The consensus in Israel, the US and parts of Lebanon and the Arab world is that Hizbullah recklessly triggered the Israeli rampage in Lebanon this month by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers, causing all the Lebanese to pay a very heavy price. This will be debated for a long time, and supporters of a more truthful picture of reality would argue that the kidnapping of the soldiers is only the latest move in a long-running war between Israel and Lebanon, not a sudden unilateral action. 

However, a more compelling question is being asked now: Why do the US, Europe and much of the Arab world allow Lebanon to be pulverized by Israeli bombs when most of those same people in the West last year held Lebanon up as a beacon of democratic change; a model for other Arabs?

We now have two Arab countries that Bush has trumpeted as models and vanguards of America's policy of promoting freedom and democratic change: Iraq and Lebanon. Neither is a very comforting sight today. Not many Arabs will sign up for Bush's democracy and freedom plan if this is what they will expect to happen to their countries. 

The real irony in the global political defecation business that Bush should ponder is that American planes, bombs and tanks were directly (in Iraq) or indirectly (through Israel in Lebanon) responsible for bringing Iraq and Lebanon to their current state of turmoil, destruction and pain. 

Hizbullah is a complex organization whose many activities respond to the needs of its core Shiite Lebanese constituency, including security, social services, economic support, political representation nationally, and administering local government. Its leading role in resisting the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon and ultimately driving the Israelis out in 2000 enhanced its standing among all Lebanese. It has since been criticized by many Lebanese, though, for defying the authority of the central government, and for being an arm of Iranian and Syrian foreign policy. 

Some of these accusations surely are correct, and Hizbullah has grappled only meekly in the past two years with internal Lebanese and Western diplomatic pressures to integrate its resistance assets into the national armed forces. Hizbullah sees itself as a deterrent to Israeli threats against Lebanon, and the main means of maintaining the integrity of Lebanon. Many will now question this self-image after its kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers triggered the destruction of much of Lebanon. 

The real irony in Bush's statement is that he wants others to pressure Syria to pressure Hizbullah to change its policies - at a moment when the central pillar of Washington's Middle East policies appears to be a refusal to speak to some of the most important political groups in the region. The US has no relations or known contacts with Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah, and is not on speaking terms with Syria, which it has mildly sanctioned. 

Bush ignores at his own peril the fact that Islamist political sentiments and resistance movements are the fastest growing sector of national life in the Middle East. For the US to be squarely opposed to and unable to speak with this large part of the public spectrum is foolish enough; it is even more reflective of amateur American foreign policy-making that Washington's policies in the region are an important contributor to the expansion of such Islamist sentiments and organizations.