From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Days after Israel began its bombing of Lebanon and Hezbollah missiles began landing on Israel's northern cities, The Weekly Standard published an editorial by its editor, William Kristol, headlined "It's Our War".

Kristol is a leading neoconservative and The Weekly Standard's list of contributing editors is a virtual who's who of the movement's leading thinkers and proselytisers, many with close ties to the Bush Administration and the American Enterprise Institute, Washington's most influential conservative foreign-policy think tank.

The Kristol editorial was a belligerent response to those who reckon the neoconservative "moment" has passed - consigned to wherever it is that failed foreign policy doctrines end up - and an exhortation to the Bush Administration to resist descending further into the sort of confused multilateralism and useless diplomacy that has marked its dealings with North Korea, and especially Iran.

Neoconservatives don't do nuance. Kristol's position is crystal clear: what is happening in the Middle East is an Islamist-Israeli war, part of the wider conflict between Islamist totalitarianism and liberal democracy and moderate Islam. To fight this war, the US has to confront not just terrorist networks but the states that sponsor them...

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