Congressional Democrats should talk about the crisis from the perspective of U.S. interests. To perpetually discuss Israel attacking Palestinians and Lebanon from the perspective Israel--no Israeli attack can be discussed except in the context of being response to provocation--makes Democrats look like whores for the Israel lobby.
What are U.S. interests in the conflict? How should the United States advance these interests? Is there a Congressional Democrat with the courage to criticize Israel? Is it healthy (or viable) to have Congressional Democrats so extremely out-of-sync with the grassroots on a major issue?
Some in the Bush administration clearly want to widen the conflict to the United States attacking Iran. What are the drawbacks of attacking Iran? How is the Israel lobby pushing the United States toward war with Iran?
BTW, have we ever asked why the Democrats did such a feeble job opposing the Iraq War Resolution? What prevented the Democrats from correctly apprehending U.S. interests? Political cowardice? Group think? Ignorance of security issues? The Israel lobby? Anything else? ("Bush lied to me" is no excuse; even if Iraq had chemical weapons it still wasn't an immediate threat.)
The failure of Democrats to effectively oppose the Iraq War is relevant now because going to war against Iran is possible. To what extent have the deficiencies of Congressional Democrats been corrected? To what extent are the Democrats vulnerable to getting played again?
But let's take a moment to evaluate the situation from Israel's perspective. (Billmon sees Israel facing nothing but paradoxical bad options.) What is Israel trying to accomplish? What end state is Israel trying to achieve? What are Israel's short-term goals? Do Israeli planners appreciate the political dimension to war? At the end of the war people need to accept the new situation as legitimate. If Israel gets its way, will Palestinians and Lebanese see the situation as legitimate?
Ultimately, little guys can veto political order if they are willing to use terrorism. Does Israel have a vision for a situation where no organized group will be pissed off enough to engage in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks?
poputonian at Digby's Blog has a post about a world leader that accurately predicted the mess that would result from the United States invading Iraq. One of the observations is that outside parties can see the situation more clearly for what it is. Having lived overseas I can relate to reading newspapers and thinking the other country's domestic squabbles were sometimes silly and irrelevant to the important issues facing the country--comfortable distractions.
I had a friend who lived in Israel/Palestine and later worked in a pro-peace organization that tried to bring Palestinians, Israel and U.S. policy into harmony. (The organization wasn't successful.) One of her observations is that Palestinians and Israelis are both obsessed with seeing themselves as the victims in the conflict. My corollary is that neither Israel nor the Palestinians will voluntarily sign onto an agreement that does not acknowledge the greater suffering on their side.
So, let's stop wasting time on the sham that the two sides will negotiate a resolution to the conflict. The international community should impose a settlement. The United States should not block this process because a just settlement is in U.S. interests. It's in Israel's interests too, even if the conflict has made the overwhelming majority of Israelis too scared and crazy to accept this.