Mum on the Mideast?

"Nowhere is the knee-jerk support of Israel more clear than in the debate in Congress this week--or lack thereof--over the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. Leaders of both parties have been quick to forcefully condemn Hamas and Hezbollah while offering unconditional support for Israel's bombing of civilian Beirut."

You don't usually see this headline on a liberal Web site: "Don't Blame Bush." But Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg --who recently returned from a trip to the Israeli-Lebanese border, funded by AIPAC--exonerates the president:

"We don't really know why Hezbollah chose the moment it did to end this fragile truce by launching a raid that killed three Israeli soldiers and resulted in the kidnapping of two others. . . .

"We do know enough, however, to divide responsibility for the current war among these players: Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. This has not stopped many analysts in Europe and the United States from laying blame for the violence squarely at a less obvious doorstep--that of the Bush administration. . . .

"There are three basic criticisms. The most familiar is that Bush encouraged the Arab-Israeli conflict by neglecting the peace process championed by Bill Clinton. The problem with this line of reasoning--which comes mainly from the liberal side--is that negotiations were at a genuine impasse when Bush arrived in office. . . .

"A second case against Bush, which comes from advocates of diplomacy and negotiation as the solution to all the world's problems, is that he failed to directly engage with Syria, Iran, and Hamas, leaving them to their mischief. Like the first objection, this one confuses the process of foreign policy with the substance. It has been a hallmark of Bush's approach to isolate rather than engage rogue regimes. . . .

"You can blame Bush for a lot of mistakes, and I do, but not for the latest turn in the seemingly eternal and eternally depressing Arab-Israeli conflict."

Weisberg shows he's not a knee-jerk partisan. But wouldn't it have been better if Slate, and not a pro-Israel lobby, had paid for his trip?

This stem-cell debate would have been huge if it wasn't being overshadowed by two wars, but Bush finally took out his veto pen yesterday:

"President Bush bluntly and swiftly defied a bipartisan majority in Congress and a strong current in public opinion and exercised his veto power for the first time today to block an expansion of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research," says the Los Angeles Times . "Within hours of Bush's announcement, a House effort to override the veto fell 51 votes short of the required two-thirds majority, effectively killing the bill for the rest of the year. The vote was 235 for the override and 193 opposed, with 51 Republicans siding against the president. "Bush cast his legislative triumph as a victory of conscience, not a setback for science. He said the veto will discourage research that involves the destruction of human embryos to extract the stem cells that scientists believe can generate vast varieties of healthy cells that can replace diseased cells in humans."

Of course, it's hard to declare a "triumph" when 63 senators, in a chamber controlled by your party, vote against your position. "The issue underscored the weakening hold Bush has on his party, as he failed to persuade GOP leaders -- unlike many earlier occasions -- to send him only legislation he finds acceptable. But his stalwart opposition to the bill provided a reminder that even a weakened second-term president retains enormous clout in the veto power that Bush has been so restrained in using."

Says the New York Times : "By defying the Republican-controlled Congress, which had sent him legislation that would have overturned research restrictions he imposed five years ago, Mr. Bush re-inserted himself forcefully into a moral, scientific and political debate in which Republicans are increasingly finding common ground with Democrats. . . .