Bush's Hail Mary Pass Through the Mideast

Tuesday President Bush begins a nine-day, six-and-a-half country tour of the Middle East, beginning with three days in Israel--the first time in his presidency that he's been to that country. He'll also go to the West Bank (the half country), Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia (first-ever trips to all four) and Egypt. In June 2003, Bush traveled in two and a half days to Egypt, Jordan and Qatar (where he told U.S. troops stationed there that America had sent them on a mission to Iraq "and that mission has been accomplished," and that troops were "taking aggressive steps to increase order throughout the country.") He met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Jordan, and visited that country again in 2006.

The White House claims Iraq isn't on the itinerary. Nor, for that matter, are Tehran, Damascus or the elected leadership of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Surprises are not expected. Officially, Bush is looking to fan the meager flame of hope lit at the Annapolis summit in November. But as with the run-up to that summit, expectations are being held at or near ground level.

Golf-Clap Welcome

Saudi Arabia's English-language daily, Arab News, put it this way: "From the Israeli prime minister’s house in Jerusalem to the palace of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, Bush can expect a polite welcome during the eight-day trip. ... But with the US presidential campaign under way, Middle East governments already appear to be looking past Bush to his successor and are not expecting any major breakthroughs." The writer sardonically added: "Many people’s view of Bush was summed up inadvertently by a diplomat from a major Arab state, who indicated disbelief that Bush plans to use the trip to renew his drive for Middle East democracy.'Is that still on?' the Arab official said — anonymously."

Columnist Yoel Marcus, writing in Israel's Haaretz, was even less deferential:

Bush's visit to Israel in his final year in the White House is not a dramatic move to impose a peace agreement on Israel and the Palestinians. In the interviews he gave to Yedioth Ahronoth and Channel Two, we saw a naive diplomat who declared that a comprehensive agreement will be signed by the end of the year - a strange thing to say, considering that Bush has avoided any serious involvement in bringing peace over the last seven years, apart from one vision and one road map that both sides have used to go nowhere.

The last time Bush was in Israel was in December 1998, when he was in the middle of his foreign-policy apprenticeship: "Burning Bush sighted between Israel and Egypt," went the headline above a Houston Chronicle column by Dan Rather, who was then still anchoring the CBS Evening news. Rather, a grandiloquent Texan familiar with Texan grandiloquence, perceived even then the careful orchestration of substance-less things to come: "Bush said and did all the right things in Israel," Rather reported. "His well-crafted statement on arrival was a thing of political beauty: 'Israel is a great friend of the United States. I'm here to learn not only about Israel but also about my own religion.'" His religion at the time was crafting his way to front-runner status as the GOP's choice for the 2000 election.

"Looked Real Bad Down There"

During that trip Bush took a chopper flight with Ariel Sharon, then Israel's foreign minister, flew over Gaza or the West Bank--what he inaccurately called "the Palestinian camps," according to Ron Suskind's account of Bush's description of the trip during his very first National Security Council meeting as president--and made his decision right then and there, in that chopper, to shrug off three decades of in tense American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "Looked real bad down there. I don't see much we can do over there at this point. I think it's time to pull out of that situation."

So he did.

This late in his presidency, so low in the polls, and with the Arab world finding him no more credible than do most Americans, Bush's aims aren't about to soar much higher than they did during that chopper flight with Ariel Sharon a decade ago.

See also:

• The Annapolis Summit
• Bush's Road Map for Peace Five Years Later
• Sixty Years of US-Mideast Policy