Word: hizballah
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced a thankless, all but impossible task in trying to sell the Arab world on the U.S. policy of delaying a cease-fire so that the Israeli military can continue its anti-Hizballah campaign. But her case was hardly helped when she explained that the violence that has already killed more than 400 Lebanese and turned more than a half million into refugees represents the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." Phrases like that - and her rejection of the call for an immediate cease-fire on the grounds that "whatever we do, we have...
...Critics have long warned that by refusing on principle to talk to the likes of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizballah, the U.S. is restricting its own ability to influence events in a region where those regimes and organizations represent a significant force. As Rami Khouri, editor at large of Beirut's Daily Star, so tartly put it: "Washington is engaged almost exclusively with Arab governments whose influence with Syria is virtually nonexistent, whose credibility with Arab public opinion is zero, whose own legitimacy at home is increasingly challenged, and whose pro-U.S. policies tend to promote the growth...
...Last week, Administration officials spinning Rice's mission boasted that "she's not going to come home with a ceasefire, but with stronger ties to the Arab world... What we want is our Arab allies standing against Hizballah and against Iran, since there is no one who doesn't think Iran is behind this...
...Bush Administration expected that while Lebanon and Gaza are under Israeli assault, the very Arab autocrats the Bush administration in a giddier moment had threatened with a fatal dose of democracy - and whose citizens are backing Hizballah - are going to give diplomatic support to Israel and the U.S. offensive against Hizballah? You have to wonder what these guys are smoking...
...Many of Lebanon's other parties and Lebanese, however, don't particularly care about Sheba Farms. "We consider the South to have been liberated in 2000 thanks to Hizballah," said Rami Rayers, a spokesman for Druze leader Wallid Jumblatt. But now "Hizballah has led Lebanon to disaster...