NEIGHBORS AT WAR

The last deception in the newest attacks between Israel and Lebanon occurred more than a week ago, when the question of proportional response seemed to still matter: The kidnapping of a soldier or two soldiers is worth X number of retaliatory deaths but not Y. But now there is no such calculation with Hezbollah’s wanton missile barrage of Israel or in Israel’s reduction of Lebanon to rubble.

The next steps in the Middle East – where Iraq, temporarily ignored, grows even more violent – is for swift and unified action such as proposed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. They would create an international stabilization force to support the 2,000-member United Nations force currently in southern Lebanon. President Bush advocates instead leaning on Syria to influence Hezbollah, but that could also require pressuring Iran, which is not promising. As risky as the Blair-Annan proposal is, it may save the lives of civilians even if it does nor produce a more permanent answer.

Maine’s Robert Sargent, a former U.S. diplomat, finds parallels between the current situation and the Lebanon fighting of 1982. “The Bush administration has an opportunity here to emulate the statesmanship demonstrated by President Reagan in 1982,” Mr. Sargent writes. “While urging Israel to exercise restraint, an imaginative White House might try to convince its new friend Moammar Gadhafi and King Abdullah of Jordan to bring Hezbollah (and Hamas) to their senses.”

The president prefers to send his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, but Mr. Sargent has a sensible suggestion – of lowering the U.S. presence and encouraging allies without the U.S. baggage to try to negotiate. But whether it is Ms. Rice or an ally, the president’s decision suggests that he is discarding even more of the neoconservative belief that the answer to nearly all problems in the Middle East is war now and diplomacy later. That is encouraging.

It was not long ago that the United States was wondering about the first signs of democracy – elections in Iraq, Syria backing away from Lebanon, an election in the Palestinian territories – that prompted President Bush to say, “the advance of democracy leads to peace, because governments that respect the rights of their people also respect the rights of the neighbors.”

How far the Middle East is from peace, and from respecting the rights of their neighbors, can be seen now.