Mideast Tyranny's Unexpected Expiration Dates

As decades-long dictatorships teeter and fall, is it unreasonable to ask whether anyone in or out of our government really knows what's going on and why?

TV screens fill up with talking heads of politicians, academics and think-tank denizens whose combined wisdom comes down to admitting they don't know why this is happening now and can't tell how and when it will end.

A New York Times panel of experts ponders the question, "Why Didn't the U.S. Foresee the Arab Revolts?" and is reduced to citing "group think," preoccupation with minutae and the ultimate platitude that "revolutions are unpredictable."

Instead of scoffing at all this confusion, a more constructive response might combine humility about predictions with a broad and deep reassessment of how far, in a time of its own economic crisis, the U.S. should go in trying to control what happens in turbulent countries far from home.

Afghanistan, for one example. In all the hubbub about Egypt, Tunisia, Libya et al, overlooked is the growing unease among even gung-ho Republicans, typified by former Reagan Defense official Bing West with a new book, "The Wrong War," over shoring up Hamid Karzai with American blood and money.

Iraq, for another, as crowds resembling those that have dominated the news elsewhere for weeks, rally in protest against the "democratic government" we have installed there at a cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

As the Obama Administration faces the immediate problem of getting Americans out of harm's way in Libya, isn't this the right time to reconsider the U.S. role all across the region?

For one thing, shouldn't we think about shifting emphasis from weapons there to an underlying cause of the revolts--people don’t' have enough to eat? A Surge of food instead of troops might serve our interests better.

At the very least, it would reflect our humanitarian traditions better than the confusion we are trapped in now.

Update: Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells West Point cadets, “The odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq --invading, pacifying, and administering a large third-world country--may be low” and the U.S. should concentrate on ways to “prevent festering problems from growing into full-blown crises which require costly--and controversial-- large-scale American military intervention.”

"In my opinion," Gates says, "any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

Amen to that but, in the meantime, how do we get out of the costly and controversial messes we have been in for so many years?

Ex-Presidents' Flying Circus

As Bush 41 jumps from a plane to celebrate his 85th birthday, Jimmy Carter, a few months younger, parachutes into the Middle East with his own foreign policy for the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and now Bush 43 is getting into the look-at-me act.

"Just because you're an old guy, you don't have to sit around drooling in the corner," the elder Bush said after landing safely in Kennebunkport last week. "Get out and do something. Get out and enjoy life."

Such fatherly advice may have inspired George W., who is now out drooling in public about his successor's efforts to fix an economy that fell apart on his watch.

"I know it's going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we're in," he tells applauding Pennsylvania business people. "You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money."

The acrobatic aspect of W's act is to hammer Obama's policies while bending over backward to maintain a vow not to criticize his successor.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Jimmy Carter is plunging full steam ahead in the china shop, bashing Israel and meeting with Hamas leaders (while escaping a reported plot of theirs to kill him), with a reprise of his White House boobery that failed three decades ago to free American hostages in Iran or stop Castro from exporting criminals and mental cases to Florida with the Mariel boatlift.

During the transition earlier this year, Barack Obama kept repeating a mantra of "one president at a time," a prudent approach as well for those whose 15 minutes of fame has expired.

Bush 41's geriatric parachuting may only make his Secret Service detail a little jumpy, but Bush 43 and Carter have the potential to be seriously annoying with their antics in the Ex-Presidents' Flying Circus.

Barack Obama's Race With Himself

It's not as if John McCain has become irrelevant, but in the main ring of the '08 electoral circus, all eyes are now on Barack Obama's solo high-wire act as he walks a racial, political and cultural tightrope toward the White House.

The questions are less about the two candidates' policies and personalities than about the larger meaning of it all: "Could an Obama Presidency Hurt Black Americans?" CNN asks while citing those "who warn that an Obama victory could cause white Americans to ignore entrenched racial divisions while claiming that America has reached the racial Promised Land."

Meanwhile, in the Wall Street Journal, the author of a book predicting that Obama can't win now says that he "has already won a cultural mandate to the American presidency. And politically, he is now essentially in a contest with himself" to persuade "even Middle America to feel comfortable as the mantle they bestow on him settles upon his shoulders."

This portentous pronouncement comes at the conclusion of a column titled "Why Jesse Jackson Hates Obama," which argues that Jackson and his peers presided over "an extortionist era of civil rights, in which they said to American institutions: Your shame must now become our advantage."

Obama, he claims, is moving beyond all that to become the anti-Jackson "to trade moral leverage for gratitude. Give up moral leverage over whites, refuse to shame them with America's racist past, and the gratitude they show you will constitute a new form of black power. They will love you for the faith you show in them."

All these exegeses are enough to make voters' heads spin as they watch a gifted political figure weaving his way this week through a Middle East minefield and heading toward what promises to be a tumultuous reception in Europe.

Whatever the subtexts of Barack Obama's American journey turn out to be, one conclusion is inescapable: Unlike the current occupant, if and when he moves into the Oval Office, a person of substance will be sitting there.

Bon Voyage to Bush

The good news is that our President will be elsewhere much of next year, giving him less time in Washington to start disastrous wars and subvert the Constitution.

The bad news: He will be abroad, winning hearts and minds for America with his wit, warmth and incomparable charm.

In early January, Bush makes his first visit to Israel with side trips to the West Bank, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

In February, he goes to Africa, in April to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Romania, in June the U.S.-European summit in Slovenia followed by a July meeting of Group of Eight leaders in Japan, the summer Olympics in China and a November Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru.

The US Secret Service and security people around the world will be exhausted by year's end. The Republican candidate for President should be relieved by not having to explain why the incumbent is not out there campaigning for him. And Dick Cheney could be a total wreck from overseeing all the Neo-Con mischief himself after the loss of Rove, Gonzales, Libby, Meiers and so many of the other elves.

Meanwhile, the sightseeing could do Bush some good after a year in the bunker and provide some upbeat material for the final chapter of his Presidential memoirs.

When they pack his bags, the White House staff could do the country a service by forgetting to put in the veto pens.

Iraq and Vietnam, Bush and LBJ

Now that the Decider is invoking Vietnam as the touchstone for Iraq, he may want to consider the fate of the man who presided over that war.

Like Bush, Lyndon Johnson believed passionately in the necessity of his conflict, in the domino theory that losing Vietnam would lead to the fall of Southeast Asia, just as this President is certain that success in Iraq will determine what happens in the whole Middle East.

Johnson was wrong. We lost. Southeast Asia did not go Communist. Bush went to Vietnam last year and at a banquet offered a toast to “strengthening our ties."

The President should look at what happened after LBJ left office. He lived the remaining four years of his life in a depression so deep that he couldn't write his memoirs and died of a heart attack the day his successor, Nixon, admitted defeat and withdrew from Vietnam.

Had LBJ survived, he would be marking his 99th birthday next week and might have some advice for Bush, his fellow Texan. A misbegotten war can undo a lifetime of achievement such as a landmark Civil Rights Act and the War on Poverty.

But then, Bush would have no idea of what Johnson was talking about. In six and a half years so far, his domestic achievements have been zero, unless you count tax cuts for the rich and denying health care to poor children.

"Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?"

The immortal words of Casey Stengel come to mind for the Bush Administration’s latest moves in the Middle East. Casey’s incompetent Mets were only losing baseball games. This bunch is playing with our country’s future.

The most recent tragi-comedy of errors is reported in today’s New York Times:

“The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to total $20 billion over the next decade at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.”

Counterproductive is a euphemism for exporting radicals to car bomb our troops there while King Abdullah tells Arab heads of state that Americans in Iraq are “an illegal foreign occupation.”

Next week, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will go to Saudi Arabia to ask the Saudis, please, to “make clear to Sunnis engaged in violence in Iraq that such actions are ‘killing your future.’”

At the same time, to allay the fears of our most reliable ally, the Bush team is promising to increase military aid to Israel to $30.4 billion over the next decade. There is nothing like a little arms race to promote stability in a trigger-happy region.

There may be some devilishly clever, subtle master strategy in all this but, based on past performance, they might do well to consider Casey Stengel’s advice for managing tough situations: “The secret is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.”

Killers in Iraq: The Saudi Connection

Almost half of the insurgents American troops are fighting in Iraq came from our staunch ally, Saudi Arabia.

According to U.S. military figures just published in the Los Angeles Times, “About 45 percent of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15 percent are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10 percent are from North Africa.”

The Saudi government knows that and says it is doing everything possible to prevent Sunni extremists from migrating to the killing fields of Iraq. But is it?

The signals are getting decidedly mixed. Until recently, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was ambassador to Washington until 2005, had Bush and Cheney eating out of his hand. But then last month, his uncle, King Abdullah told Arab heads of state that Americans in Iraq were “an illegal foreign occupation.”

“Saudi frustration,” the New York Times reported this weekend, “has mounted over the past four years, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated. King Abdullah was angry that the Bush administration ignored his advice against de-Baathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi military.”

Now questions arise: How hard are the Saudis trying to stem the tide of their Sunni jihadists into Iraq? To what extent is exporting troublemakers in their domestic interest and part of an unspoken policy? How much pressure are they putting on the Bush Administration to stay in Iraq by threatening to support Sunni fighters against Iran-backed Shiites if we leave? Behind it all, how much of American policy is driven by placating the Saudis to ensure the continuing flow of their oil to which we are addicted?

In the Middle East, keeping up with your friends can be as exhausting as fighting your enemies. Pakistan is another example. Stay tuned.