The Thin Red Line Between Promoting and Meddling.(Periscope; Bush's Democracy Campaign)

Byline: Seth Colter Walls

As Lebanon's Parliament battles over who it will choose as the nation's next president, U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman has made it clear which side America is not on. In op-eds, TV appearances and meetings with top officials, he described the current pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, as an embodiment of the state's chronic weakness. He urged legislators to pick a leader who would disarm Hizbullah, the Iran- and Syria-backed Party of God. He did not explicitly endorse a candidate of the pro-Western majority, but his campaign still has raised eyebrows. The leftist Beirut newspaper As Safir voiced the opinion of many Lebanese, complaining that never in the history of diplomacy "has a foreign ambassador given himself such license to interfere."

Not only in Lebanon is the aggressive Bush-administration campaign to promote democracy provoking a backlash. To be sure, the protests do not always come from democrats. But countries that used to blame internal dissent on CIA meddling now blame democratic opposition on the State Department, which guides much of the billions in the U.S. budget for promoting democracy. Russian President Vladimir Putin last week bashed those "who still slink through foreign embassies" to gain support for ...