Appeasing the appeasers...

Bush sent Sec. Rice to the mid-east to project the appearance of trying to stop the fighting so the media will feeeeel good about the U.S. efforts toward peace...

SIDON, Lebanon - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon on Monday to launch diplomatic efforts aimed at ending 13 days of warfare as Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into the country in heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas.

Rice arrived in Beirut in the afternoon and was to meet with Prime Minister Fuad Saniora in the previously unannounced stopover before she heads to Israel, Saniora’s office said.
“We all want to urgently end the fighting. We have absolutely the same goal,” Rice told reporters traveling with her before arriving in Lebanon.

Immediately following the umpteenth commencement of middle-east hostilities, the American media, and to a certain extent the Europeans but for different reasons, have come to expect whatever current American administration to reflexively broker a middle-east peace deal by shuttling the Secretary of State back and forth between Israel and Lebanon. Why you ask, do they think this will work to stop the violence when it has never worked a single time since Isreal's creation in 1948?

Here's the "template for peace" that has worked so famously in the past: the current American administration brokers a diplomatic solution that temporarily stops the violence which is so distasteful to the media. The deal always requires Israel to give up some land, or settlements or demands some other disastrous concession to the terrorists in return for a cease-fire. The hostilities cease for a time and the delicate American media fawn and preen all over themselves for helping to quell the violence. Within two weeks, the Palestinians, or Hamas, or Hezbollah are lobbing more bombs back into Israel and the cycle begins all over again. And of course the media blame the Israelis.

Why do we insist that Israel not protect herself? The simple answer; because the American media draw a moral equivalency between Israel and the poor, down-trodden Palestinians. They feeeeeel that Israel is just as much to blame, if not more so, for the back and forth sniping between the two. The fact is that Israel would not do anything agressive toward the Palestinians but for the endless rock-throwing, and Kaytusha rocket-firing by the Palestinian extremists, into Israel killing civilians.

So, Condi Rice is meeting with the various leaders as to appear to attempt war-averting diplomacy. The Europeans, the other oil-exporting nations in the region, and the Islam-sympathetic media in America can feeeeeel warm and fuzzy because the U.S. is not taking sides and is once again using diplomacy and feel-good dialogue so solve terrorism -- the standard liberal solution for dealing with people who want to kill you. I think it's a charade. Hopefully Bush doesn't have any intention in stopping Israel from defending herself. He sees the wisdom in letting Israel take the battle to the terrorists, just as he has done. It is afterall, a "global" war on terror.