A sane U.S. policy would (1) exert backbreaking pressure on Israel to halt its attacks; (2) open a dialogue with Iran and Syria about containing Hezbollah and Hamas; (3) take drastic steps to stop the Iraqi civil war by making across-the-board concessions to Iraq’s Sunnis and forcing the Shiites to swallow it, while starting a phased U.S. withdrawal; and (4) getting the White House directly involved in the Israel-Palestine peace process as if their lives depended on it.

But Israel, and its neoconservative allies, are counting on none of that to happen. Instead, they’ve gambled that in each case President Bush will fall back under the spell of Dick Cheney and the neocons, and do precisely the opposite: continue to give Israel the green light, throw rhetorical bombs at Damascus and Teheran, escalate the counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, and take Israel's side in its wall-building, settlement-defending, no-talks-with-Hamas unilateralism.

A remarkable state of war hysteria is developing in Washington. Fox News, The Weekly Standard, CNN and a multitude of partisans of the contesting parties in Lebanon are pouring fuel on the fire of war burning brightly. War Drums beating in the deep?

Otherwise sensible people are seriously suggesting that all out war to the death is the desirable "motif" of the day. In addition, neocon visionaries like Bill Kristol, Newt Gingrich and the [Iran hawk and Iran-Contra player Michael] Ledeen are howling like banshees for general war against the enemies of "freedom."

The United States should be saying to Syria and Iran, “South Lebanon is going to be cleared out. We are for Israel and the Lebanese government breaking the back of Hezbollah, getting rid of all 10,000 to 13,000 missiles, and we will decisively stop any effort by Syria and Iran to intervene.”

I mean, this is absolutely a question of the survival of Israel, but it’s also a question of what is really a world war. Look what you’ve been covering: North Korea firing missiles. We say there’ll be consequences, there are none. The North Koreans fire seven missiles on our Fourth of July; bombs going off in Mumbai, India; a war in Afghanistan with sanctuaries in Pakistan. As I said a minute ago, the, the Iran/Syria/Hamas/Hezbollah alliance. A war in Iraq funded largely from Saudi Arabia and supplied largely from Syria and Iran. The British home secretary saying that there are 20 terrorist groups with 1200 terrorists in Britain. Seven people in Miami videotaped pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda, and 18 people in Canada being picked up with twice the explosives that were used in Oklahoma City, with an explicit threat to bomb the Canadian parliament, and saying they’d like to behead the Canadian prime minister. And finally, in New York City, reports that in three different countries people were plotting to destroy the tunnels of New York. (my emphasis)

And now we are, because of our lack of a prevention strategy, we’re left with no option here, in my view, but to support Israel in what is a totally legitimate self-defense effort. (my emphasis)

How can they, in fact, sit still when they have all these rockets that are very sophisticated sitting on their border, knowing they’re being - going to be fired at them and expect to stand there and the rest of the world sitting around?

And the last point I’ll make, Tim, is I find it fascinating people talk about has Israel gone too far. No one talks about whether Israel’s justified in the first place. Let’s assume Israel’s overreacting. I want to see the world stand up and say, “By the way, this in fact, is an unprovoked effort on the part of a terrorist organization supported by two countries to undermine the democratic state.” Until they say that, I think it’s awful - I think it’s a secondary question whether Israel’s gone too far.

I don’t believe the president has a Middle East policy. Three years ago the president announced the “axis of evil,” the implication being he had a plan to deal with that “axis of evil.” The truth of the matter is in every respect it’s gotten worse. You now have in Iraq, you have more of what people worry about in that region, the so-called Shia crescent. The Iranian influence is more profound in Iraq today than it ever was. There’s chaos still in Iraq today. We’ve got a long way to go to get out and leave anything stable behind. North Korea, there is really no red line drawn anywhere, nor any real capability of drawing a red line. And Iran is more emboldened. They eliminate their modulus - that is, their parliament, which wasn’t pro-Western, but it was democratic at its instincts.

And so there - there’s not been a plan. This idea that we go in and behead the monster named Saddam, somehow things are going to fall in place I think was naive in the extreme, and we’re paying a very heavy price for it.

I agree with it completely, and I said that at the time, Tim, I said at the time that the road- -remember, the, the phrase was “the road to peace in the Middle East is through Baghdad.” My argument is the road is through Jerusalem, it wasn’t through Baghdad, number one.

Number two, look where we are right now. We’re in a situation where we have dug such a deep hole we have 10 of our 12 divisions coming or going in Iraq. Everyone knows the ability of us to mount a significant land war anywhere as a potential threat is not a real threat.

And thirdly, I would point out that we have an opportunity to intervene in a different way. There’s an opportunity now, if we had any credibility in that part of the world, to be able to bring together the Sunni powers that, in fact, with all the money - who are scared to death of Hezbollah and the increased influence of Iran. We should be uniting that part of the world to put incredible pressure and consequences on Syria without us having to go to war with Syria. Syria is essentially an isolated state. Syria can have its water cut off, figuratively speaking, tomorrow. But what are we doing? Are we sitting down with the Sunni powers and saying, “Look, let’s get smart here, Jack, we have a common interest here”? But people doubt our judgment. They doubt our judgment and, as a consequence of that, we have very great difficulty getting anyone to think we have a strategy and, therefore, great difficulty getting them to join us.

It is an astonishingly simple-minded view of the situation, painted in black and white and making assumptions about who is who’s puppet and what the Israeli motivations are. Israel doesn’t appear as a protagonist. It is purely reactive. Stop provoking it, and it suddenly stops its war. ...

It is a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth.

I come away from it shaken and trembling.

It is the distorting and dehumanizing effects of occupation that made possible the proliferation of extremist groups that, albeit on a smaller scale, simply hand back to the occupier some of their own medicine. The numbers, after all, make clear that most of the victims are Palestinian, Iraqi and now Lebanese civilians, although the numbers game can also obscure the fact that the murder of any innocent by any group is indefensible.

This is the world of the apocalypse. It is the world where those on either extreme become indistinguishable. And if we do not find a new way to speak, and soon, there will be untold suffering - not only for many innocents in the Middle East but eventually innocents at home. It was the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that spawned and empowered Hezbollah. It was the decades-long occupation and humiliation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by Israel that spawned and empowered Hamas, and it is the brutal American occupation that has bred the legions of extremists in Iraq. And when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah promises "open war" against Israel, as he did in an address shortly after his Beirut offices were bombed, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he won’t cease his attack until Israel is secure, it is time to run for cover, especially when George W. Bush is our best hope for peace.