Why Bush is to Blame for the Israel-Lebanon Deaths

The Bush Administration today said we will not negotiate with Syria or Lebanon. All that means is more deaths. We previously refused to negotiate with Iran and North Korea.

No other American administration in recent memory has so totally rejected diplomacy. No other administration in recent memory has created so many dangerous world situations by failing to use diplomacy, which requires patience and not Texas cowboy machismo bravado.

Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and their Cabinets and appointees all tried and used diplomacy in the Middle East. They succeeded in keeping people at the table and off the streets. The Bush Administration's failures in Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Lebanon and Israel are both because they do not use diplomacy and because they do not know how.

Even now, they want to wait it out while civilians keep getting killed. It raises the possibility of an incident triggering a wider war. Some small incident, as the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in World War I, provokes wider war. The delay just keeps rubbing raw the wounds.

The Bush Administration's failure to have diplomats rather than cheerleaders proven to be dishonest, will not change. John Bolton, Condoleeza Rice, and Dick Cheney cannot do what the Clintons, Carters, Christophers and Allbrights did. They have a different world view with a different degree of professionalism.

No Democratic presidential candidate or otherwise is speaking out directly. Hillary Clinton, at a New York pro-war rally joined the chorus of murderous voices.

It is not the Bush Administration's pro-Israel, anti-Muslim stance that precludes peace. It is their failure of imagination.

The issue is no longer just Iraq. The only way to dramatically change this Administration's march to world disaster is with mass demonstrations and an active peace movement.