By TOM RAUM
The Associated Press
Monday, July 31, 2006; 6:07 PM
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration may have badly miscalculated in insisting that any Mideast cease-fire be tied to long-term objectives. As the toll on Lebanese civilians has soared, even moderate Arab governments have turned into U.S. critics, and Hezbollah's support has climbed across the region.
Bush's most steadfast ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, joined the ranks of those expressing frustration after Israel's Sunday bombing in the village of Qana that killed many civilians, most of them women and children. "We have to speed this whole process up," Blair said. "This has got to stop and stop on both sides."
Anger was brewing all across the Arab world as the U.N. Security Council prepared to take up the issue. Calls for an immediate cease-fire were coming from traditional U.S. allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
Even the democratically elected prime minister of Lebanon, Fuad Saniora _ whose leadership Bush often salutes _ insisted that talk of a larger peace package must wait until the firing stops. "We will not negotiate until the Israeli war stops shedding the blood of innocent people," said Saniora.
And where Saniora initially was critical of Hezbollah, he is now praising the militant group and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, for helping to defend Lebanon.
These haven't been good days for Bush's goal of spreading democracy through the Middle East.
"I think we made a huge mistake by giving Israel a blank check," said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution. "Hezbollah, after six years of relative restraint and working inside a coalition government, is accused of kidnapping a grand total of two people. A good case could be made for not doing anything."
Yet in a speech Monday in Miami, Bush showed that recent events, including the Qana killings, have had little impact on his position.
He once again depicted Israel's battle with Hezbollah as part of a wider struggle against terrorism and declined to lay blame equally on both sides even as he mourned the loss of "innocent life" both in Israel and Lebanon.
"Israel is exercising its right to defend itself," Bush said. Separately, in an interview Monday with Fox News Channel, Bush said, "stopping for the sake of stopping ... can be OK, except it won't address the root cause of the problem."
In his Miami speech, Bush laid out the same series of conditions for accepting a cease-fire that he has relied on for most of the past three weeks: Hezbollah must disarm and return the two Israeli soldiers it kidnapped on July 12, Iran and Syria must end their financial and logistical support for Hezbollah, the Saniora government must be able to exercise control of all Lebanese territory.
Bush's unnuanced support for Israel _ backed by unusual allies, some congressional Democrats _ is becoming an increasingly tough sell for the United States as it presses for a comprehensive package before the U.N. Security Council.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah "is becoming a regional icon," eclipsing even al-Qaida, suggests Mideast scholar Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland.
The U.N. debate may end up as a reprise of the battle that the Bush administration had on Iraq in the Security Council in early 2003 when only it and Britain, among the council's five veto-wielding permanent members, argued in favor of an invasion.
And Blair's recent comments raised questions about Britain's commitment. Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned Israel's response to Hezbollah rocket strikes as "disproportionate," suggesting a split between Blair and other members of his Cabinet.
Bush was meeting late Monday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who cut short her diplomatic mission to the Middle East without making an expected second stop in Lebanon.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had initially planned to hold a meeting Monday that would have brought together nations willing to send troops for an expanded U.N. peacekeeping force. But diplomats said the meeting was postponed to give more time for efforts to bring peace to the region.
Bowing to pressure from Rice and complaints about a mounting humanitarian crisis, Israel agreed to a 48-hour halt in the airstrikes while investigating the Qana bombing. But, hours later, Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes in southern Lebanon.
"The script has not worked out the way it was supposed to," said Stephen J. Cimbala, a Penn State University professor who studies the interaction between war and American politics. "Even among some hard-core conservatives, what you're hearing now is a louder chorus of people who are saying this plan has backfired."
Mehdi Noorbaksh, associate professor of international affairs at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, said the United States miscalculated on two grounds in its stance on the Israel-Hezbollah violence.
"Buying time for the Israelis" allowed violence against Lebanese citizens to rise and turned the tide of world opinion against both Israel and the United States, he said. At the same time, the U.S. position helped fan support across the Arab world for Hezbollah.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who has disagreed with Bush on Iraq, said Israel's pounding of Lebanon was hurting, not helping, America's image in the Middle East. "The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now," Hagel said.
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EDITOR'S NOTE _ Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.