We Suck, but Keep Us in Power…OR YOU’LL DIE!

Bush takes a hard line:

President Bush's uncompromising support for Israel in its battle with Hezbollah, now backed by Congress, is threatening to isolate the United States even further from the international community.

It is also putting the administration at odds with fragile democratic governments in the Middle East that it is simultaneously trying to prop up, and sowing increasing anger across the Arab world.

And Cheney turns it into a campaign issue:

Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday pointed to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah as fresh evidence of the ongoing battle against terrorism that underscores the need to keep President Bush's Republican allies in control of Congress.

"This conflict is a long way from over," Cheney said at a fundraising appearance for a GOP congressional candidate. "It's going to be a battle that will last for a very long time. It is absolutely essential that we stay the course."

…He faulted Democrats in Congress who have pushed for a timetable for withdrawing Americans from Iraq, saying that would send the wrong message to terrorists.

"If anyone thinks the conflict is over or soon to be over, all they have to do is look at what's happening in the Middle East today," he said.

Let’s follow the logic, shall we? The Bush administration increasingly isolates America by pissing off the rest of the world—including both the people who most want to hurt us and our own allies, which anyone with two functioning brain cells left in their skulls will recognize as a threat to both our national security and our ability to best protect ourselves via enlisted aid, should it be necessary. But the Bush administration are the only people who can keep us safe from this ever more dangerous world in which we find ourselves.

Color me unconvinced.