Solving The `Stability` Problem

During last summer`s Israeli-Hezbollah war, Condi
Rice assured us that we were witnessing the

"birth pangs of a new Middle East."

Condi may be right. But that new Middle East appears
to be one in which U.S. influence is visibly waning and
America is on the way out. Consider the returns from
November.

Bush`s war was repudiated in a Democratic triumph.
Our NATO allies begged off sending more troops to
Afghanistan to fight the resurgent Taliban. After a
leaked White House memo insulted him as ignorant or
incompetent, Iraq`s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
stiffed Bush by

refusing to join him and the king of Jordan for
dinner.

Cheney was summoned to Riyadh to assure the king that
the United States was not going to scuttle Iraq—else the
Saudis would have to intervene to save the Sunnis in the
sectarian civil war sure to follow. The king was telling
the veep: If you go, a regional and sectarian war will
follow you out.

In Somalia, the Union of Islamic Courts is
consolidating control. In Bahrain, the Sunni-ruled
sheikdom that is home to the U.S. Gulf fleet, elections
brought Shia victories in 16 of 17 legislative races
they contested. Liberals and women were routed, with 17
of 18 woman candidates defeated. The lone victor ran
unopposed.

King Abdullah of Jordan warns of the prospect of
three simultaneous wars—in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq.
The king did not include the five-year war in
Afghanistan, where opium exports have reached record
highs and British troops, following Pakistan`s example,
are concluding local armistices with the Taliban.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah is demanding the government
cede it veto power, or it will bring down the regime
with the kind of street action our proteges used in
Beirut, Belgrade, Kiev and Tbilisi

Anbar province has been virtually ceded to the
insurgents and their al-Qaida allies. Hundreds of
thousands of Christians have fled Iraq to Syria and
sanctuary. The Kurds are carving out their own country,
including Kirkut, in anticipation of a breakup.

U.S. forces are being moved into the capital for what
appears to be a final Battle of Baghdad to prevent a
takeover by the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, our old
nemesis, now said to be the most powerful and popular
figure in the Shia provinces south of the capital,
whence our British cousins will soon be departing.

Bush`s meeting with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Shia
cleric who heads the Supreme Council of Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which runs the Badr
Brigades, is not unrelated to the rise of Hakim`s bitter
rival, al-Sadr. There may soon be a whole lot of shakin`
going on in Baghdad.

As for the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process,"
it is as close to comatose as it has been since
before Oslo.

Israel`s economic blockade of Hamas, following Hamas`
election victory, brought rockets down on Israeli towns
north of Gaza and a bloody re-intervention by Israeli
troops. Ehud Olmert`s war to smash Hezbollah ended in
smashing Lebanon and a moral victory for Hezbollah,
which withstood five weeks of air strikes and a feckless
Israeli invasion.

Diplomatically, America has never been weaker in the
Middle East, Israel has never been more beleaguered, the
Hezbollah-Syria-Iranian axis never stronger, and our
friends in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Gulf
states never more apprehensive.

Nor are the trends hopeful. The Afghan and Iraqi wars
Bush launched never looked more certain to end in U.S.
defeats.

What is the cause of the impending collapse of the
U.S. position across the Middle East? We put democratist
ideology ahead of national interests. We projected our
ideas of what is right, true and inevitable onto people
who do not share them. We tried to impose our will with
our military power, which is more effective at killing
Arab enemies than winning Arab hearts.

America is failing in the Middle East because our
leaders of both parties will not look at the region
through Arab eyes. What Bush saw as a glorious
liberation of Iraq, Arabs saw as an invasion. Where Bush
sees in Israel a model of democracy, Arabs see a
pampered agent of U.S. imperialism, persecuting and
dispossessing the Palestinian people.

"For 60 years, my
country, the United States, pursued stability at the
expense of democracy in … the Middle East, and we
achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course.
We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all the
people."

So, Condi Rice hubristically

declared in Cairo in 2005.

Since then, those elections that Rice demanded have
advanced toward or into power the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the
radical Shia in Iraq and Ahmadinejad in Iran.

But at least Bush and Rice have solved the stability
problem.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan needs


no introduction to VDARE.COM
readers; his book

State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America,

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