The White House: The Legacy on the Line - by Michael Hirsch
July 24, 2006 issue - The Bush team didn't see this one coming. Maybe it was simply that too many other volcanoes were erupting at the same time. Iraq was tipping closer to civil war, Iran was getting more brazen by the day and North Korea's missiles were roiling East Asia. The president, meanwhile, was preoccupied with what would likely be a testy G8 summit hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. True, the two top U.S. Mideast envoys—David Welch and Elliott Abrams—were in the region when hostilities began. But they had been reassured by Lebanese contacts that Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbullah leader, didn't plan to "stir things up" while Hamas and Israel contended over a kidnapped Israeli corporal, according to a senior U.S. diplomat who would divulge the details only if he remained anonymous. "You had six and a half years of, if not calm, basically a stable deterrence between Hizbullah and Israel," the official told NEWSWEEK. "I did not expect this at all."
Bush knows all too well that the two major agendas of his presidency—antiterrorism and the promotion of democracy—are in danger of colliding with each other in Lebanon. Not surprisingly, says a senior Israeli official, his country is getting mixed signals from Washington. "We're getting support, and we're getting requests to tone [it] down. But no pressure at this point."
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