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WASHINGTON—While President Bush was ruffling the presidential contest with a warning about the “foolish delusion” of negotiating with terrorists, one of his few Middle East friends was doing just that.

Apparently it’s not appeasement when your side does it.

The U.S.-backed government in Lebanon retreated in a power struggle with Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah militants, reversing decisions that had triggered days of bloody conflict with the Hezbollah-led opposition. The government said it wanted to end the fighting and find a way out of an 18-month standoff with Hezbollah.

The capital was calm Thursday and the militants agreed to new talks.

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Bush said Thursday during a speech to Israel’s parliament. He said that kind of thinking recalls the shortsightedness of mid-20th century politicians who wanted to appease Adolf Hitler.

Barack Obama took offense. The Democratic candidate says that as president he would be willing to meet with Iran’s leaders and the leaders of other governments that the United States considers outlaws. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush was not pointing a finger at the Democrat.

“There are many who have suggested these types of negotiations with people that President Bush thinks that we should not talk to,” Perino said.

Indeed, that includes prominent Republicans such as Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Bush family adviser and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Their point is that the U.S. gains nothing by freezing out distasteful government that might give Washington something it wants, and that one need not compromise moral authority in the process.

Obama’s point is that the current policy has not worked and that he would try something else.

“The president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel,” Obama’s campaign said in a statement.

Perhaps. But the larger problem with the don’t-talk-to-terrorists doctrine is that it is a black and white solution to gray problems, and even then it is selectively applied. The Bush administration has even moved away from it in the past two years by holding limited talks with Syria and Iran and striking a nuclear disarmament deal with North Korea.

Bush apparently did not see any irony in returning to the theme while the guest of a nation that has back-channel talks with Palestinian Hamas militants and is considering full peace talks with Syria.

The Bush administration’s attempt to find something nice to say about the capitulation in Lebanon demonstrates the limitations of Bush’s democracy agenda in the Middle East.

“By definition, a deal means that all sides have agreed to it, and we’re not going to second-guess anything the Lebanese government has done in this matter with Hezbollah,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

The beleaguered Beirut government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora is a rare example of a democratically elected, U.S.-allied government in the region. Washington has showered Saniora with praise and some $1.3 billion in aid since a popular revolution forced the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon in 2005.

Hezbollah has been Saniora’s nemesis from the start. An Islamist movement with political and militia wings, Hezbollah controls territory and holds veto power in a complex political system that prizes consensus and tolerates ambiguity.

Hezbollah has thrived by fuzzing the lines between political movement, social service agency, armed protection ring and religious network. The U.S. lists Hezbollah as a terrorist group; the European Union does not.

Saniora tried to extend his government’s control by last week’s decisions to remove the airport security chief for alleged ties to Hezbollah and to declare the militants’ private telephone network illegal.

About 60 people died in the fighting that followed. While some Hezbollah supporters are disillusioned by the movement’s use of force against fellow Lebanese, Saniora probably fared worse from the conflict. His government rescinded the decisions late Wednesday, with no apparent concessions from Hezbollah save an end to fighting the militants themselves had started.

Challenged to explain why the United States does not consider Saniora’s move appeasement, McCormack got indignant.

“Because sitting back here in Washington and sort of the comforts of our own democracy, secure in our rights and freedoms, I don’t think it’s appropriate to start second-guessing those people who are making decisions that literally will determine the future of democracy in Lebanon,” McCormack said, “whether it survives to fight another day, another week, another month, and another year or not.”

He said it is “apples and oranges” to ask how that squares with Bush’s remarks in Israel, and he invoked the murky nature of Lebanese politics.

“Lebanon is not going to resolve its myriad difficulties and idiosyncrasies of its political system in the course of a week or one set of discussions,” McCormack said, and it is the duty of the United States to stand by a democratic government. Even as he implied that Lebanon is a special case, McCormack pointed to the virtues of Bush’s us-and-them approach. “It is worth talking about very clearly how there are bright lines and highlighting those bright lines between one side of the divide in the Middle East and the other.”