The Real Problem With Past US Middle-East Policy

George Bush, who has been in the Oval Office during some of the tensest and most trying times that any Commander-in-Chief has ever faced, is moving correctly in his ideas for a Democratic Arab World. His reasoning, however, is not quite correct.

He said that past US policy towards the Arab World was incorrect because we supported stability over freedom. This is true, without reservation. However, that was not the true crux of the choice. (Incidentally, US interests certainly call for external stability over the internal characteristics of external states.) The true choice that we were making was when we allowed these Arab 'governments' to sit at tables with first-world states, treating the Arab World as if it were on a par with the Western World. In other words, we formally extended to arab countries all the rights of mature, modern societies, even though we understood that the Arab countries and governments were NOT mature, adult, reasonable such entities.

We treated the arab countries as adults when we all understood that they were more like children. This was the mistake in US middle-east policy over the past 50-odd years. We never held them accountable to the contracts they signed, as adults would be so held. We never held them to any of the standards that we hold adult, western societies to. We never expected them to really be able to do anything, and yet we let them claim that they could do everything. No one in the West wanted to be 'nasty' and call the Arabs what they are, an anachronism with deadly weapons and their butts on top of the world's most important region.

We tried to respect them, when they kept demonstrating their contempt for our respect. Somewhat like a voodoo practitioner looking down on a moral-relativist who claims that voodoo is as legitimate a belief system as the belief in the correctness and applicability of Quantum Theory. Clearly silly.

But George Bush, even with this minor fault in his reasoning, is heading in the correct direction: Bring an adult governmental system to them so that, not only are we formally treating them as adults, but they will become (internally) adults through the freedoms of the west granted to them. One more gift.

This is a noble gesture, giving the arabs one more chance to mature, but it must be tempered with reality, for the event of the maturation not occurring, but instead, the further empowerment of immature societies. There must be adult consequences delivered along with the gift of adult freedoms.

Bush has been doing very, very well. The breadth and depth of actions he has taken on all sorts of fronts has been quite astounding. History books will record George Bush as an amazingly impactful President. Quite beyond Reagan.

But, we must all understand what the future holds. Children should not be given guns, and immature nations must be disarmed.

The current conflict between Israel and Lebanon is a perfect example. Lebanon wants to claim sovereignty, but refuses to be held to the responsibilities of sovereignty. Israel is going to allow this, once again, by not TAKING land from Lebanon as the price of their aggression - and the West is going to support this. This is where the standards need to be evened out, and children, if they are going to be given adult titles, MUST BE DISARMED. Period.