And we wouldn’t want a room full of foreign ministers to look foolish, now would we?

At the Rome conference Condi opposed a call for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon because it would make “a room full of foreign ministers look foolish.” And, as she later explained to reporters, she’s a big-picture kind of gal, thinking in historical, no, in geological terms: “I am a student of history, so perhaps I have a little bit more patience with the enormous change in the international system and the complete shifting of tectonic plates, and I don’t expect it to happen in a few days or even a year.”

So the conference knuckled under, calling not for an immediate but rather a “lasting, permanent and sustainable” cease-fire. The besieged people of Lebanon responded: “Put down the fucking thesaurus and do something to stop the Israelis slaughtering us!”