Diplomacy Is Hard Work

Poor Condoleezza Rice stuck doing the hard work of diplomacy for the Bush Administration. And, make no mistake about it, as Rice puts it "the U.S. has been working harder and harder and harder" to achieve a meaningful cease fire in Lebanon. A cease fire that meets all the conditions set forth by Israel.

Of course the fact that Rice was uninvited from cease fire talks in Lebanon today when an Israeli air strike killed 54 mostly women and children in the village of Qana. The death toll in Qana includes 37 children.

Even after being told not to come to Lebanon until she has done something to stop the killing, Rice claimed that she and her child loving master in the White House were doing everything possible to do so. Well, everything short of demanding that their clients in Israel actually, you know, stop the killing.

Rice brags that she "would put our efforts besides anyone's effort to deal with the situation. We are also pushing for an urgent end" to hostilities. However, the United States government has done nothing to restrain the Israelis and it in effect using them as proxies to send a message to Syria and Iran. A message written in the blood of the Lebanese people.

The US position is to allow the killing to continue and any words by Rice contrary to that are, well, lies (or spin, the Republican word for lies). This from the Washington Post.

The controversial U.S. position -- which has pitted Washington against most European and Arab allies that pressed unsuccessfully for an immediate cease-fire -- also reflects a shift back to the Bush administration's first-term strategy, foreign policy specialists said. With Rice at the helm of foreign policy, the second Bush term had been characterized by a more realistic and collegial approach to foreign policy, a shift from the hard-charging, go-it-alone push epitomized by the Iraq war during the first term.

Working harder to make the world a more dangerous place. A place where democracy can be snuffed out at the end of a gun.

photo AFP