The gift that keeps on giving

I think US diplomacy's actually been quite good.

-- Bill Kristol, July 24, 2006

I know I'm getting a lot of mileage from the neo-con warhorse's breathtaking statement those few weeks ago, but when the United States' top diplomat becomes a recruiting poster for Hezbollah, it might be time to rethink one's "diplomacy." In Arabic, the poster says,

The massacre of children in Qana is a gift from Rice.

Of course, we all may be viewing the so-called diplomatic efforts in entirely the wrong vein and that Kristol's apparently clueless remark was actually starkly revealing. The lack of diplomacy and the unfettered killing is probably viewed by the neo-cons as exactly the right course for US diplomacy. These guys don't believe in diplomacy, ipso facto, no diplomacy, hundreds of civilian dead and no-holds barred for Israel is necessarily seen as "quite good."