Admin needs to get this right

The Bush administration has made many miscalculations in its Middle East foreign policy. Letting many opportunities to make the situation better go by, they often inadvertantly make the situation worse by what they proclaim. There are times when these people should sit down and be quiet rather than do things that exacerbate the region's problems.

Understanding Hezbollah is key. At The Washington Note, one of my favorite bloggers, Steve Clemons deserves a hat tip for his post discussing what the experts on Hezbollah are saying. Quoting (including his links),

This evening on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer", my new colleague at the New America Foundation and former staff member of the CIA, State Department and White House National Security Council, Flynt Leverett, will be sharing his knowledge base about Hezbollah.
Flynt Leverett, Juan Cole, and I just had a discussion about the brewing mess in the Middle East before he went to the studio.

Lebanon-Syria-Hezbollah: Our current president needs to be sure of the facts about the dynamics surrounding Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria. In this excellent 7/14 article in the LA Times the writers lay out more about how the entities are connected. To quote,

Iran and Syria each have long-standing ties to Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim militant group, and no Western government doubts that they provide financial, political and logistical support. But some officials and experts say Hezbollah can also move on its own initiative, for its own reasons, even as it seeks to avoid any move that would displease its chief patrons.
. . . The possible role of Iran and Syria has become an issue as the raid brought fierce Israeli retaliation and stirred fears that fighting could engulf more of the region. If Iran and Syria ordered the Hezbollah raid, it might signal their willingness to see the conflict continue and widen. But if they did not, U.S. and Israeli charges that their longtime adversaries were somehow involved could heighten the tension in the region.

Attention to a wider/wiser Middle East policy is long overdue. As I said in my post of yesterday,

With all that has happened with the current administration - its ignorance, ineptitude, short-sightedness, arrogance and stubbornness - it is hard to see how they will succeed in keeping the lid on the crisis in the Middle East.

Others in the blogosphere are making similar points. Cris Toensing's excellent opinion piece, "Letting Gaza Burn," of 7/13/05 is carried in TomPaine.com. Toensing writes that, quote,

Washington is supposed to be the “honest broker” between Israel and the Palestinians, the sole superpower that prevents this incendiary conflict from burning out of control. Is the Bush administration’s non-response to the latest flareup a function of its many distractions? Severe as other global crises are, the answer is no. It is, in fact, the Bush administration’s policy to do no more than tut-tut while the already singed hopes for moderating Hamas go up in smoke.
. . . Watching the confrontation heighten from Washington, Bush officials have merely affirmed Israel’s “right to self-defense” at every opportunity, while conspicuously declining to identify how properly functioning air conditioning in Gaza City poses a threat to Israeli civilians. . .
This tiptoeing around the facts, while it sounds unusually absurd on this occasion, is in line with Bush (and Clinton) administration practice of long standing: Blame the Palestinians for starting the fight, exonerate Israel of any culpability, place the onus on the Palestinian leadership for Palestinian suffering at Israeli hands and hint at behind-the-scenes pressure on Israel to stand down. These last hints have grown steadily more delicate in the post-9/11 years. When the Bush administration decided that they, too, wanted to order missile strikes against Islamist militants on foreign soil, they stopped complaining about Israel’s extrajudicial executions in Gaza and the West Bank. . .
In the wake of the Hamas victory in January’s Palestinian elections, however, the daylight between U.S. and Israeli positions disappeared. That border crossing has been closed for nearly half of 2006, to the predictable detriment of Gazan exports and incomes. The U.S. discontinued financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, and stayed quiet as Israel withheld millions in customs revenue that belong to the Palestinians by treaty. So it seems superfluous to ask “Where is the U.S.?” as Gaza feels the squeeze.
Rather, the questions ought to be: Will the U.S. demand that Israel not unleash similar collective punishment on Lebanon? Meanwhile, how can Bush believe that the U.S. can help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by unequivocally backing one side? And when will Americans demand that their presidents act as truly honest brokers?

What the West does in the Middle East is very important, though there is almost nothing we can do about much of what happens. Far too often, however, what the U.S. does and says is totally counterproductive. With so much at stake, it would be very good if we could get it right this time.
Tags: Middle East foreign policy Bush administration Hezbollah terrorism