On Meet the Press yesterday, Barack Obama summarized the lessons of his Middle East tour:

I think King, King Abdullah [of Jordan] is as savvy an analyst of the region and player in the region as, as there is, one of the points that he made and I think a lot of people made, is that we’ve got to have an overarching strategy recognizing that all these issues are connected. If we can solve the Israeli-Palestinian process, then that will make it easier for Arab states and the Gulf states to support us when it comes to issues like Iraq and Afghanistan.

It will also weaken Iran, which has been using Hamas and Hezbollah as a way to stir up mischief in the region. If we’ve gotten an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, maybe at the same time peeling Syria out of the Iranian orbit, that makes it easier to isolate Iran so that they have a tougher time developing a nuclear weapon.

Here we have a crystalline example of the kind of thinking about the Middle East that has prevailed for decades at the State Department, in Europe, and in leftist circles. This is the myth of linkage at its finest, in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the sword that must be pulled from the stone before peace, goodwill, and American suasion are possible in the Middle East.

In this worldview, the ineffectiveness of Arab states as U.S. allies is due primarily to genuine — as opposed to claimed — objections over the lack of American involvement in the conflict, as if America’s failure to “create” a Palestinian state is because 15 years of Madrid, Oslo, Camp David, the Road Map, Annapolis, and billions of dollars in foreign aid represent an insufficient dedication of resources to the conflict. In this worldview, Iran “uses” Hamas and Hezbollah to “stir up mischief,” a state of affairs which can be changed through a peace process. Obama apparently doesn’t believe that Hamas and Hezbollah are allied with Iran because all three share a very clear and unappeasable goal: ridding the Middle East of Israel and America. Does Obama really believe that Hamas and Hezbollah can be co-opted by a peace process?

By making Palestinian statehood — something that has no chance of happening soon, and something that America has profoundly little ability to influence — one of the major departure points for his Middle East policy, Obama is placing America’s fortunes in the region in the hands of…the Palestinians. Yikes.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 12:17 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.