Like Jim Geraghty over at TKS, I was struck by the extraordinary stinginess of my friend Ed Kilgore, guest-blogging at talkingpointsmemo.com, when discussing what credit the Bush administration should get for the changes occurring in Lebanon. Kilgore rejects as “rhetorical enchantment” the idea that Bush’s speeches had anything to do with it. More on that in a minute, but first: For heaven’s sakes, Ed, Bush’s policy has been about much more than speeches! It should be obvious that the big environmental change that has happened in the Middle East is the invasion of Iraq and the election on January 30 (which many on the left pooh-poohed or predicted couldn’t happen). Ed says he will withhold credit from the Bush administration unless Lebanese leaders give it credit. Well, how about this? Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese Druze leader now opposing the Syrians, told David Ignatius: “It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq. I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.” Amazing–a heretofore anti-US politician in the Middle East is willing to give Bush more credit than a very sensible New Democrat here in the US. As for Bush’s rhetoric, it is much more than the State department making “the appropriate noises” as Ed characterizes it at one point. It is a rhetorical and diplomatic full-court press that is different in kind from anything we saw in the Clinton administration (Ed, trying to imply that there has been no big change in US policy, says general hostility to Syria “has been US policy for as long as I can remember”). That this has mattered should be obvious. Indeed, this is what the Wall Street Journal news pages said in an excellent front-page analysis of the budding revolt in Lebanon on Monday: “How it happened shows the way the more-aggressive US policies–from the invasion of Iraq to President Bush’s rhetoric about fostering democracy–are mingling with local politics to jostle once-unquestioned realities in the region.” Finally, Ed makes a cheap debating point: he says that the Bush administration evades blame for things that are its fault, therefore, in effect, it shouldn’t get credit for anything either. How silly. All administrations spin. Independent analysts should be able to decide how to apportion blame and credit on the merits. On the merits, Bush staked his presidency on an attempt to forge a better Middle East, an effort that is now bearing fruit, even if Democrats in this country want to look the other way.