Froomkin Puts the Bush Stance Succinctly

His blog on the WaPo site is well worth a read, IMHO. While he's a bit too polite about the belubbed "leader" and his completely ignorant stance on Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah, I can forgive Froomkin because I think he's one of the few decent minds at the Post these days. Which seems to be why the WaPo's editorial board seems intent on neutralizing him. Remember the right-wing plagiarist they hired for all of 5 seconds; the ass who couldn't get through his first piece without stealing and then blaming a vast left-wing conspiracy for his theft?

From Froomkin:

Presented with a crisis on the Israeli-Lebanese border in which the two pillars of his foreign policy -- fighting terror and spreading democracy -- were conspicuously at odds with each other, President Bush made it clear which pillar is dearest to his heart.

Bush is strongly supporting Israel's furious wave of attacks against Hezbollah and other targets in Lebanon, even going so far as single-handedly thwarting a humanitarian-based international consensus for a cease-fire.

But the cost to the fragile Lebanese government -- up until now, the greatest success story in Bush's push for democracy in the Middle East -- has been enormous.

"The country has been torn to shreds," Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told diplomats in Beirut on Wednesday. "Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions? . . . You want to support the government of Lebanon? Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, no government can survive on the ruins of a nation."

Interestingly enough, there might have been a way for Bush to be spared such a grim choice, having to pick one pillar over another. Conceivably, at least, if Bush had opened lines of communication with Hezbollah's patrons in Syria and Iran, he might have been able to, in the president's own immortal words, " stop this shit ."

The Bush White House has a long-standing aversion to engaging in dialogue with its enemies -- foreign or domestic. At least in part, that's based on an intense desire not to reward bad behavior. But the aversion to rewarding enemies by talking to them has not historically risen to the level of doctrine.

Overcoming that aversion would have been difficult for the White House, at least in the short term. But would it really have been more painful than watching one of its two central foreign policy pillars fall by the wayside?

The White House, of course, probably doesn't see the choice as starkly as that. The official line is that Israel's military action in Lebanon is actually tidying things up over there, strengthening the democratic government in the long run. Just like in Iraq.