On March 14, in the windup to the war with Iraq, President Bush abruptly "changed the subject." He made a brief speech, without a single mention of Iraq, calling for implementation of the Road Map for a full-fledged Palestinian state by 2005. While the odd timing of his talk showed he was yielding to pressure from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush emphasized his "personal commitment" to serving as an "active partner" in achieving the Road Map's goals. This was Bush's "read my lips" to the Arab world -- we will pursue the purposes dearest to your heart as soon as this war against Saddam Hussein, which makes you uncomfortable, is over.

There is no reason to doubt that President Bush's prime motivation in bringing down Saddam is, as he says, to remove the possibility that the Iraqi dictator would either himself use, or turn over to terrorist groups, chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. But it also seems clear that the President believes that eliminating Saddam can achieve more than remove the threat posed by a particularly brutal and grandiose dictator. And while there are major policy differences between the Powell and Rumsfeld factions, on one matter they almost certainly agreethat the Middle East, left as it is, poses an unacceptably high risk to the United States of ongoing terror and turmoil.

For the State Department, once Saddam is gone, the key to taming regional anti-American passions is solving the Arab-Israel conflict. The State Department faction places little stock in prospects for democratization of the Arab world. It believes that autocrats prepared to accomodate U.S. interests -- people like Jordan's Abdullah and Egypt's Mubarak -- are the best that can be hoped for and wants to strengthen their position by satisfying Palestinian Arab demands, which, unsatisfied, as the State Department sees it, keep their populations at a perpetual fever pitch, ever-ready to succumb to the call of fiery anti-American demagogues, whether Islamist or secular in orientation.

Surprisingly, it is the Rumsfeld faction that has the more ambitious agenda for reshaping the Middle East, believing that Iraq, under U.S. tutelage, can become a viable democracy, and then serve as the first domino in bringing down autocratic states in the neighborhood. These neo-conservatives reason that the populations of other Arab states will demand the same personal freedoms and democratic institutions that they see bringing a better life to Iraq's people. The group around Rumsfeld, in short, is reviving the notion of a New Middle East first advanced by Shimon Peres. While Peres believed the Oslo peace process would be the domino producing a transformed Middle East, the optimists in the Defense Department see Iraq transforming the Palestinian Authority -- among other regimes. People living in democratic states will want peace and prosperity, so the argument goes, not pursue fantasies of bringing down the West or destroying Israel.

The President seems to be incorporating elements from both perspectives in his policy. He is adopting the State Department's view that addressing the Arab-Israel conflict is an urgent priority. At first reluctant to follow Clinton in what had proved the quagmire of brokering a peace agreement, President Bush has now served notice this will soon be on the front burner. And he is following the Defense Department in his emphasis on democratic transformation of the region. "Iraq will serve as a catalyst for change, positive change," the President said. Indeed, the rhetoric of political correctness is being used to undercut those who would question the practicality of the scheme. We are told that to say the Middle East will resist democratic reform is to indulge in "the soft bigotry of low expectations." The President already professes to see dramatic progress toward democracy in the Palestinian Authority -- justifying moving ahead with the Road Map -- in the appointment of long time Arafat lieutenant Abu Mazen as Prime Minister. Indeed, if we accept this reasoning, the Palestinian Authority is jumping the democratic gun and may serve as a beacon to Iraq.

While Peres believed the Oslo peace process would be the domino producing a transformed Middle East, the optimists in the Defense Department see Iraq transforming the Palestinian Authority.

Unfortunately, it is all but certain that the Road Map to a New Middle East designed by the U.S. administration will prove as much a desert mirage as the disproven illusions of Shimon Peres. On February 26, the same day Bush, in his speech at the American Enterprise Institute, endorsed the domino theory of Middle East democracy, the State Department distributed a classified report (duly leaked to the Los Angeles Times) entitled "Iraq, the Middle East and Change: No Dominoes." The report declared that even if some version of democracy took root in Iraq -- which it said was unlikely -- the notion that you could transform the Middle East was not credible. Indeed, the report argued that liberal democracy in the region would be extremely difficult to achieve and electoral democracy could easily lead to Islamic-controlled governments hostile to the United States.

Painful as it may be to agree with the State De-

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