Newborn disaster.

The "new" Middle East is emerging, and it isn't at all pretty - a child, in fact, that only its mother (the Bush administration) could love. When a massive military presence on main street Ramadi is considered freedom, you know something is dreadfully wrong with this picture. But then freedom is a very malleable word, one that enables scoundrels to sound high-minded while in fact speaking a portion of the grisly truth. "Freedom" may sound like human rights, but what they're really talking about is the freedom to apply power at will. Pirates' freedom, or perhaps more accurately, the freedom of the mafia don. Our standard is clear: a regime loves freedom if it is compliant with our directives. If not, it is radical, dictatorial, extreme. Uri Avnery, the great Israeli peace activist, sums it up quite neatly in a recent column. Palestinians are "moderate" if they follow U.S. orders and "pragmatic" if they follow Israel's orders.

Clearly Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is both "moderate" and "pragmatic", joining Bush and Olmert in roundly condemning Hamas (which is neither). Rather than criticize Israel and the "Quartet" for systematically strangling Gaza while allowing the expansion of settlements and related infrastructure in the West Bank, Abbas is working in coordination with the powers that have denied his people their most basic national and human rights for the last four decades. These are, of course, the same powers that sign his paycheck and provide his security forces with arms, so how can Abbas not be compromised in the eyes of most Palestinians, who have nothing... not even a national identity. They see the Palestinian Authority living relatively affluent lives, eating well amid screaming poverty, bowing to their occupiers... and so they vote for Hamas, not just in Gaza, mind you, but throughout the West Bank, as well. They exercised their right to choose their own leaders late last year, and now they are being punished for not having legitimized the "leaders" we chose for them. There's Bush's democracy.

If it weren't so grim, it would be almost laughable to hear Dubya clumsily working his rhetoric around this situation when he and Olmert have so obviously undermined the very principles the claim to champion. Pundits in the U.S. media - those critical of Bush - fault him for being "disengaged" from the Israel / Palestine issue, but the problem is just the opposite. That lack of progress in reaching a comprehensive peace agreement? That's what they've accomplished, with the full cooperation of the Israeli government. Bush has involved himself deeply, pouring money and arms into one Palestinian side, strangling the other (and 1.5 million civilians along with it), and fomenting this conflict under the watchful eye of their Middle East point person, Elliot Abrams, who by rights should be spooning gruel in a Nicaraguan prison right now. The result is quite typical for this administration - a total disaster, people at one another's throats, that sort of thing. More birth pangs, and with a midwife like Abrams, you can see what this sucker is going to look like when it grows up.

The new Middle East - slouching soon towards a Bethlehem near you.

luv u,

jp