“Robust”

Remember what was on the media’s mind in 2004? A vigorous election season, Mel Gibson’s muscular faith and a hardy Iraqi resistance.

Well, they’re back, and so is the buzzword “robust,” which dictionaries define as “strong and healthy,” “full of vigor” or even “rude.” In 2004, it elbowed its way into 1,486 election-season stories to describe, among other things, tax cuts and vote margins.

Now “robust” wears United Nations blue. President Bush declared in a speech Monday that a “robust international force” will be required to help end fighting in Lebanon, and a LexisNexis search for “robust international force” yields 209 hits in the last month, compared with only 79 over the previous seven years (usually weak calls to arms for Darfur).

The phrase’s first mention came within a week of the start of hostilities, courtesy of CNN war horse Christiane Amanpour.

Whether the proposed peacekeepers end up being healthy or rude, they’ll need more than washboard abs to resurrect another 2004 relic: U.N. Resolution 1559, which called for Hezbollah to be disarmed. — Swati Pandey