Let's not be crushed by the Syria train

"Don't panic," the former US ambassador to Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, told his Lebanese friends at a conference organized jointly last week by the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation and the Aspen Institute. And the Lebanese panicked, because the March 14 majority doesn't know how to make itself relevant as the transition in Washington accelerates, amid signs the Obama administration intends to engage Syria.

There is disconcerting haziness whenever American officials, past, present, or future, explain why it is time to talk to Syria. The principal argument is that the Syrians can be broken off from Iran and Hizbullah, that now is the time to pry Bashar Assad away from his dangerous liaisons. That reasoning, when not utterly na•ve, happens to be counter-intuitive. Assad knows that it is his dangerous liaisons that make engaging Syria desirable; the Syrians' strong card is their ability to dance with Iran and Hizbullah and Hamas and manipulate the Lebanese and Palestinian scenes while continuing to oversee mayhem in Iraq. For Assad to give all that up as a prerequisite for dealing with Washington is a non-starter. It would mean surrendering his leverage before getting down to the serious business of negotiations. Why should he do that?
Assad can read the dynamics as well as anybody. The reality is that it is the Americans who want a new relationship with Syria, so the onus is on them to make the concessions. Nor are the Syrians blind to the lessons of recent history. Hafez Assad spent decades playing the spoiler in the Middle East, many Americans were killed thanks to his efforts, but that only induced successive US administrations to pursue him with greater vigor. Syria has violated United Nations resolutions on Lebanon that the Bush administration considered vital, most damagingly Resolution 1701, but the fact is that Bashar Assad has paid no price for this and may soon be rewarded with heightened attention from the Obama administration.

Assad is under no great pressure from the US to give up anything significant. So why does the mood in Washington become so animated whenever the subject of dealing with Syria is brought up? Why does so potentially bad an arrangement seem high on the agenda of those in the Obama transition team dealing with Middle Eastern affairs?

The only convincing explanation is that the Americans are pining for the 1990s, when states rather than non-state actors happened to be more dominant in the region. As US policymakers look around these days, they see a disconcerting vista. In Lebanon, Hizbullah seems more powerful than the state; in the Palestinian areas, Hamas has a decisive advantage over the Palestinian Authority; in Egypt and Iraq, groups outside the reach of the state, or alienated from or inadequately integrated into the state, are challenging governments or ruling regimes. On the margins of the region, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Islamist movements, sometimes sponsored by state organs but also able to resist state authority, seem to be proliferating. A natural reaction of American diplomats and policymakers used to dealing with formal state structures is deep unease.

This the Syrians have skillfully understood. At a recent conference in Venice, I sat next to a Syrian doctor who several months ago was sent with colleagues to Washington to explain why Syria was worth opening up to. If one could distill his argument into a single phrase, it was this: "Syria is a state; it's best for everyone to bolster states in the Middle East against non-state actors." For many policymakers, the Syrian dictatorship remains attractive because it wards away the prospect of non-state Sunni Islamists taking over in Damascus. That Syria has been at the epicenter of efforts to arm and assist non-state actors such as Hizbullah, Hamas, and Al-Qaeda seems largely irrelevant to Western policymakers and opinion-shapers. In the absence of a desirable alternative to the Assad regime, the Syrians are making headway in marketing themselves abroad.

Which leads us back to the Lebanese panic - or at least the panic of those who understand that there are those in Washington who would welcome going back to the time when Syria could control Hizbullah. If the US preoccupation is with the growing power of non-state actors, then what better way to contain Hizbullah than by allowing a new form of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon? Reinforcing that argument is the fact that Israel has no real problem with it. According to reports, Israel and Syria advanced quite far over Lebanon in their talks in Turkey. If Benjamin Netanyahu becomes Israel's prime minister after his country's elections next February, one of the ways he might avoid making concessions on the Golan Heights is to cut Assad more slack in Lebanon.

Some US officials argue that Washington's engagement of Syria will help assure that Lebanon is not on the block in future Syrian-Israeli discussions. Perhaps, but if the Obama administration's priority is to inhibit Hizbullah, then we must be realistic: The sovereign Lebanon that emerged from the 2005 Independence Intifada is expendable, because that Lebanon has been unable to prevail over Hizbullah. Even within the US bureaucracy, those defending an independent Lebanon will have to persuade colleagues that a Lebanese state backed by Syria is less attractive to Washington and Israel than a weaker government that has been unable to extend its authority over all its national territory.

Does that mean an independent Lebanon is finished? Not necessarily. There are fundamental difficulties in a Syrian return to Lebanon, whichever form it might take: The Syrians need Hizbullah as leverage in their own talks with Israel. That means that far from weakening the party, they may only ensure that Hizbullah resumes its cross-border attacks. At the same time, Syria is incapable of fully imposing its writ on the party in the same way it could before 2005. Iran is now a major player on the scene, and there are many ways for the Iranians and Hizbullah to show that Syrian power in Lebanon is not what it used to be. This would make even less likely a Syrian-Iranian rift, however, since Syria could neither defeat Hizbullah militarily in that event, nor would it see any benefit in breaking with a party that has been its de facto enforcer in Beirut.
In other words, the Obama administration may soon come to realize that Syria doesn't have the means to give the US what it seeks in Lebanon. The Lebanese March 14 majority must see to it that while Obama is experimenting, an independent Lebanon survives. The majority has another strong suit, namely that it represents a far more desirable, pluralistic, even liberal Lebanese future than the despotism of Syria or the religious militancy of Hizbullah. However, March 14 has displayed crying incompetence in adapting to change in Washington, or shaping American attitudes in this transition period - for example by pushing for a delay in US engagement of Syria before the parliamentary elections next spring.

If the majority loses, alas we all lose. There is still a policy vacuum to be filled in Washington. There is still time for March 14 to fill that vacuum with practical proposals to ensure the US does not throw out the Lebanese independence baby with the bathwater when it chats up Assad. The Syria train is moving out in Washington, and the majority must ensure it will be on board.

Giving peace in Palestine no chance

Rarely a day goes by without someone offering new advice to the incoming Obama administration on how to deal with the Middle East. This advice is usually based on a simple principle: If George W. Bush pursued a specific policy, Barack Obama must do the opposite.
Much of the counseling has focused on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The lines of argument are familiar. The conflict lies at the heart of the Arab world's traumas, therefore resolving it is the key to unlocking many of the region's other problems. Peace is achievable because the outlines of an agreement were almost agreed to during the 1990s, after the Oslo Accords were signed. And Bush didn't do enough for Palestinian-Israeli peace, while Obama can succeed by compensating for that failing.

The difficulty with the three premises is that each is questionable. The problem of Palestine doubtless requires an urgent settlement, but all the signs are that we may be beyond that stage - past midnight on the kind of peace with which we would have been familiar in 2000, when talks collapsed and new leaders took over in the United States and Israel.

Is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict the Gordian knot that needs to be cut in order for other regional crises to be resolved? The bitter fate of the Palestinians is a significant factor in how Arab populations view themselves and their relationship with the West. However, when one looks more closely, the centrality of the Palestinians' humiliation is also, perhaps even mainly, the result of the Arabs' humiliation at the hands of their own leaders and their alienation from politics in general. In supporting the Palestinians, Arabs also denounce the illegitimacy of those governing them. That is why Palestine, as much as it is about Israeli behavior, is also about the abject failure of the Arab state.

Arab citizens are the victims of despots who neither respect them nor afford them the bare essentials of a political life. Citizens are permitted only indifference, only to express themselves in favor of the tyrannical fathers ruling over them. What is the role of Palestine in such a context? Arab regimes have used the conflict with Israel to maintain suffocating security establishments and to deflect popular anger away from their own shortcomings. However, that could mean that if Arab societies become more open, Palestine will recede as a prime shaper of Arab attitudes.

Taking this a step further, if the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is resolved but Arab despotisms are left in place, it is doubtful that we would see deep changes in the nature of Arab societies. Peace with Israel will not mean that fewer young men join militant Islamist groups (probably the contrary would happen), nor that Arab citizens will be able to voice their opinions more liberally. No one doubts the importance of Palestine, but as the Lebanese showed at the end of their 15-year civil conflict, just as the Kuwaitis showed after the 1991 Gulf war and the Iraqis did at the end of the 2003 war, Arab societies will turn against the Palestinians, often in very unreasonable ways, when they feel that they themselves have paid an onerous domestic price for having backed the Palestinians.

The second assumption about a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, namely that the outlines of a final agreement are known and were defined during negotiations in the 1990s, is equally problematic. All the evidence today suggests that Palestinian-Israeli dynamics are changing so rapidly that the Oslo framework may have become a distant anachronism.

The reason is that on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli divide those unwilling to make the required concessions for peace are in a position to veto a final settlement. On the Israeli side we are likely heading after the February 2009 parliamentary elections toward a center-right government, one either led by the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu or in which he will have a decisive say. Given that the present center-left Kadima-led government has been incapable, when not unwilling, to take steps bolstering the credibility of President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, it seems illusory to expect better next spring.

Similarly, Hamas has no interest in a peace settlement, believing the armed struggle can deliver the Palestinians much more. The Islamist movement may soon have as its main Israeli adversary Netanyahu, who, like Hamas, welcomes an open-ended truce that ultimately resolves nothing. Meanwhile, the Palestinians' condition will only consolidate the divisions between the West Bank and Gaza. However, not before very long this stalemate might only further undermine the credibility and negotiating strategy of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization, creating openings for Hamas in future elections. This coming January, Hamas and Fatah are likely to clash over whether Abbas should remain in office as president, and this week's fighting in the Mieh Mieh camp in southern Lebanon was a worrying omen that Palestinian refugees may soon be caught up in their political animosities.

So, did George W. Bush err in not doing enough to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? His administration blundered in isolating the late Yasser Arafat, pushing for Palestinian elections, and doing nothing to persuade Israel to suspend settlement-building - all steps that strengthened Hamas and discredited Fatah. But Bush's lethargy in the past year, despite the Annapolis conference, was only a symptom of the dynamics at play: Washington is basically unable to impose peace on the Israelis and Palestinians, and nothing suggests this will soon change.

Few in the US want to admit that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may be irresolvable for now. That's understandable, since doing nothing to address the conflict may be worse than doing something, even if that something is futile. The danger is that Palestine has become a diplomatic quandary where it is better for the Americans to oversee negotiations that merely delay the inevitable descent into violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Such negotiations present no prospect of peace, but keep alive an empty process that is better than no process at all. If so, Barack Obama may soon find himself as ineffective as George W. Bush was.

Michel Aoun's minority package tour

You have to hand it to Michel Aoun, he never goes half-way. Here was everyone else staying in Syria for a few hours, two days at the most, and here is Aoun opting for the full four-night, five-day holiday package tour, including visits to religious sites, open buffets, Damascus by night, and an audience with the dictator, all for the low price of his mortal soul.

There will be much dispute over Aoun's choices as he "reconciles" with his old Syrian enemy - his partisans applauding the general, his adversaries finding fault. But a more obvious question is what does Aoun gain from this trip that he didn't have before embarking on the road to Damascus? And what does he lose? - assuming that many Lebanese, perhaps most, still believe that Syria was behind the killing of the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, as well as of dozens of others beginning in 2005.

To the first question, the easy explanation, an electoral one, is unconvincing on its own. If Aoun's gambit is that he has to become friendly with Syria to be assured that his candidates will be given more room on electoral lists in predominantly Shiite constituencies, as well as Jezzine, then he has already forfeited enough politically to achieve that. Rather, the general's deeper ambition (if "depth" can in any way reasonably be applied here) is to become the primary mediator between the Christians and Syria's regime. Aoun's immediate aim is to displace President Michel Sleiman from that role, but more generally to breathe life into a contentious notion associated with his principal Maronite political ally, Suleiman Franjieh, but also with Aoun's own son-in-law, Gebran Bassil: namely that Christians, in order to protect their community, have a long-term advantage in entering into a strategic regional alliance of minorities with the Shiites and Syria's ruling Alawites.

If there are any doubts about this, the symbolism of Aoun's visit is there to dispel them. The point of the general's planed excursions to Christian shrines in Damascus is to show that Christians thrive under Bashar Assad.

To the second question - what does Aoun have to lose by so flamboyantly settling his differences with a regime accused of systematic murder in the past three years? - the answer is: quite a lot. Through this gesture, the general has taken his followers farther than ever in their divorce from the Lebanese sectarian consensus. Aoun has repeatedly sold his alliance with Hizbullah as a successful effort to preserve that consensus following the 2005 Independence Intifada. That would only be true had Aoun remained a bridge between Sunnis and Shiites. Instead he took sides, and is now thumbing his nose at the Sunni community once more by effectively absolving the Syrian regime of guilt in the Hariri murder; or worse, making it plain that he cares little about that guilt.

But it's the Christians who will ultimately have the most forceful say on Aoun's Damascus trip. And whichever way you cut it, most Christians do not share the general's views on an alliance of minorities, nor are they particularly eager to embrace the Assad regime, preferring a colder relationship of mutual respect. Aoun is under the impression that he can continue to manipulate Christian misgivings about the Sunnis to his advantage. However, those misgivings only have meaning in the context of domestic Lebanese affairs. Once the Christians see the general wanting to take the community into a regional confrontation with the Sunni Arab world, once they realize that Aoun's method for doing so is a partnership with a deeply mistrusted Syrian leadership and with Iran, their reaction will likely be one of suspicion, if only from a perspective of self-interest.

Self-interest counts for a lot, but there is also the matter of principle. It sends a very different message when Lebanese officials, mandated by the government, meet with their Syrian counterparts, and when a parliamentarian like Michel Aoun does so. That's not to say that Aoun had no right to visit Damascus, only that by doing so outside the confines of formal state-to-state relations - the desirable framework for ties between Lebanon and Syria - he injects a form of unilateralism into his act that demonstrates he will ignore Syrian behavior in Lebanon, regardless of how it violates Lebanese sovereignty and United Nations resolutions. That's why Aoun's defending his visit as representing a new page in Syrian-Lebanese relations is so manifestly vain. Aoun claims to be representing all of Lebanon when he only truly represents himself.

Why should that matter? Because it would have been useful, just this once, for the Lebanese to be united around their victims. Aoun's political career since his return to Lebanon has centered on a perpetual struggle against the legacy of Rafik Hariri, whom the general never forgave for having, in death, served as a mobilizing force against the Syrian presence. By transforming his stay in Syria into a grand tour, part political summit, part pilgrimage, by offering so large a dispensation to Bashar Assad and demanding nothing in exchange (except for what Assad will toss him by way of making the trip more palatable in Lebanon), Aoun has betrayed the memory of even those who sided with him in his darker moments: the soldiers who died for him on October 13, 1990, after Aoun had fled to the French Embassy and refused to issue them with an order to surrender; Gebran Tueni, who had his differences with the general, but always defended Aoun's partisans when they were arrested and mistreated by the Lebanese security services; Samir Kassir, who had engaged Aounist students at St. Joseph University and encouraged them in their fight against Syrian hegemony; Antoine Ghanem and Pierre Gemayel, who had, like Aoun, endured years of marginalization at Syrian hands.

Egoism is sometimes a quality of great men. Aoun would agree after placing himself at the same altitude as Charles de Gaulle reconciling France with Konrad Adenauer's West Germany. But his is an egoism without a trace of greatness, without vision or a center of gravity. Aoun took the package tour of Syria, the one the budget tourists choose. He won't come away from the experience with his reputation enhanced.

Is the UN leading the Lebanese on?

According to press reports, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will set March as the deadline for work to begin at the Hariri tribunal. The latest extension will be referred to as "technical" by the Security Council, an insincere notion concealing the fact that in the past three years, from one extension to the next, the UN investigation has moved forward with remarkable, even suspicious, lethargy.

It's long past the time to begin wondering what really happened in the two years when Serge Brammertz was UN commissioner. What investigation file did he leave in the hands of his successor, Daniel Bellemare, who, if that is at all possible, has been even more silent than the mute Belgian? It's a matter of record that Brammertz wasted valuable time by reopening the Hariri crime scene and repeating the work of the first commissioner, Detlev Mehlis, and others, only to reconfirm their findings. It's also virtually a matter of record that Brammertz shied away from using the authority granted by the Security Council to its fullest in his interrogations in Syria - most prominently in his interview of the Syrian president, Bashar Assad. That's why this latest extension, technical or not, leads us to believe that Bellemare was left with so incomplete a dossier, that by March he will have needed more than a year to fill in the blanks.

On top of that comes disturbing information that the investigation has stalled. The information may be correct or it may not be, but for such doubts to dissipate, both Bellemare and the UN will have to tell us more than they have until now. If the Canadian commissioner soon offers up an update report as devoid of content as the last one, indeed as insulting as the last one, then it's the UN's credibility that will be at stake. Bellemare has already indicated he will not name names. Fine; but if the Security Council is taking the trouble to use the term "technical extension," that means that come January we will be entering into a new phase of the investigation. A new phase requires a more substantial UN update.

What should the next report contain? First of all a reassurance that Bellemare actually has something in his briefcase to make a persuasive case in court. The commissioner has been more open in private with officials than he has been in public, and that poses problems. The implementation of justice, if that is where we are headed, is not a private matter to be discussed between UN and Lebanese officials and foreign ambassadors; the Hariri murder was a national affair, and not since Detlev Mehlis has a commissioner actually considered that relevant.
Bellemare must also take a clearer position on several issues left hanging thanks to his and to Brammertz's wishy-washiness. Now that we will soon be entering a pre-trial phase, Bellemare must bolster the Lebanese judiciary when it comes to the detention of the four generals, not just throw the burden onto Lebanese shoulders. More is also needed indicating that Bellemare knows who ordered the Hariri assassination and those taking place afterward. Both Mehlis and the first official tasked by the UN to throw light on to the crime, Peter Fitzgerald, were much more affirmative on this issue, so why has Bellemare opted for the bewildering opaqueness of Brammertz? He needs to explain how the public interest is served by such an attitude, particularly when a public trial looms.

If Bellemare's files are not airtight by March, what happens? What kind of charge can he put together, bearing in mind that the Syrians have a highly competent legal team waiting in the wings to do battle? Some pessimistic legal minds point out that any court can be established, but that it need not necessarily implement its mandate - notably the special tribunal for Sierra Leone, which today lies dormant. That seems less likely with the Hariri tribunal, given the potential backlash in Lebanon, but a vital question is who Bellemare decides to accuse given what he has in hand. If he has hard evidence against some suspects, but not others, might that force him to reduce the scope of the accusation the court will then submit? Or might the court decide that there is simply not enough material to go on, before sending Bellemare back to work to strengthen his case?

Then there are the politics. There is no center of gravity anymore at the Security Council to inject new life into efforts to unmask Hariri's killers. In 2005 and 2006, the French president, Jacques Chirac, and the American president, George W. Bush, provided that center of gravity. China, Russia, and the United Kingdom were in no position to oppose muscular resolutions bolstering the UN investigation. Today, we have Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, and soon Barack Obama in Washington, neither deeply committed to the Hariri tribunal. Indeed, Sarkozy has invested too much into his relationship with Syria to allow the tribunal to disrupt that. The same holds for Russia, which was never enthusiastic about the tribunal in the first place, while the UK is now publicly vaunting its intelligence cooperation with Damascus. As for China, it is indifferent.

International bodies are only as effective as the actors backing them up. Under the best of scenarios, the five permanent members of the Security Council will simply leave the Hariri tribunal alone, to advance or hang depending on its evidence. But even that can lead to its atrophying. During the Brammertz years, the wide latitude afforded the commissioner, much like his lack of accountability for the slow pace of work, arguably deadened the investigation process. As the tribunal picks up speed, limited interest from the permanent five, not to say the active hostility of some of them, may actually render the body ineffective.

To avoid that outcome, Bellemare will have to prepare a compelling case. It makes no sense yet to doubt the commissioner's intentions. But we must be realistic: Bellemare, like his predecessors, isn't operating in a vacuum. If he has evidence that some powerful states do not want released; if there are fears that such evidence might generate instability or worse in Lebanon, then we might have to start preparing ourselves for an unsatisfying, even a failed, trial ahead. Then again this reading may be too dark. However, at this late hour we're entitled to insist that Ban Ki-moon and Daniel Bellemare at last prove it wrong.

George W. Bush: good, bad, and ugly

A large part of the hope accompanying the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States has been relief at the departure of George W. Bush. While by no means an outstanding figure, Bush is today so abhorred that an evenhanded reading of his legacy seems impossible. Yet the reality is that, when it comes to foreign policy, his administration has been just about as good, and as bad, as its predecessors.

There are dark spots to be sure. The Guantanamo prison along with the more discriminatory aspects of the USA Patriot Act, the Bush administration's creepy legal effort to justify torture in its "war on terror," the Abu Ghraib outrage, the extraordinary rendition program sending individuals back to their countries of origin to be mistreated, are all blights on a country claiming to support human rights and the rule of law. The Obama administration's intention to close down Guantanamo comes not a moment too soon. To a large extent, Bush's claims about spreading democracy to the Middle East were undermined by such behavior, even if the American legal system and media, it must be recognized, were in the forefront in limiting or highlighting the administration's abuses.

When it comes to its traditional global partners - Europe, China, and Russia - the US has in the past five years, after the Iraq invasion, returned to the humdrum consensual equilibrium of the past, if it ever fully abandoned this. There have been normal ups and downs, as when Russia recently invaded parts of Georgia, but mostly the Bush administration has acted like any other administration. If "unilateralist neocons" have been pulling the strings, they did little during the second Bush term to prove this. Bush, just like Bill Clinton before him and Barack Obama after him, sits atop an administration that makes policy through a blend of self-interest, ideology, opportunism, and an affinity for the status quo.

What about the Middle East, where Bush supposedly revolutionized Washington's dealings with the region? The Iraq war has become the benchmark by which everyone judges the US president. Certainly, the political preparations for the war, like the planning for the postwar situation, were a disaster, the result of manipulation, negligence, incompetence, and hubris. But in repeating this, critics of the US never acknowledge an essential truth: Bush removed from power a mass murderer of historical proportions, who would have only perpetuated his vicious, kleptomaniacal rule to the detriment of his people had he not been ousted. Nothing but military force could rid us of Saddam Hussein.

By the same token, few of the critics acknowledge that Bush, and here the president can take personal credit, pushed through a change of strategy in Iraq that proved successful in lowering the levels of violence, the so-called "surge." Since Vietnam and the days of Lyndon Johnson, there had been a perception that losing American wars will remain losing wars. Bush, along with his field commander General David Petraeus, showed that this was not the case. Blame Bush for overseeing a postwar plan for Iraq that was a shambles, but also accept that he believed in a more positive outcome there when most of those around him hadn't a clue what to do.
Ironically, Iraq would prove to be the exception confirming the rule that the Bush administration, like most other administrations, perhaps more than many, largely worked through a multilateral consensus in the region. Even in Iraq, this impulse was evident soon after the end of the invasion, when the US sought international cover for its military presence through a United Nations resolution.

The attack on UN headquarters, far from pleasing Washington unilateralists, was a powerful blow to the Americans because it denied them effective UN assistance on the ground, where the international body had set up humanitarian aid networks.
Long before the Iraq conflict even began multilateralism was also on display in Afghanistan, where the US deployed troops with its NATO partners under UN authority. The same consensus has shaped the way the US has dealt with the Iranian nuclear program. As early as December of last year, when a US intelligence estimate expressed "high confidence" that Tehran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, the Bush administration virtually took its military option off the table, and later prevented Israel from attacking Iran. Instead, it has worked through the International Atomic Energy Agency and the so-called "5+1" group of nations, which have otherwise proven splendidly futile in convincing Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

On the Palestinian-Israeli track, the Bush administration has been roundly condemned "for not doing enough." But what does that mean? There is much about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that the Americans can do little about. Bush foolishly endorsed Israeli negotiating positions that helped undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization. The isolation of Yasser Arafat backfired, allowing Hamas to gain ground in Palestinian institutions after it won the legislative elections of January 2006. But those self-defeating choices were not a complete break with the past. Bill Clinton laid the groundwork for Arafat's isolation by blaming him alone for the collapse of the 2000 Camp David summit, just as the Clinton administration allowed Israel to build new settlements and create facts on the ground in the midst of the Oslo process.

Since last year, the Bush administration has shown lethargic interest in Palestinian-Israeli talks, but lethargy is about the only sentiment those talks deserve to produce. The dynamics of the negotiations have turned against any resolution. Hamas is not interested in a final two-state deal, while Israel's political system is constitutionally incapable of creating the kind of government coalitions that could order Israeli withdrawals from occupied Arab lands. The US can only do so much in this context (and has tried to do so multilaterally, through the hollow Quartet), so here is a prediction: Barack Obama will hit up against the same obstacles as Bush did on Palestine, and will soon become the target of Bush's critics.

Finally, in Lebanon Bush also worked through the United Nations and with France to produce Resolution 1559, the basis for Syria's long-awaited withdrawal in April 2005. Later, Washington helped establish the international investigation and trial framework following Rafik Hariri's assassination, a rare and laudable instance when international law was applied to a political crime. The US was taken to task for supporting Israel during the summer war of 2006, but to be cynical about that, it did so in the context of a regional and international consensus. Bush acted little differently than Clinton did in April 1996, during the Grapes of Wrath operation, when Israel killed over 100 civilians at Qana alone.

With time, Bush's performance in the Middle East will be judged with a cooler eye. People will see merit where they refuse to see it now, and will be harsher in concluding that what made Bush more acceptable internationally - his surprising willingness to water down US behavior in a pool of international unanimity after Iraq turned sour, like his unwillingness to vigorously challenge Arab dictatorships - were steps that actually made the US less effective. That reassessment will come once people hear echoes of Bush's limitations in Barack Obama, who has been, unreasonably, transformed into the avatar of our every desire.

The God that Failed

Adding to Dave's post on Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama, sometimes I wonder if some people have any sort of memory, particularly the journalists now playing up this story as if the messiah had spoken.

That's not to say there is no story here; Powell is a stalwart of the Republican establishment and one of the few, far too few, African-Americans who until now has had a genuinely good chance of becoming president of the United States. My problem is that he is a man on whom the establishment has bestowed the title of foreign policy sage, when in fact he proved to be one of the most mediocre secretaries of state in recent memory, in a field including such nullities as Madeleine Albright, Warren Christopher, and the opportunistic but hollow Condoleezza Rice.

Why on earth do we listen to Colin Powell? When he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff he opposed George H.W. Bush's decision to remove Iraqi forces from Kuwait militarily, even though the decision was ultimately a sound one. At the end of his term as chairman he advocated a disastrous U.S. operation in Somalia, contradicting his own near unworkable conditions for overseas intervention, the so-called "Powell Doctrine." As secretary of state under George W. Bush, the first item on his agenda was a botched effort to impose "smart sanctions" on Iraq. Powell visited Damascus to persuade President Bashar Assad to end illicit cross-border trade between Iraq and Syria, which was providing vital economic oxygen to Saddam Hussein's regime. Assad promised Powell he would, then ignored that promise, embarrassing the secretary early in his stewardship.

There came Iraq. Powell persuaded Bush that he would be able to get international support for an invasion if the administration took the United Nations route to gain Security Council approval for U.S. action. When he couldn't do so, Powell made his now-infamous presentation to the Security Council arguing that the Iraqi regime was developing weapons of mass destruction. The briefing was later shown to be based on false evidence, and Powell has since described the episode as a "blot" on his record. However, Powell was as blameworthy on Iraq as the many other American officials who are routinely lambasted today for the conduct of the war. However, he somehow managed to teflonize himself by repenting. No one blames Colin Powell for the fiasco, though he never contemplated resigning and stayed on in office until 2004, by which time it was clear that he had misled everyone.

(For those of us who thought the war was worth it, Powell is doubly blameworthy: for making it seem since he left office that we should censure others for the debacle in Iraq, but not be too harsh on Colin Powell; and for never having drawn the right lessons from the first Gulf war, namely that Saddam Hussein merited being removed for no other reasons than his past as a mass murderer and for being a relentless purveyor of Middle Eastern and international instability.)

That is the same Colin Powell now imparting wisdom and advice to voters. He may just get it right this time, for once, with all the evidence suggesting that Obama will win. But notice how the endorsement comes when this outcome seems a dead certainty, when the risks of the endorsement are slight and the potential gains great. Give Powell a 10 for gulling the public once again, and give yourself a zero if you're falling for it.

Lebanon's smell of victory, next time

So, Israel's strategy the next time it enters into a war with Hizbullah is to destroy much more of Lebanon than it destroyed in 2006. The plan is deeply cynical, its justification thoroughly dishonest, but Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's secretary general, will not be able to reply that he didn't expect what happened, before apologizing to us afterward.

In an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot last week, the head of Israel's Northern Command, Major General Gadi Eisenkot, had this to say: "What happened in the [southern suburbs] of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on." What Eisenkot meant was that if Hizbullah fired off its rockets from villages, instead of trying to prevent the launches Israel would simply flatten these villages. This strategy of "disproportionate" force could well be accompanied by a widening of the scope of Israeli retaliation against Lebanon, targeting the country's infrastructure. A former head of Israel's National Security Council, Giora Eiland, has argued in favor of this, and wrote recently: "A legitimate government runs Lebanon, supported by the West, but it is in fact entirely subordinate to the will of the Shiite organization."

It poses problems to argue that Eiland doesn't know what he's talking about, that Hizbullah, while powerful, must contend with a majority in Lebanon that deeply mistrusts it, therefore that the Lebanese government is not "entirely subordinated" to Hizbullah's will. Why? This might imply that Israel is free to ravage Hizbullah and the Shiite community at will, but should not extend this to other Lebanese. That is, of course, not what a rebuttal of Eiland necessarily implies. However, beyond the humanitarian argument, indiscriminate Israeli retaliation against both Hizbullah and its enemies could unite the Lebanese momentarily against Israel, or more worryingly, and more likely, could spark a new civil war. This, Israel would not particularly mind, as it would occupy Hizbullah in a bestial internal conflict that could ultimately grind the party down, as the previous Lebanese Civil War did the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Eiland made his case in the context of a domestic Israeli debate, so his ideas might or might not be implemented by the government in case of any new confrontation. Much would depend on what the United States says and does. But Eisenkot's massive retaliation plan - and he underlined it was a plan, not a proposal - is belated recognition that Israel's only effective weapon against Hizbullah is to poison the well of Shiite support for the party. By imposing a balance of terror in their favor, the Israelis calculate they will be able to deter Hizbullah, but also justify before the international community harsh reprisals if the party fires first.

Still, Eisenkot's statements left several things vague. What happens if Hizbullah fires longer-range missiles at Tel Aviv and beyond? In whose favor would the balance of terror be then? What would the Israelis destroy in response? An effective policy of deterrence implies leaving oneself a range of escalating options, so that for example if Israel were to react with massive destruction of Lebanon early on in a war, it might risk leaving itself with few viable options to hit even harder at later stages if Hizbullah itself decided to escalate. And since the party's longer-range missiles are in every way Iranian missiles, and would probably be fired far from the front lines in the South, meaning near the Syrian border, would that mean that Israel transforms the conflict into a regional one?

And what about Syria in Israel's plan? In their fervor to hold the Lebanese government responsible for whatever Hizbullah does, many Israelis never mention that the party in the past two years has been able to rearm thanks to weapons transiting through Syria. They never mention, in justifying their negotiations with Syria, that Hizbullah became a powerful military force during the years when Syria controlled Lebanon. They never mention that President Bashar Assad has time and again made it clear that he has no intention of breaking with Iran over Hizbullah (or anything else), and that such a step would be inexplicable anyway as it would deny Syria the military leverage the party provides it over Israel.

As Israel's armed forces destroy Lebanon's towns and villages, as well as quite possibly its electricity, road, and water infrastructure, what will they do against a regime in Damascus far more responsible for allowing Hizbullah to be what it is than the Lebanese state, which Eiland implicitly points out is too weak to contain the party? If the answer is "nothing," and Syria is to be left alone, then we get the message: For the umpteenth time Lebanese blood will serve as currency in Syrian-Israeli bargaining.

News reports on Wednesday suggested that Hizbullah is still very much eager to avenge the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, and that Nasrallah had said as much at a party meeting, before this was leaked to the daily Al-Akhbar. The news item came only days after the Hizbullah commander in the South, Sheikh Nabil Qaouq, called Israel "a cardboard state that will be destroyed by the resistance fighters." Earlier, Qaouq had promised to liberate the Shebaa Farms by force, because diplomacy had failed. That this coincided with signs that diplomacy appeared to be on the verge of liberating occupied Ghajar was hardly fortuitous.

Even hundreds of tons of Israeli cardboard landing on Lebanese heads could cause quite a bit of damage, so Qaouq's bravado smelled like hubris. Neither Israel nor Hizbullah must relish a new round of fighting just yet, which is perhaps why the rhetoric on each side has escalated. But allow a doubt. In the destruction game Israel is capable of much more than the brash Hizbullah, and this time far more capable of confirming that whatever victory the party might subsequently declare, it would look vain indeed while we all stand in the midst of a smoldering wasteland.