Dismal Dream for Middle East
Gandalf Grey
By Pierre Tristam
Created Nov 28 2006 - 8:05am
It's all coming full circle. The American dream of a democratic Middle East
is surrendering to old nightmares of autocracy from Iraq to Lebanon by way
of Syria and Iran. It hadn't been much of a dream to start with, not because
its intentions weren't desirable, but because its duplicity doomed it. The
Bush administration couldn't pretend to want democracy in Iraq or Lebanon
while abetting dictatorial-like regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan,
baby-sitting disintegration in Afghanistan and virtually flaunting
indifference at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, source and subconscious of
all Mideastern nightmares.
Arabs are in an economic, political and cultural dark age. Some of it is of
their own making; plenty of it, not. Only short and western memories hew to
the convenience of forgetting that every political boundary from the Eastern
Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush is the creation of European powers. But
Arabs have long memories. Less than a century ago, France and Britain
thought they could impose their will on the Middle East by drawing lines
where they pleased and declaring king whom they picked. Woodrow Wilson's
genius had been to stay out of what he correctly saw as a gamble with
calamity. He knew colonialism's spoils for what they were: rot, with
compound interest. Other American presidents until Eisenhower adopted
Wilson's hands-off approach, watching his cautions prove true.
The French and the British never tried to remake the Middle East in their
image; they had neither the idealism nor the desire. They only had the
means, or thought they had the means, to muscle the Middle East in their
interest. They failed. They created a mosaic of powder kegs. And left the
United States to pick up the pieces, with oil as the all-powerful lure.
Beginning in the 1960s, that's just what the United States began doing, but
with its own brand of "realism": Work with repressive regimes, not against
them so long as they work with you. And triangulate between Israel and its
Arab enemies. That's the Kissinger doctrine, in a nutshell.
The end of the Cold War should have taught the West a good lesson: It's not
a bad idea to wait out tyrannical regimes, whether they're the Soviet Union
or Iraq. Isolated, bankrupt, they eventually crumble under their own weight.
The democratic sweep started by the fall of the old Soviet Union might have
spread to the Middle East, if only there'd been enough patience. Instead,
there was George W. Bush and that old flammable mixture of hubris, divine
right and lust for oil, which he thought could yield miracles so long as the
U.S. military could lead the way. The result was good-old-European-style
overreach, with America left alone to hold the bloody bag.
What's so remarkable -- and depressing -- about the unraveling is how
familiar it all is: The assassinations, the fears of civil war, the American
deal-making with old authoritarian standbys in order to make surrender look
like that Nixonian phrase of Vietnam vintage, "peace with honor." Who would
have thought that the American way out of Iraq would have to cross
tollbooths controlled by so-called axis-of-evil countries -- Syrian and
Iran? Who would have thought that Lebanon would again be sacrificed to
deal-making?
Sixteen years ago, James Baker III was the first President Bush's secretary
of state, in charge of putting together the military coalition that would
oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Baker wanted the Syrian army to be part of
the coalition. He succeeded. In exchange, the United States would turn a
blind eye to Syrian designs on Lebanon. What Syria had been unable to
achieve since 1976 because of French and American opposition -- occupy all
of Lebanon -- it achieved in 1990, as the Americans and their Arab allies
"liberated" Kuwait.
The Lebanese managed to boot out Syria after almost 30 years of occupation
last year. But pro-democracy forces in Lebanon -- an indigenous force,
unlike Iraq's -- have just suffered their sixth assassination in less than
two years. And Baker is back in the Middle East, brokering new deals. Among
them: handing Lebanon back to Syria, through Syria's protege in Lebanon,
Hezbollah, which is also backed by Iran. In exchange, Syria and Iran split
Iraq's security between them and let the United States decamp, "with honor,"
while presumably preventing an Iraqi Rwanda.
And there you have it. The circle is complete. The authoritarians, the
tyrants, the regressives are back in control from the Eastern Mediterranean
to the Hindu Kush. By foolishly rushing it, President Bush set back
democracy in the Middle East for who knows how many generations, ensuring a
longer dark age instead. And still, as always, the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict bubbles and seethes, the Middle East's eternal, sleepless volcano.
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson