Wading through the News and Commentary on the Middle East

There's lots of material out there and little certainty about what it all means. Here's a straight AP news story on MSNBC that includes a possible Israeli proposal:

Diplomatic efforts gained traction with Israel signaling it might scale back its demands. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said fighting would halt only if Hezbollah, a Shiite militia that controls much of south Lebanon, pulls back from the border and releases the two soldiers whose capture last week triggered the Israeli offensive.

An aide to Olmert indicated the prime minister was ready to compromise on the question of dismantling the Islamic militant group. But the aide said Olmert might oppose a U.N. and British idea of deploying international forces to Lebanon.

The current U.N. force in southern Lebanon has proven impotent and a larger, stronger force could hamper any future Israeli attacks, should any deal fall apart. Israel wants the Lebanese government to patrol the south.

Of course, I read the story several hours ago so things could easily be different in these swiftly changing times. We'll see.

The MSNBC story also included a sidebar item that said Hezbollah's arsenal of missiles includes about 10,000; I have heard that Hezbollah may have as many as 30,000 missiles.Somebody has been very busy over the last few years. One thing I'm learning is that the governments of a number of countries don't seem to control their entire country. I suppose that's been true all along but the lack of foreign coverage over the last twenty years has left Americans somewhat behind the times.

The mildly conservative Bloomberg has a number of things to say about the G8 conference including this:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, said the lack of support for Bush's stance illustrated that the U.S. is ``increasingly isolated, distrusted, disliked.''

In an interview, Brzezinski, who's now with Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was ironic that most of the G-8 leaders were closer to Russia than the U.S. in their views on the Middle East.

``It tells you something about the degradation of American leadership, and that is a serious challenge to America's long- term interests,'' he said.

While Bush left the summit without giving a final press conference, Putin showed no reluctance to meet with reporters. He held a news briefing at the end of every day of the summit. At yesterday's session, he said with satisfaction that all the documents drafted by Russia, including that on energy security, were approved ``practically without changes.''

Putin even extended his final press conference after his spokesman tried to stop it. He may have been enjoying himself so much because of questions like the one posed by a member of a student group, who asked Putin what he could expect for the future. ``Nothing but good,'' he replied. A Chinese journalist then told Putin that in China ``you are our true hero.''

Increasingly, Brzezinski has gotten tired of being polite and now simply tells it like it is. Many people did their best to get Bush to recognize the flaws in his policies but Bush never had the humility to recognize a simple truth: no man or woman on this earth can have all the answers. A president must know how and when to listen to others.

Russia and China seem to be working hard on becoming allies and given their mutual interests that's not particularly suprising. But we see here once again that George W. Bush is not serving our country well. This is a president who clearly wants to go on a long vacation but who has too much pride to resign or admit that he has led America down the wrong road.