Starting today Bush the Younger will spend the next five days traveling to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He’ll also meet with the leaders of Afghanistan and Jordan. No one seems to expect much of anything to come of the trip – not foreign policy experts, not pundits, not other world leaders – and the White House isn’t doing much to make anyone change their minds. There are no grand treaties to be signed; there are no stalemated negotiations which a President may be able to progress; there aren’t even any newly elected leaders to congratulate. The region is in terrible shape, far worse than it was when Bush the Younger took office, and the trip has no discernable purpose.
During this Administration the United States has seen its involvement all over the Middle East deepen and neither they nor us are better off for it. Just for kicks let’s take a quick look around the Middle East and see what’s happened in the last eight years, shall we?
Afghanistan – When Bush the Younger took office the civil war that had gone on in Afghanistan more or less uninterrupted since the Soviet invasion in 1979 had reached a relative stalemate along long established ethnic lines. The Taliban controlled most of the country and the Northern Alliance, a group of warlords aligned against the Taliban, had a small but relatively secure strip of the north. After the 2001 attacks in America, a NATO led coalition, working with the Northern Alliance, deposed the Taliban. It was hailed as a new dawn for a forgotten land.
The international community promised that Afghanistan would no longer be neglected. It wasn’t done out of sheer kindness though. Failed states, areas where no government held sway, were suddenly seen as threats to the existing international order on account of the fact that rogue, non-state groups could use them as secure bases of operation. Today, Hamid Karzai, the appointed and then elected leader of post-Taliban Afghanistan, is derisively referred to in the international community as the “Mayor of Kabul” because, get ready for it, much of Afghanistan is not under the control of any government. Oh yeah, and the Taliban is still a potent force within the country and their leader, Mullah Omar, remains at large.
Egypt/Jordan/Saudi Arabia – Even in a post comprised largely of simplifications this one is particularly gross, but since I’d like to keep this to less than 5,000 words I’ll just point out one thing. These countries have pro-western autocratic governments which have largely put off their own reckoning with their natural instability because the United States needs them to continue on their present course, no matter the future consequences.
Iran – In 2001 Iran, a theocratic democracy, had re-elected a relatively reform minded President and had, with the exception of suspicions about complicity in the Khobar Towers attack, enjoyed a relatively peaceful run of relations with its neighbors and the rest of the world.
Today Iran has considerably more economic influence thanks to record oil prices and has strengthened its hand in Iraq thanks to an American led overthrow of its implacable enemy and his replacement with Shiites long friendly to Tehran. The empty bluster which for so long has exclusively comprised our policy towards the Islamic Republic has allowed the government in Tehran to enjoy this newly enhanced international position while seeing its most hard line elements bolstered, its pro-Western reformers given a bad name, and a bombastic demagogue elected President.
In short, during the course of Bush the Younger’s presidency the government of Iran has become less friendly and more powerful. Bravo.
Iraq – This is, obviously, well covered ground, but it bears remembering that while Iraq was ruled by a murderous despot at the start of this Administration he was a weak murderous despot who was well contained and had, for more than a decade, respected the unwritten international rule that you’re allowed to do whatever you want to your own people as long as you don’t involve your neighbors.
Today the country is bogged down in a civil war that may end up tearing it apart, it is probably the most dangerous place on earth in terms of per capita violent deaths, it has spawned a refugee problem that burdens the entire region, and it has undergone violent multisided ethnic cleansing that will, when all is said and done, rank it right up there with Rwanda in 1994. American troops are direct participants in the civil war, to dubious benefit, and the war will – conservatively – end up costing two trillion dollars. Just a quick reminder, that’s two million million dollars.
Israel/Palestine – Again this is largely well covered ground, and we’ve got to be fair to Bush the Younger by remembering that the situation wasn’t exactly promising when he took office, the second Intifada was already four months old at the time. He did not step into a situation where peace was at hand and blow it up. However, in 2008 both sides are demonstrably further from their stated goals than they were in 2001.
Israel, whose stated goal is to be secure and at peace with its neighbors, is more vilified, both in the region and internationally, than it has likely ever been. Bush the Younger’s all but undisguised favoritism caused the Israeli government to get carried away with policies that have been disastrous. These include, but are not limited to, the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which has done nothing to improve the security situation; the bankrupting and crippling of the Palestinian Authority, which has resulted Hamas’ rise to power through legitimate democratic elections; and the 2006 war in Lebanon which failed to achieve its purpose, degraded Israel’s already low international reputation, and was positively catastrophic for the perception of Israeli military superiority.
The Palestinian’s stated goal, a viable and internationally recognized state, is no closer than Israel’s. Thanks to the callousness are carelessness of the Bush Administration’s policies the Palestinians are now not only required to bear tremendous humanitarian burdens, but they’ve also lost the ability to field a single government with the authority and legitimacy to negotiate credibly. As if that weren’t bad enough they are no longer even the most aggrieved people in the region. That unfortunate title, and much of the attention that comes with it, has been diverted to the Iraqis by way of American fiat.
The Israelis and Palestinians continue, together and with the full support of the United States, along their path of mutually reinforced misery.
Lebanon – A state one trumpeted by the Bush Administration as a success story – ignoring the fact that the Syrian withdrawal had almost nothing to do with American actions – has continued along its bumptious course of occasional violence and non-stop instability. It remains, as it has been since the Reagan Administration, almost completely impervious to American influence of any kind.
This is an incomplete picture and a simplification, but it’s also fair and accurate as far as it goes. While I could go on about the many other foreign policy fiascos of Bush the Younger it seemed only fair to limit myself to the countries and topics that will likely be on his agenda for his little trip. No American President can or should be expected to solve all the problems of any region, much less one as chronically chaotic as the Middle East, but at the very least we ought to expect that on the whole things aren’t worse at the end of an Administration than they were at the beginning. Alas, for this President that is an inescapable conclusion. He has taken a number of bad situations and made them worse, and while it is easy to dwell and focus on his preeminent failure in Iraq, it’s worth remembering that there are plenty of others as well.
