By flip-flopping on its stance toward the fighting between Israel and Hizbollah, the Bush administration not only changed course in that tragedy but signaled that it is confronting its own goals in Iraq. Implied in this change is an understanding obvious enough as to be banal if so many lives were not at stake: Short of world conflagration, a country cannot kill its way to peace.

Since July, right-wing media have been talking up “World War III” – or, for those who count the Cold War, “IV.” (Sean Hannity gets credit as the first to decide the Middle East was the ground for “World War V.”) The absence, for now, of a new world war must be a surprise for backers of an administration that has been pushing to neutralize Middle East power centers in Syria and Iran and wipe out Hamas and Hizbollah.

That plan was wounded in Iraq and has nearly succumbed in Lebanon, where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saw the resiliency of Hizbollah and concluded the administration’s plan for a “New Middle East” may need modification. This conclusion came about, unfortunately, only after the administration urged that Israel be given time, asthe White House must have imagined, to roll through Lebanon. Instead, it raised the international status of Hizbollah.

The current cease-fire is unlikely to hold; certainly, Hizbollah will not surrender its weapons, no matter what UN Security Council resolutions say. Nevertheless, the administration agreed to resolution language that declares, among other things, “no foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government” and would address border questions such as the disputed Shebaa farms area. The United States backed this cease-fire because the alternative of continued fighting, with the loss of Lebanese civilians leading to the strengthening of Hizbollah, was worse.

A similar choice confronts the United States in Iraq. A little over a week ago, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of the U.S. Central Command, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraqi violence can be solved only by Iraqis – which is to say not its liberators.

That changed view calls for a changed policy. On the op-ed page today, Stephen J. Solarz and Michael E. O’Hanlon outline one way to do that, and others, included supportive Republicans on the Senate committee, have made similar suggestions.

All of them describe narrower goals – rather than large views of freedom imposed from without, they now seek peace created within.

That is a large step back to the realpolitik of the George H.W. Bush administration, and may not be as inspiring as some of the current president’s initial goals but may also avoid the next world war, whatever its number.