Writing in this week’s Newsweek, ex-peace processor Aaron David Miller says the Obama administration will have to be “much tougher than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush were, if it’s serious about Arab-Israeli peacemaking.”

The article sets forth the standard peace-processor recommendations (push Israel to improve life in Gaza, stop settlement expansion on the West Bank), as well as the generic admonition that we should be “prepared to be tough with the Arabs as well.”  On that latter point, however, Miller has no specific suggestions to make.

The “peace process,” as it has existed over the last 15 years, has in fact depended on not being “tough” (much less tougher) on the Palestinian “peace partners.”  They always need to be “strengthened” with new concessions.  Their shaky “confidence” must continually be rebuilt, with new “confidence-building” measures.  They cannot be asked to affirm recognition of a Jewish state as a goal of the process - it would weaken them.  They cannot be asked to educate their public on the concessions (starting with the “right of return”) necessary for the process to succeed - ditto.  They cannot be held to the three-phase “performance-based” process to which they agreed:  if they don’t perform Phase I and II, they go to Phase III anyway.  If they cannot reach agreement, even on borders, even after a year-long process, even with the most pliant prime minister in Israeli history, they can rely on a peace processor to suggest the solution is to be tougher on Israel.

As the IDF continues its efforts to implement Phase I of the peace process in Gaza, by dismantling the terrorist organization that currently controls it, the most significant contribution the new administration can make to the process is to firmly support Israel in those efforts, to reiterate the commitments made by both the Clinton and Bush administrations to “defensible borders” for Israel, and to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in compliance with the Jerusalem Embassy Act.

Israel — having withdrawn every IDF soldier from Gaza, dismantled every settlement, and removed all 8,000 “obstacles to peace,” and having then seen the Palestinians immediately destroy the greenhouse economy, burn the buildings that could have been used for housing and schools, turn the settlement areas into rocket launching sites, elect their premier terrorist group to control their government, and force a new war on Israel — could stand to have its own confidence rebuilt too.

In his December 29 press conference, describing U.S. goals with respect to Gaza, Deputy Press Secretary Gordon Johndroe used the term “sustainable ceasefire” or “sustainable and durable ceasefire” no less than ten times.  Reporters did not ask him to define the term, but they did the next day during his December 30 press conference:

Q How exactly is the United States trying to recreate the ceasefire to make it sustainable and durable? What’s the difference between an immediate ceasefire and one that is sustainable and durable? It sounds like, kind of, semantics.

MR. JOHNDROE: No, I think a ceasefire that is sustainable and durable, what we’ve been calling for, is one that is exactly that — it’s lasting. We don’t just want a ceasefire for the sake of a ceasefire, only for violence to start up immediately, or within the next few weeks. That serves no one’s interest, as President Bush discussed with Prime Minister Fayyad, and –

Q But how do you know that it would be lasting?

MR. JOHNDROE: We have got to get a commitment from Hamas that they would respect any ceasefire and make it lasting and durable. And so until we can get that assurance — not the United States, but until Israel can get that assurance from Hamas — then we’re not going to have a ceasefire that is worth the paper it’s written on.

A “commitment” from Hamas, however, is not going to be worth the paper it’s written on, particularly if Hamas receives, in exchange for the “commitment,” concessions that would effectively strengthen its position as it prepares for the next fight.

A better guide to the meaning of a “sustainable and durable ceasefire” can be found in the answer Condoleezza Rice gave at a July 16, 2006 press briefing at the start of the Second Lebanon War, when she was asked why the United States did not simply call for an immediate ceasefire.  She explained “the real goal here is . . . to bring an end to the violence in a way that is going to be sustainable”:

SECRETARY RICE: . . . I can tell you right now if violence ends on the basis of somehow Hezbollah or Hamas continuing to hold in their hands the capabilities anytime they wish to start launching rockets again into Israel . . . if violence ends on the basis of Syria and Iran being able to turn on the key again anytime, we will have achieved very, very little, indeed, and we will be right back here, perhaps in a worse circumstance because the terrorists will assume that nobody is willing to take on what has been a very clear assault. . . .

Two and a half years later, Hezbollah has more than doubled the amount of rockets it had prior to the war.  The UN force inserted to police the ceasefire did not prevent the re-arming of Hezbollah, nor will it prevent the re-launching of rockets if and when Hezbollah decides.

In fact, the conclusion of that war — complete with a “binding” UN resolution and a UN force - led to the creation on Israel’s southern border of exactly the “worse circumstance” Rice described.  Hamas assumed (correctly) that nobody would take on an even clearer assault:  year after year of rockets on Israeli civilians.

To use the standard Rice set forth in 2006, a sustainable and durable ceasefire is one during which Hamas does not continue “to hold in their hands the capabilities anytime they wish to start launching rockets again into Israel.”  It requires the practical disarmament of Hamas and the permanent elimination of tunnels or other means of smuggling or rearmament.

Anything less will be a ceasefire, but not a sustainable and durable one.

Earlier today, America’s Voices in Israel held a briefing for bloggers, in conjunction with the Israeli Foreign Ministry and  New York Consulate.  The conference call featured Jeremy Issacharoff, Deputy Chief of Mission of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. and Brigadier General in Reserve Relik Shafir of the Israeli Air Force, who spoke from Ashkelon.

They made it clear that Israel’s objective is not the reoccupation of Gaza or the elimination of Hamas, but rather the crippling of the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza and its ability to threaten Israeli citizens, and the establishment of new “rules of the game” (including the elimination of arms smuggling from Iran).  There will be no ceasefire without the complete cessation of firing into Israel, and the “status quo ante is not an option.”  Asked about an “exit strategy,” they said it was Hamas that should be thinking of one.

There was no discussion on the conference call of the “peace process,” but I think it might be useful–particularly for those who think that Israel is currently pursuing a fruitless “military solution”–to view what is happening now in Gaza in terms of long-delayed Phase I of the “Performance-Based Road Map”:  the “sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.”

That step was supposed to be taken by the Palestinian Authority (which committed itself to the Road Map in 2003 and “recommitted” itself at Annapolis in 2007).  It is something that everyone — the U.S., the UN, the EU, Russia, and the Palestinian Authority — all agreed was the necessary first step.  Given the complete failure of the PA to meet its commitment in Gaza, it is now being done by the IDF.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni addressed the Knesset today on the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip, and had this to say:

Israel has done everything possible to avoid the moment at which it would be forced to take action, but that moment finally came.  We will make the most of it, in order to change the equation.

Israel is waging a struggle, but this struggle is not Israel’s alone.  Israel is standing on the frontlines of the Western world’s war against terror, and we expect support for doing the right thing and fighting the war of the entire free world.

It is true:  the pictures broadcast on television all over the world are provoking harsh public opinion against Israel.  Unfortunately, some of the world’s decision makers are swayed by public opinion and the media, even though they know what is true and what is not, and how they would act in a similar situation.

From this podium, I call upon the world’s leaders, and particularly those from the Arab world - those who understand that the threat does not come from Israel but from the radical elements in the world, headed by Iran; those who know what Hamas really is; those who know that Hamas is a problem for the entire Palestinian people and not just Israel’s problem. . . . They know that the road to peace passes through the war on terror, extremism, hate and incitement, which means a war against Hamas and those like Hamas.

Although Israel has not yet made its ultimate strategic objective clear, it is hard to see, given those remarks, that an acceptable outcome would be simply a new ceasefire, or a Lebanon-type resolution where an international force protects Hamas while it rearms.

 1.  Top 10 Words in the Presidential Election:  “The audacity of hope and change we can believe in.”  (Memo to future historians asking if this can really be the slogan that won an election:  yes, it can).

2.  Top 10 Words in the MSM Election Coverage:  “You know . . . I felt this thrill going up my leg.”

3.  Top 10 Words in the New York Times for an Unidentified Source:  “person speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to speak.”

4.  Top 10 Words in the New York Times for Al Qaeda in Iraq:  ”homegrown Sunni extremist group American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led.”

5.  Top 10 Words in the MSM for Terrorist:  “gunman,” “militant,” “extremist,” “member of a military wing,” “agrarian reformer” (that last one may have been from a different list).

6.  Top 10 Words in the Daily State Department Press Conference:  “two states living side by side in peace and security.”

7.  Top 10 Words for Diplomatically Describing This Year’s Failed Peace Process:  “narrowing the gaps on borders and identifying and distilling differences” (Dennis Ross). (Code:  “narrowing the gaps” means Israeli concessions; “distilling differences” means Palestinian suggestions for further concessions).

8.  Top 10 Words for Unwavering Commitment:  “I can no more disown him than my white grandmother.”  (Eight Word Runner Up:  “Let me be clear . . . [Jerusalem] must remain undivided.”)

9.  Top 10 Words by Caroline Kennedy on Her Senate Ambition:  “In our family you always think about going into politics”.  (Thirty-Nine Word Runner Up:  “While I was thinking about it in my own head, and in my heart, talking to my children and my husband, ya know people started coming up to me and saying ‘Why don’t you be senator you’d be great’ . . .”).

10.  Top 10 Words in the Governor of Illinois household:  “f—–g golden,” “f—–g appreciation,” “f—–g nothing,” “f—–g Chicago Tribune editorial.”  (May technically only be seven words).

You cannot say it more succinctly, or put it more clearly, than Howard L. Berman (D-CA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, did in a statement released last night.  Here is the text, in its entirety:

Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week.  No government in the world would sit by and allow its citizens to be subjected to this kind of indiscriminate bombardment.  The loss of innocent life is a terrible tragedy, and the blame for that tragedy lies with Hamas.

The statement issued by Condoleezza Rice held Hamas responsible for the renewal of violence, but simply urged that the ceasefire “be restored immediately.”  No other government in the world would be satisfied with simply another ceasefire.

Shmuel, it is an important observation that the Saudi/Arab plan is a set of principles rather than a plan.  But it also needs to be noted that it is not a very good set of principles:

Move back to the Auschwitz borders, give up the Old City, and recognize the right of return:  after that, we’ll recognize you.

The difference between a “plan” and a “principle” is that one is presumably negotiable and the other presumably is not.  The Saudis/Arabs have yet to indicate that their principles are negotiable, and their “plan” contradicts the principles to which the U.S. committed itself in the April 14, 2004 letter to Israel:  no return to those borders, and no right of return to Israel.

Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former State Department director of policy planning, writes in “We Must Talk Iran Out of the Bomb” that Iran’s nuclear program “may well constitute the Obama administration’s first foreign policy crisis.”

The reason is simple.  Iran is well down the path to being able to enrich uranium on a large enough scale to produce a nuclear weapon.  The International Atomic Energy Agency just reported that Iran may well reach this point in 2009.

An Iran with a nuclear weapon or the ability to produce one or more bombs in short order poses a true danger.  Still, one path for the new American administration would be to adopt the “North Korea option” and live with the threat. The risk is that doing so would make an already unstable Middle East even more so.

Haass explains that a second option — an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations – also involves “serious risks and costs”:  (1) the nuclear capability might survive or be rebuilt, (2) there could be retaliation in Iraq and Afghanistan, (3) Iran might “unleash” terrorist attacks “throughout the region and the world,” (4) the flow of oil could be interrupted, and (5) the price of oil could go to $200 per barrel.

Haass recommends a diplomatic course — persuading Iran to “freeze or suspend its nuclear efforts or, better yet, give up an independent capability to enrich uranium.”  He would allow Iran a “small” enrichment program subject to “highly intrusive inspections,” with a three-part diplomatic package:  access to nuclear energy (but not nuclear materials), eased economic sanctions, and normal relations with “security assurances.”  If Iran refuses, he would threaten additional sanctions that would finclude Russia and China.

Henry Kissinger once said every memo he received at the State Department had three options:  (1) nuclear war, (2) unilateral disarmament, and (3) a third option, favored by the author of the memo.  The options in Haass’s article fit that template:  (a) accepting a nuclear Iran, (b) bombing its nuclear facilities, or (c) the Haass diplomatic option.

His diplomatic package is highly likely to fail, since it (a) has already effectively been rejected by Iran, (b) relies on sanctions that are rarely effective or enforceable, (c) requires Russian and Chinese support, necessitating separate negotiations with (and significant foreign policy concessions to) each of them, and (d) gives Iran exactly what it wants — more time in 2009 to complete its nuclear program while “negotiations” proceed.

Barack Obama has repeatedly said a nuclear Iran is “unacceptable.”  But that does not leave, as the only remaining option, bombing Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.  There are other military options, including easier ones that Iran would fear more.  They are discussed extensively in “The Last Resort:  Consequences of Preventive Military Action Against Iran.”

It would be useful for Iran to read an active discussion by American foreign policy experts of the various military options, since diplomacy not backed by a credible threat of force cannot succeed.  One of the surest roads to failure is to signal Iran, through an article by the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, that U.S. experts have weighed the risks of force and selected the usual State Department option:  toothless talk.

In Walter Russell Mead’s article in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs (ably analyzed by Shmuel Rosner), there is a paragraph that inadvertently captures the problem in the current Middle East peace process. Mead writes that it may be difficult for outsiders to understand the Palestinians’ “yearning for the villages and landscapes lost during the birth of Israel in 1948,” but that American policymakers should recognize that the unconditional right to return is the “central demand” of the Palestinian movement:

The Palestinians’ national identity took shape in the course of their struggle with Zionism, and the mass displacement of Palestinians resulting from Israel’s War of Independence, or the nakba (”catastrophe” in Arabic), was the fiery crucible out of which the modern Palestinian consciousness emerged. The dispossessed Palestinians, especially refugees living in camps, are seen as the bearers of the most authentic form of Palestinian identity. The unconditional right of Palestinians to return to the land and homes lost in the nakba is the nation’s central demand.

There are three important points in that paragraph, although they are not likely the ones Mead intended.

First, the observation that the Palestinians’ “national identity” is something that “took shape in the course of their struggle with Zionism” is an implicit recognition that a national identity was not there before.  The Palestinian “national identity” is neither pre-existing nor positive, but rather one defined by its opposition to something.  That something is Israel.

Second, the assertion that the “displacement of Palestinians” was something “resulting from Israel’s War of Independence” starts the story in the middle.  Israel’s War of Independence was itself the result of something before that:  the Arab rejection of UN Resolution 181, which would have created a Palestinian state, and a sliver of a Jewish state.  The root cause of the displacement was the war the Arabs brought against the Jewish state.

Third, the statement that the refugees in camps are viewed as “the most authentic form of Palestinian identity,” and that the Palestinians’ “central demand” is the unconditional right of return demonstrates the “peace process” is a contradiction in terms.  The Palestinians cannot give up the “right of return” without giving up their “national identity”; but as long as they cling to an anti-Israel identity and a “right of return,” they cannot achieve a state.

The Obama administration has been urged to make the peace process a priority, with an American plan and a high-powered Middle East envoy.  But the problem with the peace process has never been the absence of plans or the authority of envoys.  The fundamental problem is a Palestinian identity fashioned from an anti-Israel narrative, with a central demand inconsistent with a Jewish state.

Before rushing in where Clinton and Bush failed, the Obama team should start “Rethinking the Two-State Solution.”

The New York Times ran a long obituary Saturday for Conor Cruise O’Brien, who died Thursday at the age of 91, recognizing him as a distinguished Irish diplomat, politician, educator, historian, man of letters and public intellectual and noting that he wrote many books, mentioning nine of them by name.

But the Times, as Marty Peretz has observed, managed to omit any reference to what was perhaps O’Brien’s finest book:  “The Siege:  The Saga of Israel and Zionism” – published in 1986 and still, 22 years later, one of the finest books ever written about Israel.

How did such a book come to be written by an Irish author?  In the Prologue to the book, O’Brien recounted that he had represented Ireland at the UN for five years during the mid-1950s, and found himself – since the delegates were seated alphabetically – between the delegate of Iraq on his left and the delegate of Israel on his right.  For five years, he sat through the annual debate on “The Palestine Refugees” – a “bitter, sterile and static debate, taken up in the main by heated attacks on Israel by every Arab delegation.”

My own contribution to the debate . . . was emollient and “balanced”; something in it for both sides, but not much.  As I came out of the debating chamber after my first intervention on this item, I met a friend, an American newspaperwoman.  She asked me how my speech had gone over.  I told her I had been thanked by both my neighbors, the delegates of Iraq and Israel.

“Christ!” she said.  “Was it as bad as that?”

Over time, he struck up a friendship with both his adjoining delegates.  He recounted this vignette of a moment during a particularly bad speech by Adlai Stevenson, denying any American involvement in the Bay of Pigs:

While this performance dragged on, Gideon Rafael [of Israel], in the chair beside me on my right, was doodling on his pad, his face impassive.  The Caribbean is not a region of the highest priority for Israel.  When the time came, Gideon would cast his vote with the United States, keeping his personal opinion about the Bay of Pigs to himself.

Adlai’s peroration was even more embarrassing than the rest of his speech.  “I have told you,” he said, “of Castro’s crimes against man.  But there is even worse:  the record of Castro’s crimes against God.”

Several delegates looked faintly sick.

“Fidel Castro has” – Adlai here turned his page and peered at the new one – “Castro has . . . circumcised the freedoms of the Catholics of Cuba . . .”

Gideon looked up sharply and turned to me.  “I always knew,” he said, “that we should be blamed for this, sooner or later.”

His relationship with the Iraqi delegate resulted in many conversations during 1956 and 1957, at a time when there were some pro-Western circles in the Iraqi government.  But after the Iraqi revolution of July 14, 1958, his Iraqi friend did not return to the General Assembly:

Rather naively, no doubt, in the circumstances, I asked my new neighbor, the head of the new Iraqi delegation on the committee, whether he had any news of his predecessor.  Without moving a muscle, and with his gaze firmly directed into space, my new neighbor pronounced the single word:  “Hanged!”

It was the only word he ever addressed to me, if it was addressed to me.

After he left the UN in 1961, O’Brien did not pay much attention to the Middle East, but in 1981, after he retired as editor in chief of The Observer, he decided to go to the region “and have a look for myself and form my own opinions, without undue deference to the opinions of specialists, or any deference at all to collegiate opinions.”

The following year, he decided write a short “current affairs” book about the area, but as he studied and read, the book evolved in ways he did not foresee.  He put together a masterpiece of meticulous research and beautiful writing that is much more than a popular history.  In his Prologue, he wrote that:

The story I tell is a true story, told with due respect to chronology – master of all things – without invention, or propagandist intent, or added color:  there is color enough there, in the material, without need of addition.

The first sentence in the first chapter of his book was “Does Israel have a right to exist?” and the last sentence, 661 pages later, noted that while there was a momentary abatement in violence in view, “What is not in sight is an end to the siege.”  Twenty-two years later, the siege continues, and the book he wrote is still relevant and revelatory.

George W. Bush has been a much more voracious reader during his presidency than generally recognized, reportedly reading more than 60 books in 2006, including multiple volumes on Abraham Lincoln.  In his fascinating conversation yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute, Bush told the group he had been reading a lot about Lincoln recently, and had just finished James McPherson’s book on him.  That led to a humorous colloquy with AEI President Chris DeMuth: 

MR. DeMUTH: Another book that you famously read was Eliot Cohen’s “Supreme Command.” And he later went to work for you.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, he did.

MR. DeMUTH: Do you think he got it right in that book?

THE PRESIDENT: I can’t even remember the book. (Laughter.) I remember reading it, but give me a synopsis. (Laughter.)

MR. DeMUTH: That–

THE PRESIDENT: You can’t remember it either. (Laughter.)

MR. DeMUTH: No. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Just teasing. Did he work for you at AEI? Is that why you’re–

MR. DeMUTH: He was on our Council of Academic Advisers.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, okay. I did read it.

That was followed by DeMuth’s one-sentence summary of the book and a response by Bush that future presidents may find illuminating:

MR. DeMUTH: The essential point is that in history, in wartime, Presidents do well not leaving the war to the military, but being the supreme commander themselves.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, that’s right, yes. Well, you’re going to have to rely upon the military a lot. There’s four basic constituencies for a President during war; one is the American people. And this has been a difficult assignment, to convince the people that what happens in Iraq matters to our own security at home, that what happens in Afghanistan matters to the security, and that–the first task was to remove the regimes that threatened peace and threatened our security. And the next task is to not replace one strongman with another, but encourage a democracy to grow because we’re in an ideological struggle. And it’s the ideology of liberty that defeats the ideology of hate every time.

A second constituency was the enemy. And they got to know we’re going to go after them all times, all places–unrelenting pressure on them.

Third, in the case of Iraq, with the Iraqi people, they wanted to know whether or not America was going to keep its word, because if not, they’re going to find a local militia that could keep their families safe.

And the fourth is the military. And the military must know that the mission is just, the goals are clear, and the President will not be making decisions with their lives based upon an opinion poll.

Barack Obama, even before he has been inaugurated, has been compared to Abraham Lincoln.  Few people these days compare George W. Bush to Lincoln, but history may record at least one similarity:  both of them had war presidencies, learned that a war could not necessarily be won simply by relying on the generals in place, and realized that a driving idea – not just saving the union but spreading freedom throughout it; not just removing a dictator but establishing a representative government – was necessary in order to prevail.

In any event, future presidents would be well-served to remember the four constituencies in any war:  the enemy, the American people, the people in foreign countries, and the military itself.

Monday night, in his comments at the annual Menorah lighting at the White House, President Bush began by noting he had “had a pretty eventful weekend.”  He was not referring to the shoe thrown at him, but something larger:

So I slipped out Saturday night to Andrews Air Force Base, boarded Air Force One, and landed in Baghdad, Iraq, on Sunday afternoon.  It was an unbelievable experience, it really was, to stand next to the President of a democracy and hold my hand over my heart as they played the national anthem in front of one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.

In a roundtable with the Associated Press yesterday, Condoleezza Rice was asked about “this, you know, sort of signature moment of a guy throwing a shoe and saying, you know, this is your goodbye present.”  The AP reporter wanted to know “why should Americans think that we have done a lasting and valuable thing in Iraq?  And I know you’re going to say the removal of a tyrant, but beyond – beyond the change of” – at which point Rice interrupted him with this answer:

SECRETARY RICE:  The removal of a tyrant is a pretty big thing.  Look, so a reporter threw a shoe, which, by the way, is a kind of sign of the freedom that people feel in Iraq, but somehow what was missed was the extraordinary moment for the President of the United States to go to Iraq, of all places, and to be received by a democratically elected Prime Minister, a democratically elected Presidency Council, with full honors at the Presidential Palace with the Iraqi band playing the national anthem of the United States of America.  I think that is far more salient than one guy who decided to throw a shoe.

And I have to say that the weight of the story is about the President being able, after all of the difficulties and the ups and downs, to go to Iraq and to receive that kind of honor with an Iraqi Government that is preparing for provincial elections at the end of January, that an Iraq that is no longer ruled by a bloody tyrant who put 300,000 people in mass graves, who used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and against his neighbors, who literally tried to absorb the state of Kuwait – for me, one of the extraordinary moments was to drive into Kuwait the last time and see the Iraqi flag flying voluntarily in Kuwait, an Iraq that will no longer be a threat to its neighbors, that has its best relations with Turkey ever, that is being integrated into the Arab community of states again, but this time as a Shia-majority, democratic government that is an avowed friend of the United States.  That’s what that story is about.  And frankly, I think it’s peculiar that any of you decided to focus on the shoe.

On September 11, 2007, at a time when most of the country and its elite simply wanted to withdraw from Iraq, Norman Podhoretz published World War IV:  The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, his sustained defense of the Bush Doctrine – the combination of (a) pre-emptive military action to preclude anti-American fascist states from amassing weapons of mass destruction, and (b) a forward strategy of freedom to compete with anti-American fascist ideology.  The first part of that strategy had led to an amazingly successful three-week campaign to remove Saddam Hussein, followed by the much more difficult task of bringing representative government to Iraq.

Podhoretz noted that opponents of the Bush Doctrine had sought to dismiss Iraq as merely a “civil war,” while they acknowledged (somewhat inconsistently) that it had attracted al Qaeda, who had not been there before.  But the involvement of al Qaeda — and Iran and Syria — demonstrated the Iraq conflict was no more a meaningless “civil war,” without wider consequences, than the Spanish Civil War in 1936 was simply a “civil war” unrelated to the future of fascism.  Podhoretz wrote of his amazement regarding charges that the Bush Doctrine had failed:

After all, Iraq had been liberated from one of the worst tyrants in the Middle East; three elections had been held; a decent constitution had been written; a government was in place; and previous unimaginable liberties were being enjoyed.  By what bizarre calculation did all this add up to failure?  And by whatever stranger logic was failure to be read into the fact that the forces opposed to democratization were fighting back with all their might?

In the book, Podhoretz expressed his belief that the hindsight of history would recognize George W. Bush had developed a strategic doctrine to meet a worldwide challenge, articulated it in a series of historic speeches (particularly the September 20, 2001 Address to Congress and the Second Inaugural Address), and remained remarkably steadfast in Iraq in the face of not only relentless criticism but extraordinary personal ridicule and demonization.

If history remembers the shoe, it will remember it was thrown by a reporter who was allowed in the room to ask harsh questions of the Iraqi prime minister and the American president, without fear for his life, and who – if he is tried for his assault on the president – will have a lawyer at his side and a public unafraid to speak out in his behalf.  History will record the shoe as evidence that as he left office at the end of 2008, the president who did not flinch was vilified by many, but had in fact achieved a pretty big thing.

It is obvious now that the Gaza disengagement was a strategic disaster for Israel, but at the time Ariel Sharon considered it a diplomatic triumph, since he obtained a formal American commitment regarding the post-disengagement era in a presidential letter dated April 14, 2004.

One of the explicit promises in that letter was that:

The United States will lead efforts, working together with Jordan, Egypt, and others in the international community, to build the capacity and will of Palestinian institutions to fight terrorism, dismantle terrorist organizations, and prevent the areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means.  [Emphasis added].

In early 2005, in anticipation of the Gaza disengagement, the U.S. appointed a Middle East Security Coordinator (first Lt. Gen. William Ward, then Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton), who went with his team to the region.  Gaza became a severe security problem from the very first week following Israel’s disengagement, and in June 2007 Hamas took over Gaza in fighting that lasted less than a week.

In an interview published Friday, Gen. Dayton had the following exchange with Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz about the failure to prevent the Hamas takeover:

You had no responsibility for overseeing the training of anybody in Gaza before and at the time of the June 2007 violence?

We had no responsibility for training anyone in Gaza.  We didn’t provide them any weapons or any ammunition, or any of that sort of thing.  There was a small program we had an interest in.  It dealt with the Presidential Guard at the border crossing at Rafah.  That was it.  I didn’t have any money - you can check back - to do anything, even if we had been asked to do it.  But we were not asked to do it.

Not asked to do it?

Laura Bialis, an American documentary filmmaker currently living in Sderot to film a community under existential stress, posts on the completion of her first year there:

This week marks one year since I moved to Sderot, a small town on the edge of Israel’s Negev desert, one mile away from the Gaza strip.  I came here to find out what it means to live in a never-ending war, and to document the lives and music of musicians under fire.

Sderot is known for being a poor southern development town, for being hit by qassam rockets from Gaza for eight-years with no end in sight, and for being the “Liverpool” of Israel, having bred some of Israel’s most successful rock bands.

Among Israel’s elite and Tel Aviv society, Sderot is known as a “lousy” place… and on the surface it looks run down, unkempt, and unbeautiful.  I have noted the shocked expressions of most Israelis when they hear that I have moved from West Los Angeles to Sderot.  But in my year here, I have forged an unbreakable connection to this place.

Maybe I’m just a small town person who’s been stuck in a big city most of my life, or maybe the artist in me felt constrained dealing with the film industry in LA.  All I can report is that I have learned more in this, my 35^th year, than any other in my life. . . .

The remarkable post continues here.

One day, when the history of the resistance to the Islamic war of terror is written, a special chapter will be devoted to the citizens of Sderot, who lived day after day, year after year, through rockets fired indiscriminately at a civilian population, but who — like the citizens of London during the blitz — stood their ground, while the world yawned and cautioned their government about a “proportionate” response.

In an interview published yesterday, Barack Obama said his presidency is an opportunity to “reboot America’s image” around the world:

Barack Obama says his presidency is an opportunity for the U.S. to renovate its relations with the Muslim world, starting the day of his inauguration and continuing with a speech he plans to deliver in an Islamic capital.  [. . .]

“I think we’ve got a unique opportunity to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular,” Obama said Tuesday, promising an “unrelenting” desire to “create a relationship of mutual respect and partnership in countries and with peoples of good will who want their citizens and ours to prosper together.”

The “unique opportunity to reboot” reminds me of Jeffrey Goldberg’s prediction earlier this year — that despite a popular belief that Obama’s inauguration would change the image of America, the world will fairly quickly see him as surprisingly similar to his predecessor:

There is almost this childish belief that on January 20, 2009 we will elect another president and that it will be Obama, or at least a woman, and the world will say “Oh great!  Now we can like you again!”

There is this level of childish certainty in that — that I find unfathomable.  Because the next American president will have to advance America’s interests around the world.  Some of those interests will have to be advanced in hard ways.

I predict that if Barack Obama becomes president, by late 2009 the stories in newspapers in Europe and on TV across the Arab world will be “Oh my God, this Obama is like Bush Lite!”

Why?  Because he’s had to take hard steps in Afghanistan.  Because he’s had to take hard steps in Pakistan.  Because he hasn’t actually pulled out of Iraq, because pulling out of Iraq is not as easy as it sounds when you are debating Hillary Clinton on a stage somewhere. . . .

Because the next president — whoever it is — is going to face the same set of enormous problems, and like any president is going to have limited maneuverability to deal with those problems.  And those problems are not going to go away.  The Islamic Jihad is not going to say “Well!  They elec