Hmm, that sounds vaguely familiar. Return with us now to those days of yesteryear, in July 2006, after Israel launched another war on another Islamic group and quickly found itself bombing the crap out of Lebanese cities:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she wants to see a sustainable ceasefire in the Middle East. But the Bush administration says peace will not come, as long as Hezbollah remains an armed threat to Israel.

Rice says the United States obviously wants the violence to end. But she says a ceasefire that does not address the root causes will not hold. She says any ceasefire that leaves Hezbollah with the ability to launch rocket attacks on Israel, and opens the door to Iranian and Syrian interference, will accomplish little.

"And we will be right back here, perhaps, in a worse circumstance, because the terrorists will assume that nobody is willing to take on what has been a very clear assault, now, on the progress that is being made by moderate forces in the Middle East," she said.

I wonder how that earlier effort turned out? Can these people not simply google their past lofty pronouncements and understand not only how hollow they ring now, but how hollow they rang then?

The U.S. stand today is a carbon copy of its position during the Lebanon War: Temporary ceasefires that halt the current bloodshed are no good; people must continue to die while the "root causes" are addressed in negotiations that nobody has actually proposed holding. It seems to me the time to start addressing those root causes might have been during the six-month ceasefire that was wilfully allowed to lapse just over a week ago.

The U.S. pretext for stalling on an immediate ceasefire was sanctimonious bullshit then, and it's sanctimonious bullshit now.