All hell looks to break loose

With Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers and Israel's retaliatory incursion into Lebanon, things are looking scarier and scarier in the Middle East. I'm thinking back to the 2000 election and reports of the internal Bush Administration debate over whether to attack Iraq in 2001-02. In both cases, two alternative approaches to resolving tensions in the Middle East were offered. One side consisting of neocons and Bush himself, argued that the key to stability in the Middle East was to take on and transform the most radical anti-Israeli regime, Iraq. Once democracy was established there, it would transform the rest of the region and ultimately lead to a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue. The other side, consisting of Al Gore in 2000 and Colin Powell in 2001-02, argued that peace in the Middle East started with an agreement on the Palestinian issue, which would then defang radical regimes like that in Iraq and transform the region.

Well, six years into the Bush policy, how is the "transform Iraq first" strategy working out? Iraq is in total chaos. Al Qaeda and sympathetic groups are emboldened and have succeeded in radicalizing the bulk of the Muslim population throughout the Middle East, putting pressure from the Islamic fundamentalist side on a number of regimes, especially Saudi Arabia. Iran has moved to the right, is in the process of developing nuclear weapons, and has strengthened its strategic position in Iraq. Hamas has taken power in Palestine while the right retains control in Israel. It looks like all-out war developing in Gaza between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinians, war which will surely spread to the West Bank as well. Now Hezbollah, Iran's ally and the most powerful terror group in the world, is getting in on the action and drawing Israel into another invasion of Lebanon. Syria, supporter of Hamas, will clearly feel pressure to intervene if the situation deteriorates in Gaza and the West Bank, especially with Israel buzzing the Syrian president's residence in Gaza.

Call me a glass half empty kind of guy, but it seems to me that our present course isn't working too well. Maybe that Gore guy (and 90% of the U.S. foreign policy establishment) had it right all along.