Should Bush Act on Middle East Conflict?

Michael Hirsh in Newsweek insists that Mr. Bush must take action on the ever-worsening crisis between Israel and Hezbollah/Lebanon; that a failure to do so amounts to Bush hiding "behind the skirts of multilateralism" (a term I have no doubt Mr. Bush can neither pronounce nor define).

I say Bush acted by refusing to act. You?

Good foreign policy should be metronomic in pace—measured, steady, dependable. That's especially true when you're the world's only superpower, and you want to keep things that way. The key is to inspire respect, trust and faith in your judgement. That’s called leadership. But for six years now, George W. Bush's foreign policy has resembled a pendulum swinging out of control, lurching wildly from hubris to "help us." Despite the "stay the course" rhetoric, there's been little that is steady or dependable about it, and not surprisingly it has inspired little respect or trust around the world. In Bush's first term, the pendulum swung too far toward in-your-face unilateralism. Now, in his second term it has swung dramatically back toward the most squeamish sort of multilateralism—the kind of thinking that says, "Without partners, I don't dare make a move."