As the war in Lebanon between Israeli forces and Hizbollah fighters intensifies, and the death toll mounts, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Bush administration, appearances to the contrary, is not interested in peace, ceasefires or diplomatic solutions to the violence. Indeed, today, a group of prominent neocons, including Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and members of Vice President Cheney’s office managed to get a story published by Insight Magazine (one of the Moonie Times’sister publications), in which they, figuratively speaking, take Condoleeza Rice to the woodshed for her failure to sufficiently support their dreams of further wars in the Middle East:

Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration’s national security and foreign policy agenda.

The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict. […]

The criticism of Miss Rice has been intense and comes from a range of Republican loyalists, including current and former aides in the Defense Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. They have warned that Iran has been exploiting Miss Rice’s inexperience and incompetence to accelerate its nuclear weapons program. They expect a collapse of her policy over the next few months. […]

A leading public critic of Miss Rice has been Richard Perle, a former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and regarded as close to Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Mr. Perle, pointing to the effort by the State Department to undermine the Reagan administration’s policy toward the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, has accused Miss Rice of succumbing to a long-time State Department agenda of meaningless agreements meant to appease enemies of the United States. […]

Mr. Perle’s article was said to have reflected the views of many of Mr. Bush’s appointees in the White House, Defense Department and State Department. Mr. Perle maintains close contacts to U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Robert Joseph, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams and Mr. Cheney’s national security adviser, John Hannah.

(cont.)

There’s nothing worse than being labeled an appeaser in the Neocon playbook. They invariably prefer the unilateral use of American and Israeli military might as the proper prescription for conflicts in the Middle East, rather than diplomacy in conjunction with our European allies, NATO and the United Nations. From the tone of the Insight article, you can just see them salivating over the possible demise of Ms. Rice, and the resulting opportunity to inflict their own strategy for regime change through massive military assaults against Iran and/or Syria.

The Neocons, both in and out of the Bush administration, have a hunger for a wider regional “war on terror” that is undiminished by the complete and utter ruin of their policy in Iraq. Sadly, it now appears that events in Lebanon are playing out in ways which may allow them to achieve their goals of attacking Syria and/or Iran, sooner, rather than later:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Surrounded by yellow Hezbollah flags, more than 60 Iranian volunteers set off Wednesday to join what they called a holy war against Israeli forces in Lebanon.

The group — ranging from teenagers to grandfathers — plans to join about 200 other volunteers on the way to the Turkish border, which they hope to cross Thursday. They plan to reach Lebanon via Syria on the weekend. […]

“We are just the first wave of Islamic warriors from Iran,” said Amir Jalilinejad, chairman of the Student Justice Movement, a nongovernment group that helped recruit the fighters. “More will come from here and other Muslim nations around the world. Hezbollah needs our help.”

Suffice it to say, Iranian volunteers marching off to fight the Israelis in Lebanon plays directly into the hands of the “Cheney Cabal” who must be thrilled that this is happening. This only provides them more ammunition to take to the President to push him to adopt an even harder line toward Hizbollah, Syria and Iran. Rice’s approach to diplomacy, limited as it is by any realistic proposal to stop the fighting in the near term, is hamstrung by her failure to obtain any support for her position among our European allies, who must be watching these events unfold in horror at America’s ineptitude, ignorance and arrogance.

The only real question I have is whether it was Cheney and Rumsfeld’s strategy all along to encourage Israel to go on the offensive in Lebanon, both to undermine Rice’s position and to reinstate their own policy for a broader war in the region, or whether it is merely a “fortunate coincidence” (fortunate only for them, not for the rest of us) of which they have been more than happy to advantage so that they can push their own agenda for the Middle East? Reports that Israel has been planning this attack for over a year with the Pentagon’s knowledge and approval incline me to the former view. And the sudden employment of the phrase “World War III” by Gingrich and others strikes me as a premeditated and calculated use of rhetoric in order to ratchet up the fear level among the American public.

A while ago I predicted we were in for a wild ride this Summer in terms of a coordinated campaign by conservative supporters of President Bush to generate support for war with Iran, in part to bolster the Republican party’s prospects for the mid term elections this Fall. Yet even I didn’t anticipate the Bush administration letting Israel slip off it’s leash to attack both the Palestinians in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon. Mea culpa.

I should have anticipated such murderous manipulation from the most immoral and deceitful administration in our history. If killing a few more Arabs (and Israelis) is what it takes to assure continued majorities in the House and Senate for Republicans, the Bush team is more than happy to oblige. The fact that this approach has already failed miserably in Iraq is of little consequence. Retaining their power, and implementing the folly of an expanded war in the Middle East is all that matters to them.