Whether one supports or opposes Israel's massive bombing campaign in Lebanon, one thing is clear--It has discredited George's last justification for America's war in Iraq.
The justifications that initially sold the war to Congress and the American people were almost immediately discredited--Sadaam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction, nor did he have operational links to Al Qaeda. (Al Qaeda in Iraq only became an active force in response to the American occupation.)
With the original war justifications in tatters, Bush came up with a new rationale--America was bringing democracy to Iraq and helping, by Iraq's example, to transform the Middle East into a stable and democratic region.
Last year, the Bush administration held up the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon and the elections in Egypt as examples of how the Iraqi model was starting to spread democracy to the Middle East. However, democratic elections in Egypt were a farce with leading opposition candidates arrested and banned from running, the media censored, and with heavy police repression. Democratic elections in the Palestinian Territory brought Hamas to power. The Cedar Revolution did push Syria out of Lebanon and led to democratic parliamentary elections and a new government (in which Hezbollah won seats in parliament and posts in the cabinet).
Now, Israel's massive bombing of Lebanon's infrastructure puts the future of the democratic Cedar Revolution in doubt.
Instead, America seems to be turning back for support to its traditional authoritarian allies in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
So--no democracy in Egypt, democracy in danger of collapsing under Israeli bombing in Lebanon, and civil war in Iraq.
Our presence in Iraq is not creating stable democracies in the Middle East nor in Iraq itself. Equally notable, it has destabilized the region leading to massively increased violence.
So what justification is left for our soldiers to keep dying and our national treasury to keep being raided for our war in Iraq? Except for peddling fear, Bush and the Republicans are out of justifications.
Despite the thousands of tragic deaths and the squandering of so many billions in Iraq, the United States--under the Bush administration--is unable to positively influence world events: not in Lebanon, not in Israel, not in the Palestinian Territory, not in Iran (and not in Korea either). Under Bush and his Republican allies, the world is more dangerous and America is less safe.