Politics

As negotiations between Syria and Israel continue informally, many question the motivations of the Israeli state, and wonder if this is truly an effort at reconciliation, or a sinister prelude to a long awaited war.

Ibrahim Daraji

It seems that the Syrian-Israeli front is indeed witnessing a struggle, between war and peace. All options are on the table, ranging from Israeli maneuvers on the Syrian border, to a chorus of daily declarations by Israeli officials, expressing a desire for peace with Syria. Contradictions are so high that one wonders; are the military maneuvers a cover-up for an Israeli desire for peace, or are the indirect peace talks, taking place in Turkey, a mask for Israel as it prepares for another war with Syria?

If we were to debate the probability of war, we can find several indicators backing this argument, among which is an Israeli desire to reverse its repeated defeats in Lebanon, the last of which was in 2006. The comeback of Ehud Barak, after years of isolation, and his return to the Ministry of Defense, all fall within this category. The Israeli military establishment feels humiliated, and is searching for battlegrounds to restore its injured pride, and wasted reputation. There is also a political crisis in Israel, which led to the resignation of Ehud Olmert and his replacement as prime minister and at the head of Kadima by Tzipi Levni. All of that increases the probability of war with Syria, along with an ever-present desire within Israel to “punish” Syria for its support for resistance groups in Palestine and Lebanon. Israel failed to eliminate these groups directly and in addition to their military success, they have achieved victory within their own constituencies through the ballots, adding to Israeli frustration. This gives more reason to “punish” Syria, where certain Israelis believe that this would automatically weaken these groups, enabling Tel Aviv to strike at them again and eliminate them once and for all.

Many believe that the United States supports this option and encourages Israel to go to war against Syria, also to “punish” Damascus for what it sees as Syria’s “negative role” in Iraq. Some Israeli analysts go further, claiming that certain Arab and European parties are also urging the Israelis to go to war against Syria.

Danish Ambassador Ole Egberg Mikkelsen has been in Damascus for three years as his country’s representative. It’s been a period of ups and downs, particularly with the controversy that erupted when a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. A few months later, almost 6000 Danish nationals were evacuated from Lebanon during the war in July-August of 2006 via Damascus in one of the biggest evacuations that Denmark has ever undertaken. FW: had the chance to speak to Mikkelsen about his role in handling these crises, and how the relationship between Syria and Denmark has changed over the past few years.

Tomader Fateh

You arrived Syria in the fall of 2005 and you were here during the cartoon crisis. Protests erupted outside the embassy and the building was attacked. What were your feelings on landing in so hot a situation so soon after you arrived?
The crisis itself was, of course, a crash course in crisis management for my staff and I. Fortunately, we received a lot of both moral and practical support from our Syrian friends. Many called me to express their outrage about what had happened. Everybody seemed to realize that what you need in a crisis is diplomacy and dialogue – not violence and destruction.

Recently, I attended one of the most interesting and thought-provoking panel discussions since my arrival to the United States.
The George Washington University’s School of International Affairs invited me to attend a conversation with five former Secretaries of State, discussing the next President of the United States and the world challenges he will face.

It was fascinating to sit with Henry Kissinger who served under Presidents Nixon, and Ford; James Baker who served under the first President George Bush; Warren Christopher who served under President Bill Clinton; Madeleine Albright  who also served under President Clinton; and Colin Powel who served under the second President Bush, and listen to their collective wisdom discussing world politics, providing advice to the next President, and forecasting what world we will likely live in during the next decade. 

For a long time, Syrian-Spanish relations were based on mutual respect and good will. Nevertheless, bilateral relations went through an important development after President Bashar al-Assad’s first visit to Spain. Less than three years later, King Carlos and Queen Sophia visited Syria in November 2003.
Those two visits began a series of other important meetings between the two sides, covering a broad spectrum of issues.

On July 14, 1957, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru landed in Damascus for a brief visit while heading to the United States. A dinner was held in his honor at the Presidential Palace, and the following morning, Pandit Nehru handpicked a red Damascene rose to place on his jacket, saying that it made him feel bright and optimistic. During this brief visit, a main street in the heart of the capital (where the Umayyad Square is currently located) was named in his honor, to “immortalize Syrian-Indian relations.” In 2003, Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee visited Damascus, injecting the relationship with new life. That was taken a step further in June 2008, when President Bashar al-Assad visited India with First Lady Asma al-Assad, meeting with his Indian counterpart Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and senior members of the Indian government. FW: Magazine spoke with Gautam Mukhopadhaya, the Indian Ambassador to Syria, to talk about the visit, how it enhances bilateral relations, and the future of India, Syria, and the Middle East.

Prior to his last visit to New Delhi, President Bashar al-Assad gave a lengthy interview to The Hindu, India’s leading English daily. The newspaper described him as “the youngest head of state in West Asia and also, one of the most influential.” The Syrian President talked about a variety of issues related to Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, relations with the United States, and Syrian domestic politics. The print version that appeared in The Hindu was significantly shorter than the full text. In collaboration with Siddharth Varadarajan, the Associate Editor of The Hindu, FW: brings readers the full transcript of the presidential interview, conducted in Damascus in June 2008.

Jimmy Carter stated recently that 85% of the issues linked to the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights have been sorted out. What is left is the question of the last 15%? Is that an accurate assessment?
Actually, we achieved 80% of what we have to achieve before signing the treaty but of course we do not have precise criteria; this is our estimation. But that is true; we achieved a lot during Rabin, but because of his assassination everything stopped. That’s why we have been asking for starting from where we stopped during Rabin, where we talked about the security arrangements, which was the most difficult issue. Of course, we had Rabin deposit which means giving back the Golan Heights till the line of 4th June 1967, and we were about to talk about other issues like normal relations such as having embassies and things like this, and we did not talk about water; this is what has been left. That is true.
So, do you think that the US is trying to create an atmosphere of suspicion against Syria?
Yes, because this is the image of this administration; everybody in the world still remembers what happened in Iraq when they had all that evidence, but then it was proved that everything was fabricated; even Colin Powel confessed in an interview that he was not truthful, and we all know the same, and most of the countries know about the problem
between Syria and the US, and they always try to find traps for Syria. This is reality.
Your Excellency, turning to Lebanon, the Doha Accord has been seen as a major victory not just for the different Lebanese political players but also for Syria’s policy.
Do you think the Doha Accord and the new coalition agreement will mark the opening of
a new chapter in Syrian-Lebanese relations?
Definitely, yes from different aspects.
The first aspect as you mentioned, it is a victory for the Lebanese. This is so because Syria protected itself; when you have chaos, conflict, civil war and whatsoever in Lebanon we will be affected directly, this is the first victory. The second victory is that many Lebanese and many officials around the world used to accuse Syria of creating problems in Lebanon, and that we have an interest in creating these problems and having conflicts in Lebanon, but the Doha Accord which was supported directly by Syria was a stark proof that
Syria is working in the other direction, not like what they used to mention; this was very important for Syria. And even the proposals we used to propose few months ago before solving the problem were the same proposals the Doha Accord depended on. So, we were proved to have the vision for a safe Lebanon.
Do you think if things move fast, you will make a visit to Beirut?
Yes, and about the other aspect as I mentioned because we proved that, we can see now that many Lebanese noted that Syria is working for the sake of Lebanon; the interests of Syria and Lebanon are common. So, the relations should move in the right direction to be better in the future. But the visit of the president, this is related to the formation of the national unity government in Lebanon first. Second, this is related to the discussion between me and the Lebanese president; we have not had any discussion about my visit. But, when I spoke to him after the Doha Accord, I told him that we are ready to help Lebanon and help him personally in his mission. He said we want the help of the Syrians in the future and we said we are ready; we are still waiting.
And will this lead to opening an embassy in Beirut?
Yes, and we mentioned this three years ago and we said that we do not have any problem. But, the problem is that if you have bad relations with any country, you usually withdraw your ambassador and close the embassy. So, how do you open an embassy with a country or
government with whom you have bad relations not good ones? Now, when they have this national unity government, it is going to be normal for Syria to open an embassy in Lebanon.
I have been struck by the paradox in Syria’s policy where internally Syrian society is very strongly secular and you oppose sectarian politics and you do not allow that kind of politics in your country, but most of your best friends in the region all come from
sectarian backgrounds like Hamas, Hizbollah and even the Iranians.
Is this a problem for Syria?
Actually in politics, you have to be pragmatic; the first question that you have to ask is who is effective in our region, you do not ask who is like you or who is not. Hamas is effective and important in Palestine. Hizbollah is a very important party in Lebanon, and Iran is a very important country in the region.
Without those players, you cannot have stability, you cannot have any solution and you cannot reach anything you are looking for. So, whether you like it or not, or whether you agree with or disagree, you have to deal with them. You do not say like this administration ‘black and white’, ‘evil and good’ and things like this; this does not work like this in politics. If you want to solve problems, you have to deal with the players.
The Iranians were not very happy when Syria took part in the Annapolis Conference and I would imagine they are not happy with the indirect talks with Israel.

Have you had any feedback from Tehran?
We were not very happy with Annapolis Conference too! This is because we knew that this is not a serious administration; we knew in advance from subsequent events that they are not serious towards the peace and they announced that many times. They said we are not interested in the Syrian track recently even after Annapolis. So, we knew that these events were window dressing just to tell the American people that we are working for peace. For us, it was important to bring up the issue of the Golan again on the international podium because most of the world was in Annapolis. That’s why we had to go in order to put the Golan on the table, but at the same time we were not happy. And now after 6 or 7 months nothing happened on any track.
Again, this is a Syrian issue and Iran does not interfere in Syrian issues; they support the Syrian cause whether we are happy or they are happy, and that’s why the relations between Syria and Iran are very strong. And in the 1980s most of the world was supporting Saddam Hussein, including the US, against Iran and we were one of very few countries in the world to say that Iran was right at You are right, this is about the government not about the opposition.
So you think if India were to involve itself in the peace process issue, this could bring about a balance? Yes, because it has two aspects: the first aspect if you are interested, you can play a direct role between the two sides, Syria and Israel, and the Palestinians
and Israel. That will make the region more stable, and that will affect India itself in the long run and the world at large, especially Asia. Second, it’s about the role that you can play through your weight or your position as India, a big country, in making dialogue with other powers of the world, that is the United States then Europe, your region. How
can you help the Middle East become more stable; because you are going to be more careful. We have an emerging economy, a budding economy which is still weak. It is not strong enough and confident enough to be liberalized fully.
What is the impact of the Syria Accountability Act, the sanctions against Syria? Has it hurt you in anyway?
No, because we don’t have real bilateral relations with the United States anyway.
Most of our relations used to be with Europe and now with Asia. A few years ago we took a strategic direction to move towards Asia and even South America, which is south - south, but not with the United States. We have a few hundred thousand dollars in terms of trade
balance. The effect is more political than economic.

Turning to the US presidential elections, how do you think the outcome would affect the prospects of peace in Iraq and the withdrawal of American occupation forces there?
Usually in Syria we don’t bet on who is going to be the President of the United States, especially in a campaign. You don’t listen to what they say during the campaign. We usually bet on the policies not speeches, but of course the common thing among those candidates is about the failure of the previous government or administration. This is very important.
As long as they see the failure, they are not going to adopt the same doctrine or policy. This is very important for us. Now, how to find a solution? You cannot find a solution in the US. You have to make it in the region. If you want to make it in the region, you have to find out who are the main players: first of all, the Iraqis, and second the rest of the
countries surrounding Iraq. They can help. You have to make discussions, to make dialogue. The problem with this administration is that they do not have dialogue even with their allies, in Europe or in the region, including the British first of all, who supported them in their war.
So, what we heard from the Democrats, Obama and Hilary Clinton, was positive regarding the Iraqi issue, that you have to make dialogue, to have a political process in order to have withdrawal at the end. What we heard from McCain, that he is going to stay for a hundred
years in Iraq: I don’t think that’s what you may hear from a politician usually, any politician, that he wants to stay one hundred years. But anyway, we have to wait until somebody is in the office.
Were you surprised by the statements that Mr Barack Obama made at the AIPAC meeting the other day?
No. Again, this is a campaign. If you are in a campaign, you usually talk to your audience. So, AIPAC supports Israel, so it is normal for any candidate in the US to use this language in front of them. So, I wasn’t surprised.
Recently there was [Deputy Prime Minister] Mofaz in Israel raising the issue of the need to take military action against Iran. Is it something that you are afraid of, or do you think that is not a possibility.
This is the biggest mistake anyone could make in Iran, whether Israel or the US.
I think that the repercussions of this mistake are going to be huge and maybe for decades. On the other hand, they get angry when Ahmadinejad says that Israel is going to disappear. So, why do they have the right to say they are going to attack Iran? And make Iran ‘disappear’
Disappear or not, they are using the same language. Iran said many times that this is a peaceful nuclear [programme], and as long as they follow international law, why be against them? They said it is peaceful and mentioned many times that they are going to cooperate with the IAEA, but the problem with some Europeans and with the American administration is that they don’t want them to have what they have right to have: the fuel. There is no
international law which says you cannot have [nuclear] fuel. This is the problem;
and it is a national issue in Iran. So, what Mofaz said will make the situation for Israel before the rest of the world and the region worse. That is how we see it.

Your Excellency, if we turn to domestic issues before we end, are you thinking, let’s say in four to five years, of widening the scope of domestic political activities?
I read a statement by you somewhere that there should be a greater role for the so-called patriotic opposition.

What is your vision of political developments inside Syria for the next five years?
When I said we’re going to have reform in Syria when I became president, this means every aspect of reform. You may say the main axes are the political, economic and social – upgrading society in general. Usually you move faster in the most urgent axis and where you can achieve more, where it is faster to move forward. The most urgent in Syria is the
economic, because we have poverty; the second one is the political. When you talk about the opposition in the process of political reform, that depends on the laws. What laws are you going to have, and what circumstances you are living in today in order to have the good result that you are expecting from a good law, not like what happened in Algeria in
1988, when they had good laws, but they did not have good circumstances. So, they have been paying the price till today. Not like what happened in Lebanon. They have full democracy, but they have been moving from one civil war to another, from one conflict to another for more that 200 years. This is not our goal.
What happened during the last seven years: I became president in August 2000, two months later the Intifada started, the conflict in Palestine started and has not stopped. It is getting worse everyday. The problem in Lebanon started in 2004. You have 9/11 after one year and we have the war in Iraq, which is the worst, in 2003. All these circumstances
affected Syria directly.
Usually in such circumstances you have tension, you have more closed minded people, you have more extremism. For example, we started seeing those terrorist attacks in Syria in 2004. We hadn’t seen them since the early 1980s in Syria, especially al-Qaeda, who have the same roots as the Muslim Brothers who were in Syria in the 1980s. So, the whole society is affected. This means the whole political process is going to be affected. We used to think that many things would be implemented in 2005. We couldn’t so far.
And we have all this American pressure.
This doesn’t mean that we stop. Now we had the first private satellite TV station last year, the first political magazine three years ago, and now we have many private magazines in different fields. We have more freedom in Syria than before.
We are moving slowly and cautiously. We have to be very frank and very clear about this. We don’t move fast, and we cannot move fast.
The next step is going to be the expansion of the participation of different currents in Syria by having an upper house of parliament, and we are discussing what kind of house will have more participation. Second, the local administration law: how to have freer and more dynamic elections around Syria. Third, and that is what we discussed in 2005 and we
didn’t discuss before, a new modern party law. This is the most important aspect of the political reform. Actually, we were supposed to do that in 2006, but the problem is that most difficulties started in 2005, after the assassination of Hariri and the embargo imposed by most countries in the region, in Europe and in the US on Syria. This is why we said we have different priorities. Now we started talking again about it. It is not going to be implemented in 2008 because we expect this year to be dangerous. We are going to wait and see what will happen with this administration, then we can discuss it. We are moving forward; and we are not talking about patriotic or not patriotic opposition. Many people want to participate, whether they are opposition or otherwise. I am talking about reform in general. We said that we have opposition but it is not legal because we don’t have these laws, but it exists in Syria wherever you go, you can sit with them, you can criticize the government and the state in general, the officials. So, we are dealing positively with opposition, but it doesn’t exist as a legal entity yet, because we need these laws for the opposition to be legitimate by law, but it is there and we deal with
it as reality.

You mentioned Algeria. Is one of your fears that too fast an opening politically may lead to the emergence of Islamist or sectarian parties?
Sectarian, yes. You come from India. You have the same mosaic, but you have a successful democracy. For different reasons, it was not a successful democracy in Algeria. Maybe because you have different pillars of society. In our society, we have the Islamic pillar
and the pan-Arabism pillar. We have many different currents, but none of them will lead: only these two will lead.
If you don’t have good relations between the pan-Arabism and the Islamic, you will have problems. And that’s what happened maybe in the early 1960s. We had this division between the Islamic and the pan-Arabist. They looked at it as very secular; and in the past they used to think that secular meant atheist – against God, and this one supports God. So, they had conflict with each other.
That is why it wasn’t easy for us to have real democracy. This is one of the reasons of course. Now you need to have good relations in order to have democracy.
This is one of the main issues, but many in the west don’t understand the relationship between the Islamic and the pan-Arab pillars.
Within Syria, the role of Islamic social charity organizations like the Qubaysis and so on is increasing. Could these eventually emerge as political trends?
Are you looking at that as a possibility?
No, no sectarian current is allowed to be politicized. This is for the security of our
region and our country. We cannot allow that.
And that law will never change?
No, they have the right to practice any kind of activity related to Islamic teachings but not in politics. Politics in Syria has its rules and laws.
On that note, thank you very much.
Thank you very much for coming to Syria.

“Let us head east” has been a popular phrase within political circles in Damascus since 2005. Is it just a catchy media slogan, aimed at provoking Europe and the United States, or is it a strategic shift in the political pendulum of Syria’s foreign policy?

The United States, with the support of French President Jacques Chirac, tried to enforce a political isolation of Damascus after the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister

With the presidential battle heating up in the US, analysts begin to wonder what model the future president will follow. Can we expect a headstrong military driven conqueror, a dialogue pushing peacenik, or something in between?

Just last December it seemed highly unlikely that an African-American with a Muslim father and the middle name Hussein could make a decent showing in the race for the US Democratic nomination for president. Yet in January, Obama won the Iowa caucuses, eclipsing veteran Hillary Clinton. Five months later, with his win in Oregon, Obama has won a majority of “pledged” or elected delegates and is in a strong position to win the nomination. 
If Obama does win the nomination, he will compete against Republican John McCain, a Vietnam War veteran and former prisoner of war. What are the ideas, attitudes, and tendencies of the two men? And what difference could they make for Syria?
The short answer is that McCain is a cautious “Idealist;” and the Idealists are the ones who gave us the current Iraq War. McCain justifies the war, still beats the tired victory drum, and promises a long term occupation on some days—then predicts a withdrawal over four years (which will necessarily require him to broker a deal with Syria).
Obama is the most idealistic US political figure in a generation. Yet he has praised George H. W. Bush’s “Realist” approach to foreign policy. Still, as a Democrat, he is at pains to prove that he is tough on foreign enemies. Although he will attempt a quick withdrawal from Iraq over two years with help from Syria and Iran, look for him to ratchet up US military intervention in Afghanistan.
Rather than attempting to predict specific actions by a future president, it is more sensible to consider the underlying principles. In recent years, Americans have talked about foreign policy as a continuum between two poles: Realist and Idealist. The Realists are regarded as leaders like George H. W. Bush, the father of the current president. The elder Bush was close to the Saudis and saw no problem in supporting the dictators of the world in the interest of stability and prosperity. His leading adviser, Brent Scowcroft, is a leading proponent of the realist position. The prime tenant is to avoid military conflict while using the threat of military action to give teeth to diplomacy. Realists point to their success in the Cold War to show that even implacable enemies such as the Soviet Union can be managed and ultimately vanquished using a Realist approach.  
If Bush the father was a Realist, his son George W. Bush is thought of as an Idealist. The Idealists are those who favor military action as a tool for reshaping and improving the world. Their idea is to overthrow dictators in order to instill “democracy.” A democracy is a country that has elections that are internationally supervised and certified to be competitive, free, and fair.  
However, if the country in question is called Palestine and if the winner of the certified fair and free election is Hamas, the Idealists will still tag the elected government as “terrorist.” Therefore we need to add to the Idealist definition of democracy. In practice, Idealists regard as democracies those countries that support US interests in their region and hew to the American line when it comes to touchstone issues such as support for Israel. Critics will add that Idealist think of democracies as countries that also provide profit-making opportunities for major US corporations—especially those corporations that have or are likely to employee the Idealists when they are no longer in government. 
The Idealists are militarists—they believe in the efficacy of military action—yet, typically, they are not military generals. For that matter, few have ever even served in the military. In the current administration, the Idealist philosophy was most strongly promoted by men like Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld at Defense, and Vice-President Dick Cheney. The latter avoided service in the Vietnam war while his contemporaries were being drafted and sent to the jungles. Why? As Cheney famously remarked, “I had other priorities at the time.”  
One irony of the administration of Bush the son has been that the Idealists were opposed by Realists such as Colin Powell and Richard Armitage in the State Department—two men who had served in the military and who knew the costs of war first hand. So we had civilians acting as militarists and promoting the US invasion of Iraq while we had military men who were trying to avoid armed conflict.
One significant wrinkle: when Americans talk about Realists and Idealists, they are specifically talking about Republicans. Democrats don’t fit the bill easily. Why? Because their Republican opponents in US politics, at least since World War Two, have tagged Democrats as hopeless dreamers without the strength to vigorously oppose foreign enemies and without the backbone to engage in military conflict. This argument has proved potent in electing Republicans as president, although less effective in Congressional contests.
As a result, Democratic presidents tend to snarl the neat dichotomy between Realist and Idealist. In other words, they tend to pursue a Realist agenda while using military force—partly as a way of protecting themselves against charges of weakness. John F. Kennedy launched the ill-fated invasion of Cuba and initiated the Vietnam conflict by sending “advisors” to support South Vietnamese troops against the North. Lyndon Johnson, recalling Republican attacks that it was Democrat Harry Truman who “lost” China to the Communists, did not want to be tagged as the leader who lost Vietnam to the Chinese-supported Vietnamese Communists. So he escalated the conflict into a major land war based upon shaky Congressional approval of the Tonkin Gulf resolution in response to a murky and perhaps contrived provocation.
Another snarl for Democratic leaders is that they often are idealistic leaders who seek to inspire Americans and citizens of the world to act on behalf of the common good. Yet their “idealism” does not make them Idealists, because they look to diplomacy, alliances, international organizations (Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations and the United Nations) rather than military action to accomplish their goals. Democrats will say that they are using “soft power,” yet they are exposed to Republican charges that they are just plain soft.
Jimmy Carter announced that “morality” was going to be an important principle in his pursuit of foreign policy—a striking statement from the leader of a nation that is at the mercy of Saudi sheiks and their oil spigot; a nation that, in the past, overthrew democratically elected leaders in Chile and Iran while inspiring the first coup d’etat in modern Arab history to overturn the elected government in Syria in 1953. Jimmy Carter’s morality doctrine helped him broker a peace deal between Egypt and Israel. Yet it also left him exposed politically. In 1979, Iranian students took over the US embassy in Tehran. In response, Carter turned to the military and launched a rescue attempt. When US helicopters crashed and burned in the Iranian desert, Carter’s reelection hopes crashed and burned as well.
John McCain served in the military, so one would think that he would be a Realist such as Colin Powell or Richard Armitage rather than an Idealist like the civilians Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Cheney. Yet Matt Bai, writing in the New York Times Magazine, points out that McCain was a pilot who spent most of his Vietnam time in a prison in Hanoi. He came away from Vietnam with his belief in the efficacy of military power, gained in military college, more or less intact. Others, in the Marines and Army, served on the ground and spent time “in country.” Many came away with the understanding that there are some wars that simply can not be won militarily—no matter how many troops and how much military power is expended.
Barack Obama has not served in the military and, as a man of forty six, he was only eleven years old when the Vietnam war ended. Obama has no personal lessons from military conflict and he does have the experience of living in a Muslim country as a child. Of course, his father’s side of the family is from Kenya—another connection of Obama to the world outside US borders. Add these together and you would predict that Obama will be a talker, not a fighter.  
The wild card? As a well spoken Democrat who hopes to avoid Carter’s fate and lose reelection, one suspects that the first term Obama presidency might well be accompanied by military action. Think Jack Kennedy. What we don’t know is if Obama will be the Jack Kennedy who launched the utterly bizarre and completely hopeless invasion of Cuba by a proxy army of Cuban expats, or the Jack Kennedy who displayed his toughness by facing down Nikita Kruschev with a naval embargo in the Cuban missile crisis.

Scott C. Davis is the author of The Road from Damascus: A Journey Through Syria. He is also the founder of Cune Press. www.cunepress.net.
 

In the tradition of other presidential swan-songs, Bush visits the Middle East in order to leave more to his legacy than Katrina, failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the emergeance of a new recession. Why, then, is he almost deliberately stirring up more disquiet in the region?

Like Caesar, he came, he saw (well, made lightning stops in Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia), but did not conquer.
The agenda for President Bush’s May 2008 Middle East visit was unfinished business. No, he didn’t attempt to pull a Bill Clinton and try to broker a last minute peace agreement between Syria and Israel, or the Israelis and Palestinians. Nor did he engage in serious diplomacy, which might have meant meeting with the “evil” leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. He also avoided such unpleasant encounters during his January visit to the region. Bush eschews all things distasteful. He made one sacrifice to symbolize his sympathy for the U.S. troops in Iraq—giving up playing golf, but not video golf.
Bush did have one pressing priority: to declare, with full fanfare and lofty rhetoric, the United States’ unequivocal support for the state of Israel. What better place to do this than at Israel’s Knesset, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state. Palestinians driven away from their homes and livelihoods and still waiting for a home of their own call this day—May 15, 1948— “Al-Nakba.”
“America is proud to be Israel’s closest ally and best friend in the world,” Bush reiterated on May 15. He called it the “freest democracy in the Middle East,” without mentioning that Israel denies democratic rights to Palestinians living under occupation.
In a blunt message to Iran, Bush also reassured Israeli leaders that “America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world’s leading sponsor of terror to possess the world’s deadliest weapons would be an unforgivable betrayal for future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” Bush avoided—as he has repeatedly done—any reference to the facts, such as his own December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program.
In Bush’s seven plus years, the Middle East has become more unstable and violent and, in addition, faces a severe refugee crisis in Iraq, with 2.7 million internally displaced Iraqis and over 2.4 million refugees. Bush ignored these proofs of failed policy. He has not spread freedom and democracy to the Middle East. But facts do not interfere with the president’s intentions. He simply repeated his empty message before the Knesset: “We must stand with the reformers working to break the old patterns of tyranny and despair. We must give voice to millions of ordinary people who dream of a better life in a free society.” To realize this vision, Bush predicted that 60 years from now, “Al Qaeda and Hezbollah and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists’ vision and the injustice of their cause.”
By lumping al-Qaeda, a group recognized and condemned by most Muslims and non-Muslims alike as “terrorist,” with Hamas and Hezbollah, both legitimate political parties with grassroots and regional support, Bush highlighted his disconnect from the Middle East. Palestinians who democratically elected Hamas in January 2006 could only sneer at Bush’s “democracy and freedom.”
While he only praised Israel during his visit, he chided Arab leaders and named his usual suspects (Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah). After a two day visit in Saudi Arabia, Bush concluded his five-day Middle East tour at the World Economic Forum in Sharm el Sheikh. “Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail,” Bush lectured the audience on May 18, without specifically naming US ally and Summit host Egypt. In a more direct message to “enemies” Tehran and Damascus Bush added, “We must stand with the good and decent people of Iran and Syria, who deserve so much better than the life they have today. Every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in stopping these nations from supporting terrorism.”
Like his previous visit in January and just as he did before the Israeli Knesset, Bush also raised the “Iran threat,” stating that “every peaceful nation in the region has an interest in opposing Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.” Had the president read the latest Arab Public Opinion Poll conducted by the University of Maryland, he would have learned that most Arabs do not view Iran as a major threat and believe it has a right to its nuclear program. Instead, 86% of those polled in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt and the UAE identified the Arab-Israeli conflict as an important issue to them.
In light of such public opinion facts, Bush could have called for diplomacy between Israel and her neighbors to address long-standing grievances. But Bush placed all the onus on Arab states. When he addressed the World Economic Forum he demanded they “move past their old resentments against Israel.”
 Did he forget that under the 2002 “Saudi Peace Plan,” Arab leaders in Beirut agreed to recognize Israel, in return for ending its occupation of Arab territories? Instead of acknowledging that a just Arab-Israeli peace requires talking to all players, Bush stated that “all nations in the region must stand together in confronting Hamas, which is attempting to undermine efforts at peace with acts of terror and violence.”
In stark contrast, former President Jimmy Carter met with Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus last April. In an April 13 ABC News interview Carter noted, “There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process.”
In two trips to the Middle East in four months, what did Bush accomplish? At the Knesset, Bush missed an opportunity to press Israel to end its occupation of Israeli and Syrian territory. He could have pointed out that continued settlement building will only erode, rather than make possible, the creation of a continguous Palestinian state. Cynics could praise Bush for dramatizing a classical exercise in futility, but as far as brokering peace in the region is concerned, Bush failed—100%.
The president repeated his call for an independent Palestinian state, but offered no help in achieving it. As he approaches his final months in office, his foreign policy achievements appear to be ongoing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and saber-rattling against Iran, plus endless repetition of “freedom and democracy.”
Bush’s latest trip does, however, offer a striking example for the next U.S. President: how to miss an opportunity for peace, by elevating double standards and rhetoric over political courage and diplomacy. 

Farrah Hassen is the Carol Jean and Edward F. Newman Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C

In the last month, I attended two public events in Washington DC that were of great interest to any thoughtful American who really wanted to understand the public mood in our part of the world. Both events were dedicated to presenting public opinion surveys conducted in the Arab World. One was undertaken by Gallup, the other by the University of Maryland in conjunction with Zogby International. 
The results, as far as I am concerned, were totally expected and came as no surprise to me, yet, they were refreshingly suitable for their intended audience: US political analysts and advisors to policy makers. What is particularly interesting is that the findings of the Zogby poll don’t come as an unexpected change in the Arab public mood, but as a continuously solidified perception of the US and its disastrous policies in our region. I thought that in these troubled times, it would be doubly assuring to review together the major findings of these two public opinion polls. 
In March 2008, Zogby International was contracted by the University of Maryland to conduct a major poll in six Arab countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, UAE, Jordan and Lebanon. The results will neither be to the liking of the Bush administration nor to some of the governments of the countries in which the poll took place in. 
The most popular Arab leader: when Arab citizens from all six countries were asked which world leader do you admire most, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria came first among Arab heads of states, only second to Hassan Nasrallah, and guess who came third from citizens of the so-called ‘moderate’ countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! By the way, Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashed ranked fourth. The rest of the Arab leaders did not even register on the scale of popularity. 
The most reliable source of news and information: The second question sheds interesting light on the Arab viewers; which media do thjey trust more, and who is winning the battle for the minds of the Arab citizens. The questions was: When you watch news, which network’s news broadcasts do you watch most often? Zero percent said al-Mustakbal; 2% said al-Hurra; 2% said al-Manar, 3% said LBC, 9% al-Arabia, and 53% percent said al-Jazeera. It seems that even the citizens of Saudi Arabia are not very keen on watching their state financed al-Arabia channel.
However, the most revealing piece of information was when you break these statistics into a country-by-country analysis, and here you get the following results for the same question when asked in Lebanon only : 38% percent said al-Manar, 13% said al-Jazeera, 16% said LBC, 8% said al-Arabia, and here again, al-Mustakbal failed to register any value at all. 
On Iran as a major threat:  Contrary to what President Bush wants us to believe, the majority of Arabs do not consider Iran an enemy. Most believe that Iran has the right to its nuclear program (67%) and do not support international pressure to force it to curtail its program. A plurality of Arabs believes that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, then it is most likely either not to use them at all or to use them against Israel (92% combined) as compared to 8% who believed that they might be used against Arab countries. 
On President Bush: Don’t be deceived if you see President Bush performing his saber dance with some Arab royalties. Here are what the “moderate” Arabs think of Mr. Bush’s policies and administration: 83% are very critical of US policies, and 70% don’t trust the US at all. There is one caveat here though: these percentages reflect the Arab public opinion prior to Bush’s last declaration that Israel’s population is actually 307 million.  Imagine what the results would have been had the survey been conducted after his pilgrimage to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the Nakbah. 
On Lebanon: to the chagrin of Elliot Abrahms, the chief architect of US policy on Lebanon, only 9% expressed sympathy with the forces of March 14, while 30% sympathized with Hizbollah. 41% said that they were more or less neutral on the issue. 
On Palestine: despite the fact that the majority of those surveyed are deeply concerned about the divisions that tear the Palestinians apart, only 8% sympathized with Fatah while 18% expressed sympathy with Hamas. However, 38% said that they sympathize with both sides since they blame Israel and the US for the rift between the two. 
The Gallop World poll: As I have mentioned earlier, an equally interesting survey was presented in Washington, and described as the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind ever. Gallop sampled 90% of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. Many of Gallop’s findings challenged conventional wisdom in the West about the Islamic world, and ended up surprising, even angering, many people, for it totally undermined most of the premises and perceived truths of neo-conservatives and Bushites while proving the fallacy of the ‘Islamo-facism’ myth. The findings of this poll deserve careful analysis, which cannot be presented in this article, thus, I will leave this task to the next one.