…and a stinging indictment of U.S. policy from Patrick Buchanan in Israel is Playing Us for Fools. An excerpt below, but make sure you take a look at the whole thing:

If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, a ratio of 30-1, though Hezbollah is firing unguided rockets, while Israel is using precision-guided munitions.

Thousands of Lebanese civilians are injured. Perhaps 800,000 are homeless.

Yet, whatever one thinks of the morality of what Israel is doing, the stupidity is paralyzing. Instead of maintaining the moral and political high ground it had — when even Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan were condemning Hezbollah, and privately hoping Israel would inflict a humiliating defeat on Nasrallah — Israel launched an air war on an innocent people. Now, 87 percent of Lebanese back Hezbollah, and the entire Arab and Islamic world, Shia and Sunni alike, is rallying behind Nasrallah.

And how does one defend the behavior of the United States?

When Gillerman was exulting in the disproportionality of Israel’s attack on Lebanon, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton was smiling smugly beside him. When the UN Security Council tabled a resolution condemning Hezbollah’s igniting of the war and Katyusha attacks, but also the excesses of Israel’s reprisals, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton vetoed it. When a few congressmen sought to moderate a pro-Israeli resolution by adding words urging “all sides to protect innocent life and infrastructure,” GOP leader John Boehner ordered the words taken down.

Why? Because, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, had prepared the resolution and wanted it passed the way they wrote it. Our Knesset complied. It sailed through the House 410-8.

And yes, it is the munitions made with our technology, by our hands, in our factories, that is killing the children of Lebanon. Thanks Mr. Bush, maybe the up-tick in military sales will offset the slowing economy and the huge trade deficit.

Tip ‘o the biretta to the Young Fogey and Hallowed Ground.