack military units, destroy at least one tank, and are therefore terrorists. Israel retaliates by launching aerial, naval, and artillery bombardments of civilian areas and they are engaging in self-defense. If we are unable to recognize the hypocrisy of this construct then we ourselves are so enveloped by propaganda and emotion that, like the Israelis, Hezbollah, and Hamas, we can’t think rationally. We can only think in terms of tribalism and revenge.

Certainly Israel has suffered mightily from terrorist attacks; no one is denying this. But in this case, the provocation for Israel’s action was not an act of terrorism.

“Iran, meanwhile, is sitting in the catbird’s seat,” Larry J. continues. Israel may not be thinking strategically, but Iran is.

The events unfolding in Iraq and Lebanon are going Tehran’s way. The United States is being portrayed in the world media as someone who tolerates and excuses attacks on civilian populations. The perception becomes the reality and the ability of the United States to rally support among the Russians, the Chinese, and even the French becomes more impaired. We need the international community to deal effectively with nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran. Now, we will be bogged down trying to defend Israel from an angry international community.

What Israel is doing hurts the United States. Try to get a rightie to see that. Even better, try to teach algebra to a duck.

Meanwhile, the Freep are celebrating the deaths of Lebanese children. (Sample comments: “Hold up those babies up…..and cry to the sky!”; “boo friggin hoo. just eliminating future terrorists IMO”)

This is evil, people. Ain’t nothin’ else but evil. Whatever the cause, the provocation, the goal, the excuse — the deaths of children are always regrettable. Anyone who celebrates in the deaths of children, any children, is evil. People who rejoice in the deaths of children are no better than terrorists. And as long as our foreign policy caters to these creatures, the whole world suffers.