President Bush has identified our aim in Iraq as more than regime change: the U.S. seeks to transform Iraq into a liberal democracy respecting freedom of religion and individual rights that will in turn serve as an example to a region where despotisms are the norm. In a recent speech at the Heritage Foundation, the president went further, indicating that he had the entire region more directly in his sights. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accomodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe...Whole societies remain stagnant while the world moves ahead...as long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export." The speech was widely praised by neoconservative friends of Israel. Daniel Pipes called the speech not only "the most jaw-dropping repudiation of an established bipartisan policy ever made by a U.S. president" but "audacious in ambition, grounded in history, and programmatically specific."

Offering a vision for a new Middle East -- "a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East," in the President's words -- is inspiring: Americans are being asked to sacrifice lives and treasure and will be more ready to do so for a lofty goal. In World War I, the notion of a war to end wars was similarly satisfying and Bush has been compared to Wilson in laying down principles to reshape the world. But before we hastily applaud Bush's Wilsonianism, we might do well to remember what happened within twenty years of the Versailles Treaty.

There is already evidence of a disquieting divorce from reality in the Bush administration's Middle East policy. Let us look again at Pipes's article quoted above. In it, Pipes also praises the president's approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict: "I called Bush's overhaul of the U.S. approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict in June perhaps 'the most surprising and daring step of his presidency'. He changed presumptions by presenting a Palestinian state as the solution, imposing this vision on the parties, tying results to a specific timetable, and replacing leaders of whom he disapproved." But what has happened since that June speech? Arafat, the leader Bush was going to replace, has consolidated his power.

Nor would it have changed matters if Arafat had in fact been replaced or sidelined. This is because the premise underlying the policy is false. A Palestinian state is not the "solution," however obviously it may seem to be so in the never-never land of academic conflict resolution. The goal of the Arabs is to destroy Israel, not live with it, and Palestinian Arab leaders are frank about this, even though it would seem to serve their purpose to conceal it. To pursue the goal of a Palestinian state is thus to pursue the goal of Israel's destruction, by in effect implementing the first stage in the PLO's "phased plan" for Israel's destruction.

Even in terms of his own stated goals, Bush has failed to have any impact, for Arafat has successfully defied him. And what has been the administration's reaction? It has not been to denounce the Palestinian Authority, but to put yet more pressure on Israel. It is surely significant that both Colin Powell, representing the State Department, and Paul Wolfowitz, representing the supposedly more supportive-of-Israel Department of Defense, publicly praised so-called "peace plans" undermining the state. Powell in effect endorsed the so-called "Geneva Understandings," entered into on behalf of Israel by Yossi Beilin, who is not even a member of the Knesset. Steven Plaut described them in the November Outpost: "[Yossi] Beilin's latest gambit is to 'negotiate' publicly on behalf of himself with the PLO and to crayon yet another grand document for total settlement of all outstanding Arab-Israeli issues through surrender to the PLO. (The only concession by the Arab side was some modification of the right to return and the Palestinian Authority promptly repudiated even that.) Beilin does not represent Israel, does not represent the opposition Labor Party and does not even represent [the far-left] Meretz, whose leaders are embarassed by the new 'peace initiative.'"

Arafat, the leader Bush was going to replace, has consolidated his power.

Prime Minister Sharon called Beilin's activities subversive of the state. As James Tisch, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has properly said, it is like "Ramsey Clark negotiating with Al Qaeda and coming up with an agreement or Jane Fonda on her own, negotiating an agreement with the North Vietnamese."

Wolfowitz, who had enjoyed the reputation of being a strong friend of Israel, endorsed a similar scheme, this one a "petition" circulated by a former head of Israel's secret service, which called for Israel to withdraw to the 1949 borders. In a lecture at Georgetown University, Wolfowitz said the petition's principles "look very much like" the administration's Road Map. It is difficult indeed to see anything "daring" or "surprising" or even original in all this: it suggests the President clings to the old State Department formula of forcing Israel back into what even the dovish Abba Eban called "the Auschwitz borders." It's the same old poisonous liquid packaged in a shiny new bottle, labeled "A vision of a new Middle East."

And what about Iraq? The real issue is not the

December 2003               - 3 -               Outpost