Is It All Bush's Fault?

"But such a military strike would take a while to organize. In the meantime, perhaps President Bush can fly from the silly G8 summit in St. Petersburg--a summit that will most likely convey a message of moral confusion and political indecision--to Jerusalem, the capital of a nation that stands with us, and is willing to fight with us, against our common enemies. This is our war, too."

I await the liberal response: "From the neocons who brought you Iraq . . . "

Slate's Fred Kaplan sounds nostalgic for Henry Kissinger:

"Where's the shuttle diplomacy? In any other administration, at least since Nixon's, the secretary of state would have flown to the Middle East days ago, would already have touched down in Tel Aviv, Beirut, and Damascus--maybe more than once--to hammer out a cease-fire, a settlement, or at least some sort of compromise to keep the conflict from expanding."

Marc Lynch , a political scientist at Williams College, doesn't trust Bush on the world stage:

"American public diplomacy has been virtually invisible on all this, at a time when it is more urgently needed than ever. I can understand this -- you have to have a policy if you want to try to explain or defend it, and right now the Bush administration doesn't seem to have any policy at all beyond supporting Israel and issuing calls for 'restraint' which Israel promptly and publicly rejects. And what administration official wants to subject him or herself to tough Arab questioning on live TV right now? The idea that Palestinian-Israeli relations could be cordoned off from wider Middle East questions was always misguided. It's now become actively destructive to all of our interests in the region.

"The only reason I'm not calling more loudly for Bush to get involved and take a leadership role in the conflict is the expectation that he would probably do the wrong thing. But at this point, doing nothing is, in fact, doing something. The Bush administration right now looks weak, confused, and vaguely pathetic."

Americablog's John Aravosis also brings the debate back to W.:

"If Hezbollah missiles are killing Israelis, and Hezbollah's actions are supported by Lebanon's Shia population, doesn't Israel have the right to retaliate against the Shia in Lebanon? At the very least against their utilities and their roads? Putting aside the wisdom geo-politically of such action, morally isn't it any country's right to strike back?

"Or, if you think that the Shia in Lebanon don't share responsibility, then do you also believe that Americans who supported Bush, and who voted for him twice, and who supported the war in Iraq don't share any of the blame for the mayhem Bush has unleashed over the past six years?"

All right, how did the morning papers deal with the president's open-mike curse?

The LAT uses the S-word: "President Bush thinks some of his fellow leaders on the world stage talk too much -- way too much. In a recording of luncheon chatter captured by Russian television, the president also is ready with some very undiplomatic language when talking about the Middle East."