Yes, we all know that it takes a village to raise a child. It also took a village -- the southern Lebanese village of Qana -- to get the United States to act to stop the carnage in the Middle East.

The news of the killing of 57 civilians -- 34 of them children -- in a single bombing raid on Qana finally got the United States to abandon its "clean house" policy and to an insistence that Israel proclaim a 48-hour halt in air attacks on Lebanon. It is worth noting that a direct Israeli attack on a U.N. observation post earlier in the week had not achieved such a change.

An emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council condemned the attack in the strongest terms and insisted that the parties to the conflict allow free access for humanitarian aid. The Security Council also continued its call for an immediate ceasefire.

Unfortunately, it may take more than a village to secure a real ceasefire. In announcing the cessation of bombing, Israeli officials expressed determination to continue their offensive until the terror threat to Israel is extinguished. There is certainly a threat to Israel present in Southern Lebanon. Only a few short years ago, Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon after a disastrously unsuccessful attempt to remove that threat by military means. It is also true that the tactics of Hezbollah make it very difficult to distinguish its fighters from the civilian population. That said, the threat to Israel only intensifies every time Israel uses collective punishment of a civilian population to try to eliminate its enemies.

And it is not just the Israeli policy that needs to be questioned. The current bombing has also left U.S. policy in the region in tatters.

New communications technologies have offered some Lebanese the opportunity to raise their own voices during this conflict. Surely we must hear these voices, too, if we wish to understand what it means to stand for human rights during such a conflict.

If a Global Good Neighbor Ethic is to have any value, it must help us understand and decide upon a course of action in foreign policy dilemmas like the current Middle East conflict.

Secretary of State Rice's visit to the region is a good example of foreign policy as practiced in the Bush White House. Hezbollah sits right on the Axis of Evil, so the narrative goes. Hamas isn't far off. As a result, any attack on such groups is to be applauded. All the better if we don't even have to do it ourselves. If over a thousand innocent Lebanese and a much smaller number of Israeli civilians need to die in the process, we can live with that.

Condi listened. If she plays the violin, she could have fiddled. Tyre burned. Then the Condi show shifted to Rome, where no breakthrough on a ceasefire was desired. To no one's surprise, no breakthrough came.

This sad tale does not show the limits of diplomacy: It shows the bankruptcy of the Bush foreign policy. A Good Neighbor would pull out all of the stops to arrange a ceasefire on all sides, and then use all diplomatic means to facilitate negotiations without preconditions on all fronts.

Noam Chomsky and friends circulated a letter yesterday reminding us how all of this actually started. This history has already been rewritten to someone's convenience. Since it is extremely concise and can be grasped in a single reading, we know that Noam probably didn't write the letter. It does, however, offer a perspective sadly missing in media treatments of the situation.

The New York Times doesn't seem to be interested, but a human rights organization must say something.

Human Rights Watch reports that Israel is using cluster munitions in its bombing attacks in civilian areas in Lebanon. Cluster bombs are known to cause tremendous "collateral damage" and a growing international movement opposes their use in civilian areas. Many of them also fail to fully explode, which leaves behind extremely dangerous unexploded ordnance. These bombs should not be used at all, especially around civilians.

We are unlikely to hear Condi Rice criticize Israel for its tactics. The United States used the same cluster ordnance in Afghanistan in 2001-2002, and in Iraq in 2003. Israel is, therefore, in bad company.

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail exposed the U.S. use of white phosphorous bombs in Iraq. In an interview with Democracy Now, Jamail reports on his visits to Lebanese hospitals. While he can't confirm it yet, he is convinced that the Israelis are using white phosphorous bombs in Southern Lebanon.

Have you done anything today to stop this insanity? Our government has no intention of lifting a finger.

Take a moment to contact your representative and ask him/her to cosponsor H.Con.Res.450, which calls for the United States to pursue an immediate cease-fire and negotiations without preconditions.

When has U.S. foreign policy been more of a shambles? North Korea's missile launch . . . terror attacks in India . . . widening war in the Middle East . . . and all of this against the backdrop of a failed war in Iraq and one that is hanging by its fingernails in Afghanistan. Where does it all end?

You must have seen it. Our president is chowing down while Phony Blair is trying to get his attention onto the conflict in the Middle East. If you haven't seen it, check it out. He never misses a bite.

The open mike makes the policy clear. "See . . . the irony is that all they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop this shit and it's over." If life were only so simple.

Blair and Bush will laugh it off. What else can they do? Perhaps the scariest thing about the whole episode is that 38 percent of the people taking the CNN Quick Poll on this say that both of these guys actually enhanced their reputation through the mishap. This is more than the 33 percent who said that Bush was more embarrassed by the gaffe.

Foreign policy is especially on my mind as my stomach turns. I spent this weekend at a conference that brought together activists and policy people to discuss the Global Good Neighbor Ethic. Developed by the New Mexico-based International Relations Center, GGN reaches back to the foreign policy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt to locate the seeds of a new approach to foreign policy. It also looks forward to what a guiding ethic to policy might mean as the war on terror threatens to set the entire world on fire.

The need for such a new approach has never been so evident in my three decades or so of caring about such things, but will anyone care? We spent a lot of time talking about the "Fear Factor," and the question of who will want to talk about being a good neighbor when it seems that the next terror attack might be days away.

Maybe so, but our own Fear Factor can't be an excuse for not trying to change this debate. As we were getting ready to fold up our conference on Friday, The New York Times filled its op-ed page with a call for a "progressive realism". I'm happy to see that they, too, see the need to get foreign policy onto a new track, but, for now, I'll focus my realism on building the good neighborhood.