By David Bender

    The Middle East is in need of talks—any type of talks.  Iraq continues to fall into deeper chaos, with 3,000 people a month dying violently and the official American policy remaining ‘Stay the Course.’  Lebanon is in ashes with Hizbollah (rightly) claiming an historic victory; and Israel is trying to determine what went so wrong in its attack on Lebanon whereby Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran all seemed to come out of the war stronger and the Israeli ability to fight against guerrilla fighters was shown to all to be no better than the American army’s is in Iraq.  At the same time, Syria and Iran are perhaps gaining confidence such that Syria has announced it intends to form its own Hizbollah-style army to liberate the Golan Heights from Israel and Iran continues to progress toward becoming a nuclear power and has also begun to more truly address the Muslim world and West as though it had already become a major world power.  The Israeli war on Lebanon also again demonstrated the generalized weakness of the Arab governments.  Few even felt comfortable proclaiming anything but the softest moral support for Hizbollah (a key point here is that Syria did strongly support Hizbollah with words and perhaps more).  Of course, the people all supported the Arab world’s only fighting force that has been able to stop the Israelis and this only increased the cleft between the disenfranchised people and their corrupt governments.

    Of course, there is always the risk in proclaiming that the current Middle East crisis is different from past ones.  After 9/11 and the American attack on Afghanistan and the Middle East was supposed to erupt in chaos, and then again with the American war on Iraq the Arab world was supposed to have risen up.  So while it is probably true that if the US wants to press through and just try to hold everything and allow it to fall back to the status-quo, it would likely work.  But this time that is not going to work, or at least that is what Condoleezza Rice said.

    While I realize it would be terribly naïve to assume that a member of the Bush Administration will stand by their words (“Greeted with flowers”… “Mission accomplished”… “Insurgency is in its last throes…”), I agree with Rice’s point at the beginning of the recent Lebanon war that we cannot go back to the status-quo, though she was saying that as part of the American policy of giving the Israelis free reign to do as they wished (though as a side note, Rice pushing for the status-quo in the first few days of the war would have, we now know, saved 1,000 lives and prevented Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran from becoming heroes of the Arab world, but my guess is that no one in the White House or media is likely to address this point).  This is indeed a chance to break the status-quo, which has not served anyone’s interest.  Most Arabs live in poverty under oppressive regimes, Israel cannot find lasting security, the United States spends vast sums of money (and increasingly lives) protecting despots that do not deserve our aid and oil supplies that we could easily afford if not for our military outlays used to give ourselves the right to buy it.  Usually the fear with upsetting the status-quo anywhere is that something good might be lost in the transition; in the case of the Middle East, exactly what are we holding on to? Admittedly there is one important thing.  Contrary to most people’s notions of the Middle East, the vast majority of Arab countries are quite peaceful and stable.  Except for Lebanon, Iraq, the Palestinian Territories, and parts of Sudan, Algeria, and Yemen, the Middle East is quite safe and stable.  But upsetting the status-quo, if done pro-actively and with measured, realistic goals (i.e. not setting up a capitalist, democracy in Iraq in a couple of weeks) could avoid the social upheaval that could spiral into violence.

    That change is needed in the Middle East is not something particularly controversial.  Aside from American oil companies and royal families in Arabia, it is doubtful that any large group would oppose change.  The question is what kind of change. While I could spend pages attempting to demonstrate why the neo-con notion that unchallenged American supremacy in the world would actually make everyone really happy and prosperous, such is quite frankly not worth my time.  Suffice to say, we tried the neo-con plan in Iraq and the results have produced what is probably the greatest strategic failure in American history.

    Reform in the Middle East must start from an American acceptance that it is nothing more than a partner.  Remember that humble foreign policy that Bush talked about in the 2000 campaign?  A little more of that is needed, along with some pragmatism.  Engaging various actors in the Middle East means just that; speaking like a hegemon only works when it can produce results.  American arrogance since 9/11 has produced zero stable democracies, one country in anarchy, quite a few terrorists, and widespread hatred for the United States.  Listening to what some Middle East states have to say and then recognizing that they have interests too would go a long way toward beginning the long, slow path of reconciliation.