Centerblue.org

If ever there was an event that showcased the complete and utter failure of anything Bush touches, it is the pinnacle of failure represented by the coup in Gaza last week.

For those unaware, the radical Hamas Palestinian faction kicked out their more moderate Fatah governing brethren out of Gaza and essentially set themselves up as a rogue state and a haven for terrorism on the borders of Egypt and Israel. That’s the last thing that Israel needs, and essentially destroys any possibility of a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian statehood issue–since the Palestinians are now split between the radical Gaza and the moderate West Bank.

How did this come about? Because Bush, in his utter stupidity and hubris, felt it necessary to declare a new pax americana by insisting that the middle east had to become a “bastion of democracy.” We already know the disaster that awaited that policy in Iraq.

As far as the Palestinians are concerned, Bush insisted that the Palestinians hold free elections a couple of years ago, convinced in his delusions that they would elect a George Washington that would lead the Palestinians to a new land of the free. Imagine how they were shocked–shocked!–when the Palestinians instead elected Hamas to power in Parliament, putting them at odds with the rival Fatah ruling faction represented by Abbas. “Nobody saw it coming,” whined Condoleezza Rice.

They didn’t see it coming because they have ideological blinders on their eyes. When you attempt to impose democracy on a society that has not asked for it, on a culture that lacks a thriving middle class yearning for it, in an environment without consistent justice or enforcement of the peace, do not expect to get a George Washington. Expect instead to get a bunch of radicals that feed into people’s fears and play to their nationalistic heartstrings. We have seen the same thing happen in other places where Bush has pushed for elections, including Lebanon and Iraq.

Why should this matter to us? Apart from even greater threats to our oil supply arising from a Middle East in perpetual conflagration, people who voted for Bush’s re-election because they thought he would keep us safe really need to ponder the foolishness of their choice. Bush’s misguided crusades were crystal clear when we re-elected him, and yet a majority of the public chose to send him back. Instead of guaranteeing our greater security, he has guaranteed the creation of pockets of terrorism that will bedevil and attack America for decades to come. America is far less safe now than before his tenure, and not because of 9/11 but because of the awful policies enabled by his election.

Choose more wisely next time, please. It’s not as if we didn’t tell you so.

Bush’s refusal to pressure Israel to stop its war campaign is a carefully calibrated “strategy” that will in his mind bring long term peace to the Middle East, according to this analysis.

He believes the current aggression is a golden opportunity to permanently eliminate a major de-stabilizing force of Hezbollah “terrorists” (or “freedom fighters”, depending on who you ask). This is the type of rationale that guides his actions in Iraq as well. He would thus rather address the consequences of the war as a “manageable crisis” instead of continuing to serve as an “honest broker” in any Middle East peace process.

The fallacy of this line of thinking is that if you kill enough people then the conflict will go away. This completely ignores the root of the conflict, an ideology arising from hatred bred rightly or wrongly from actual or perceived wrongs against a group of people. If you fail to address the causes of the ideology then killing people will not resolve the problem, because new people will simply step into the shoes of others killed. The rampant unemployment among youth in the Middle East and even what they learn in school about the West provide almost unlimited numbers of willing suicide bombers to unleash against Israel or the US and to strengthen the ranks of groups like Hezbollah.

The foolishness of Bush’s reasoning is amply evident in the disastrous mess represented by Iraq. Instead of promoting stability and eliminating a big threat to the region in Iraq, the US is instead fomenting all sorts of unrest that it is completely incapable of quelling. That weakness is emboldening countries like Iran and Syria to behave in ways they would not were the US truly a check on their power. Israel would do well to learn from the American mistake in Iraq, especially because it was its own behavior in Lebanon in years past that gave rise to Hezbollah in the first place.

Rather than weakening the anti-West ideology, Israel and the US are strengthening it by their warmongering in Lebanon and Iraq. It is providing the validation the Arab world needs to prove that their cause against the West is a just one. They need only see the senseless bombings of cities and the slaughtering of innocent children and civilians to fuel their hatred.

I categorically condemn groups like Hamas and Hezbollah detonating suicide bombers among groups of innocent Israelis in cafes and restaurants–such behavior undermines whatever legitimacy their causes may have. Even if suicide bombers are the only weapon you have against an opponent vastly superior militarily to you, you focus on military targets in wartime and not civilians. On the other hand, how is this behavior qualitatively different from Israel bulldozing Palestinian houses and people or indiscriminately shelling Beirut? Innocent people are just as dead regardless of the method used.

The rest of the world sees what Bush and Israel do not: that the neocon ideology of shooting first and managing the damage later solves nothing and only creates far larger problems than the ones solved. As usual, the US chooses to behave like a rogue nation while paying token lip service in admonishing Israel to minimize the killing of civilians.

It is time to address the ideology behind the Middle East hostility rather than just shooting guns at the problem. Pulverizing Lebanon accomplishes nothing. The biggest obstacle is the Palestinian statehood issue. Until Israel gets serious about the subject of providing a viable permanent home for these displaced people it will continue to be perceived as an oppressor by the Arab world and will continue to be in a state of perpetual war–if not by Hezbollah then inevitably by some other group or nation that takes its place.

Bad news of increasing hostilities continues to pour in from the Middle East, as Israel opens a second offensive against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. This comes on top of military action in the Gaza strip in response to a kidnapped soldier. Israel is ignoring entreaties for restraint from other world powers. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of the Palestianian Authority had an opinion piece expressing his people’s outrage in the Washington Post.

Will there ever be peace between these two groups that so viscerally hate each other? Sometimes I wonder.

Second on the list of Middle East conflagrations: frustrated world powers refer Iran to the UN over its nuclear ambitions. Let’s face the truth, folks…Iran can thumb its nose at the rest of the world for as long as it damn well pleases, because it knows it holds the world by its collective testicles on account of the West’s never-ending thirst for oil. Russia and China are lukewarm to the referral and will continue to be eager trade partners, strengthening Iran’s hand. Policy actions really seem quite limited…but before we cry too much, let us reflect on the fact that Iran is also partially a problem of our own making. What do you expect a country to do when it sees itself placed on the “Axis of Evil” short list and then witnesses its next door “Axis” neighbor invaded? Of course they’re going to build big nasty bombs.

Third is the never-ending sectarian violence in Iraq, the latest being two dozen civilians being grabbed from a bus and shot to death. The prime minister sounded helpless as he implored, “we all have the last chance to reconcile and agree among each other on avoiding conflict and blood. If we fail, God forbid, I don’t know what the fate of Iraq will be.” We know the probable end of this tale, and it probably will not be a unified Iraq. No matter what we do, this hatred of Iraqi vs. Iraqi is not going to stop. If only our own immoral invasion did not now carry the imperative to remain and try to fix an unfixable problem…but that’s the risk you take when you start wars.