Things were not always this way. Back in the first-term hey-day of the Wipe Out Terrorists and Their State Supporters Project — that is, the one that induced us Neanderthals to support a second Bush term — the president used to say, and appear to mean, things like this proclamation of the Bush Doctrine at a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001: We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. Boy, does that ever seem long ago and far away. The Democracy Project has made ballots a substitute for thought. So as Israel, our ally, fights Hezbollah, our enemy, the Honest Broker has decided that its stake rests not with decisive victory over our enemies but with preservation of the fugazy democracy in Lebanon, a failed Syrian slave state that conceded only three weeks ago being too weak to defend itself — a state, that is, which fails the most basic test of sovereignty. “No,” you say, “not true. The administration is deftly running diplomatic interference for Israel, slow-walking a truce so the Israelis have time to put a hurtin’ on Hezbollah.” Really? Was that what you really thought “drive them from place to place” meant? Running interference with France while somebody else does your heavy lifting? Is this what you supposed was meant by regarding state sponsors as “hostile regimes”? We play diplo-chess for our ally while Iran not only arms and directs but, now, actually joins Hezbollah in the fighting? I wonder if American admiration for British Prime Minister Tony Blair would be as strong if, when it came time to fight jihadists and their enablers in Afghanistan and Iraq, England figured it was good enough to run diplomatic interference with France. We, of course, are neither joining Israel’s fight against Hezbollah nor registering that Hezbollah’s provocations, along with Hamas’s, are just the latest salvos in Iran’s war against us. Our top priority, instead, is to save Lebanon’s democracy. The administration — at least publicly — is advising Israel not to escalate the war while the “international community” works feverishly toward a “truce” according to which Israel would go back home (where Hezbollah has so far fired 3300 missiles) without having defeated the enemy, while Lebanon — the country that just told us it’s too weak to defend itself — would send 15,000 of its crack troops to police the border in conjunction with that great lover of Israel, the U.N. You’ll no doubt be shocked to learn that Hezbollah thinks this is a dandy idea — the “best way” (you’d better be sitting down for this) to “preserve the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon.” If you don’t know whether to be more outraged by Hezbollah’s mendacity or by the fact that the international community cares what it thinks, you’re not alone. Lebanon and Hezbollah If all that is not tragicomic enough, consider this: While we are throwing our arms around Lebanon, Lebanon is throwing its arms around Hezbollah. Between the sobs and sniffles that mark the oratorical style of this somewhat less than reassuring head-of-state, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora paused the other day to assert: “We are in a strong position [against Israel] and I thank the Sayyed for his efforts.” “The Sayyed,” of course, is none other than Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s “secretary general” and the current darling of the Muslim world. (In a profile more glowing than any Republican could ever dream of, the New York Times has helpfully explained that the designation sayyid means Nasrallah “is a cleric who can trace his lineage back to the Prophet Muhammad” — making him just about the most distinguished America-hating, pathologically anti-Semitic mass-murderer of our time.) Heaping further praise on terrorists who hide among Lebanese civilians when they are not launching rockets at Israeli civilians, Siniora added, “I also thank all those who sacrifice their lives for the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon.” To put it in Bush Doctrine parlance, presented with its “decision to make,” Lebanon has decided to “continue[] to harbor or support terrorism.” So, are we regarding it as a “hostile regime”? Heavens, no. After all, it’s a democracy. So Lebanon must be propped up at all costs — even if that ultimately means a “peace” agreement that will (a) stop Israel’s effort to “drive [Hezbollah] from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest”; (b) pretend there is safety in a buffer zone policed by Lebanon, a powerless nation integrated and aligned with Hezbollah and Syria — which, of course, is what allowed Hezbollah to turn that same buffer zone into a terror platform in the first place; and (c) make believe there will someday be an international force — in which Americans will not participate — that will somehow confront and disarm Hezbollah. Not a Political Party But a Committed Enemy As for Hezbollah itself? Well, given that the Democracy Project has transformed state sponsors of terror into democracies, should it come as any surprise that the terrorists themselves are now a “political party”? On Monday, President Bush, whose administration was once revolted by the European effort to prettify the public image of mass-murderers, pronounced Hezbollah “a political party with a militia that is armed by foreign nations.” But it’s not just armed by foreign nations. It is the forward militia of foreign nations, effectuating their brazen agenda to obliterate Israel and defeat the United States. And no, a few fraudulent popular elections do not convert a terrorist organization with global reach into a national political party. Who says? Hezbollah itself says. Here, for example, is the relevant passage from its 1985 manifesto — when it was of a mind to tell the world precisely who and what it was (italics mine): We are often asked: Who are we, the Hizballah, and what is our identity? We are the sons of the umma (Muslim community) — the party of God (Hizb Allah) the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran. There the vanguard succeeded to lay down the bases of a Muslim state which plays a central role in the world. We obey the orders of one leader, wise and just, that of our tutor and faqih (jurist) who fulfills all the necessary conditions: [Ayatollah] Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini. God save him! By virtue of the above, we do not constitute an organized and closed party in Lebanon. Nor are we a tight political cadre. We are an umma linked to the Muslims of the whole world by the solid doctrinal and religious connection of Islam, whose message God wanted to be fulfilled by the Seal of the Prophets, i.e., Muhammad. This is why whatever touches or strikes the Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines and elsewhere reverberates throughout the whole Muslim umma of which we are an integral part. Since its inception, Hezbollah has been crystal clear: it is the point of the jihadist spear, representing not a country but a global militant Islamic movement the shots of which are called in Iran. Nor has it minced words about the principal object of its war. The manifesto elaborates: “We combat abomination and we shall tear out its very roots, its primary roots, which are the U.S.” And Israel? No equivocation there, either. The manifesto, again, is worth quoting at some length: The Necessity for the Destruction of Israel We see in Israel the vanguard of the United States in our Islamic world. It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve. This enemy is the greatest danger to our future generations and to the destiny of our lands, particularly as it glorifies the ideas of settlement and expansion, initiated in Palestine, and yearning outward to the extension of the Great Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile. Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated. We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine. … Honest broker? If we cannot unambiguously, unapologetically, enthusiastically get behind the idea that Hezbollah and its sponsors must be quelled regardless of the impact on Lebanon’s “democracy,” how do we prevail over enemies who have no compunction about their aim to destroy us? — Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.