PRESIDENT BUSH'S trip to the Middle East last week seems to have been an effort to blow some air into his sagging, anti-Iranian balloon. His Sunni allies in the region are indeed worried about the rising power and belligerency of Shi'ite Iran, but they also know that it was Bush's war in Iraq that empowered Iran, and they are not sure they trust him to come up with a solution.
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Bush was, at last, paying attention to the Palestinian question, but although he said all the right things about a Palestinian state, the history of this administration suggests that the right words are seldom followed up by the necessary concerted action.
The much-heralded November meeting in Annapolis, Md., was, in the words of a BBC correspondent, "lots of hand shakes and tra-la-la, but not much substance." It was as if a peace process was the price of admission to coax a united Arab front against Iran.
Of course the famous intelligence estimate saying that Iran had ceased its efforts to attain nuclear weapons had, as a Dick Cheney loyalist said, "pulled the rug" out from under the bomb-Iran hawks. But Bush made it clear that he did not really believe his own intelligence agencies, saying that he thought that Iran was "trying to gain the know-how to make a weapon under the guise of a civilian nuclear program." And even Iran's knowledge of how to make a bomb is something Bush has promised to prevent.
Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, had been hoping that Bush would carry out a bombing campaign against Iran before he left office - the theory being that no other administration, Republican or Democrat, would have the nerve or be so foolish. Undoubtedly there were questions raised about Israel bombing Iran on its own, but for that it would need America's help.
A more reflective president than Bush, however, might have learned from Israel's past miscalculations. More than 40 years have passed since Israel took the West Bank from Jordan, and Gaza from Egypt, and nothing but a long nightmare has come of it. There have been Israeli surges, and relatively quiet periods when violence subsided, but nothing has really worked to Israel's benefit. The long occupation of Palestinian territories has hurt not only Israel's interests, but America's as well. The same will be true of America's occupation of Iraq.
When the hawks in the Bush administration predicted that invading Iraq would be short and sweet, with Iraqis throwing rose petals at our troops, Bush might have recalled Israel's attempt to make Lebanon conform to its plans for a transformed Middle East 25 years go.
Those of us who saw Israel's drive to Beirut to oust Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon in 1982 also saw, in a remarkably short time, the early rose petals turn to Molotov cocktails and rocket-propelled grenades. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon spawned a far more dangerous and implacable foe than the PLO had ever been. Hezbollah is an organization that had not previously existed, and would never have existed had it not been for Israel's occupation.
Israel suffered for decades as it lingered on trying to control southern Lebanon. It lost men and material, but it also lost prestige as the rising resistance grew. In the end Israel abandoned its attempt to change Lebanon and the region with its tail between its legs.
In 2006, Olmert took Israel back into Lebanon in an attempt to smash Hezbollah and cow the rest of the country into doing Israel's bidding. This time it would be done by air power, or so the Israelis thought. But Israel's gamble only strengthened Hezbollah politically, and at the same time weakened the Lebanese government to Israel's and the West's disadvantage.
That the air war in Lebanon failed to obtain its objective might be a warning if George Bush is still considering the option of bombing Iran. It will be much more difficult now for him to go to war, given the intelligence estimates, but it is worrying that Bush is now saying he doesn't believe them.
Iran is not Serbia, and would be unlikely to cry uncle even after a continued bombing campaign. And the resulting fall out would be catastrophic.
The biggest lesson that Bush might have learned from Israel's example is that overdependence on brute force to solve complicated problems does not always provide a solution, and usually makes things worse as Lebanon and the occupied territories have so amply demonstrated.
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