COMMENTARY P6

A theme of virtually every New York Times editorial touching on the Arab-Israeli conflict is knee-jerk criticism of the Bush Administration and/or Israel for not taking steps that could promote "peace." On April 7, the Times editors defended House Speaker Pelosi’s Syrian jaunt and referred to the administration’s "failed policies" and its alleged refusal to test whether talking to Syria "might help... revive efforts to negotiate peace." A March 26 editorial on Condoleeza Rice’s latest visit to the region complained of the administration having squandered six years in diplomatic inaction, supposedly because it did not realize the importance of a "just, negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians" and the need for Washington to "help jump-start the process." The editors also advised Rice to pursue talks with Palestinians "willing to discuss peace" - whatever that means - "no matter what Israel’s objections."

A February 21 editorial on Rice’s previous Middle East trip accused her of missing what "just might have been a moment for breaking the stalemate..." Israel’s dereliction, meanwhile, was its failure to take steps that would have "increased the chances for progress..."

For many politicians and diplomats as well, the accepted wisdom is that Arab "moderates," and perhaps even some in the radical Arab camp, are ready for peace with Israel and that, despite the rise of Hamas, sufficiently intense diplomatic engagement can resolve the conflict. This popular line ignores fundamental Middle East realities:

Arab leaders have no interest in genuine peace with Israel. They do not fear Israel, knowing she will not attack them unless herself threatened, and they see no great advantages to peace. Rather, both anti-Western regimes, particularly Syria, and so-called "moderate" states see gain in using anti-Israel, as well as anti-American, hate-mongering to divert their publics from domestic ills. This is true even of Egypt and Jordan, states officially at "peace" with Israel. In Egypt, government-controlled media now purvey more rabid anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda than before the Camp David accords.

The revival of the 2002 Saudi "peace" initiative at the recent Riyadh summit hardly indicates some new Arab direction. The summit insisted its plan was a "take it or leave it" proposition and called for Israel to return to the pre-1967 armistice lines and honor a Palestinian "right of return" - a formula for remaking Israel into another Arab state - after which the Arabs would reciprocate with vague steps toward recognition and an end of the conflict. Even some Arab commentators, such as Mamoun Fandy writing in the London Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, noted that the Saudi plan does not reflect serious interest in peace with Israel.

Israeli-Arab peace will come on the Arabs' timetable. The Arabs, more than 300 million strong as compared to Israel's five million Jews, are by far the region's dominant force. Israel may deter or defeat Arab attacks, but it cannot, either by concessions or other steps, force peace on the Arabs.

All minorities living within the Arab world are under siege. Tunisian human rights activist Muhammad Bechri has traced this to the "twin fascisms" - his term - that dominate the Arab world, Islamism and pan-Arabism. The first promotes murderous intolerance of religious minorities. It helps explain why Christians are under siege across the Arab world and why Sudan enjoyed broad Arab support as it killed some two million non-Muslim blacks in the south of the country. Pan-Arabism translates into endorsement of murderous policies toward Muslim but non-Arab groups and accounts for Arab support for Saddam Hussein as he slaughtered 200,000 Kurds in northern Iraq, as well as backing for Sudanese policies toward the Muslim but black population of Darfur.

The Arab world is not about to make an exception for the Jews. This broad intolerance of minorities is further evidence of how unlikely it is the Arab world will accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in its midst any time soon.

Arab regimes also demonize non-Muslim and non-Arab peoples living beyond the Arab world. In both ostensible Western "allies" and hostile states, denigration and demonization of the non-Muslim world, and particularly of the Christian West and the United States, are common in government-controlled media, schools and mosques. Such attacks not only deflect attention from domestic ills but are also used either to bolster a regime's radical agenda or help assuage radicalized opposition elements of the population.

The concern of so-called "moderate" regimes with the threat posed by radical forces in the region has not altered these realities. Saudi Arabia, for example, has been worried about the Iranian Shi'ite theocracy since its birth in 1979, but the Saudi response has been more aggressive export of its own radical, Wahhabi, Islamism, with its intolerance of non-believers and its attacks particularly on Christians and Jews. This lavishly funded campaign has seen the rise of schools and mosques promoting Wahhabi Islam throughout the Muslim world, Europe and the United States.

Those who urge an American return to Realpolitik in Middle East policy are promoting a delusion. There is a superficial logic to arguing that the United States should support cooperative dictatorial regimes, and try to win over uncooperative ones, and that to push for democratic reforms is likely to lead instead to empowerment of radical dictatorships hostile to America. But just as Pearl Harbor shut down the American isolationist camp, 9/11 should have shut down the Realpolitik camp. The 9/11 hijackers and their key leaders were mainly from American "allies" Saudi Arabia and Egypt and were indoctrinated to hate America both through the state-supported religious and cultural education given them by these "friends" of America and through the teachings of the regimes' domestic opponents. To urge ongoing unqualified embrace of such regimes and silence in the face of their hate-mongering is to invite new disasters.

American policy and the global war against al Qaeda, associated groups and nations that support them—Iran and Syria—are collapsing. Blame goes beyond liberal politicians intent on destroying the Bush administration, a pernicious press and the radical left who rule academe, mainline churches and the media. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ill-advised trip to Syria and the amazing lack of resolve shown by the British—from the captain who failed to keep his marines from being captured to the Chamberlainesque responses by the British government—all are indicative of what fills the void when leadership fails.

Carl von Clausewitz, the 19th century Prussian soldier-philosopher, posited a “primordial triangle” consisting of three legs: policy, the people and the army. Victory in war depends on each leg being firmly in place. In World War IV, the West’s war with Islamist Jihadists directly supported by Iran and Syria, two of those legs are gone and the third is crumbling.

The first and most important leg is policy. The state sets policy. The president and his administration have that responsibility. The policy leg was still-born when President George W. Bush declared war on “terror.” A nation can no more make war on terror than it can make war on ambushes or frontal assaults. Terror is a tactic that can become a strategic corollary.

First, while this is a global war with a diverse group of enemies, essentially the West is at war with Islamist Jihadists—namely Al Qaeda and groups like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and nations that support them, specifically Iran and Syria. While each of these enemies has a different agenda, U.S. policy must respond to their highest strategic aspiration, which is to establish a global Islamist caliphate by the end of the 21st century. That makes this a total war. Their strategy is to erode the will of the West and it is succeeding.

Without a clearly defined enemy, the U.S. military has been unable to develop an appropriate strategy. Currently, Gen. David Petraeus is struggling to reverse the trend in Iraq that is crumbling toward disaster with a “surge” that may prove numerically insufficient; “too little, too late.”

Second, Bush lost the second leg of the primordial triangle, the people, last November. Americans are impatient and that impatience wears even thinner when they do not know who they are fighting or why. The president sold the invasion of Iraq based on Saddam’s supposed weapons of mass destruction program. Absent those weapons, Bush has not offered the people a sufficiently coherent reason for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The American people want clear war aims and a policy focused on victory. Otherwise they are subject to the contentions of all comers from John Kerry to Rosie O’Donnell. Is this war for “global hegemony?” Is it for oil? Is it for Halliburton?

This is a global war against an implacable foe whose religious imperative envisions a worldwide Islamist caliphate. For the Bush administration, acknowledging that constitutes the proverbial “bridge too far.” Without that visionary bridge, no amount of military force will take us from where we are to victory.

The armed forces constitute the third leg of the primordial triangle and ours remain the world’s best. The U.S. Army and Marine brigades that stormed to Baghdad in the spring of 2003 performed superbly. They continue to be well-led, well-trained and highly-motivated. Nevertheless, the Army, and perhaps to a lesser extent the Marine Corps, are in danger of collapsing.

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Creighton Abrams redesigned the Army so that the all-volunteer force could never be wasted in a long war unsanctioned by the American people. Accordingly, he placed much of the Army’s sustained fighting power in the National Guard and Army Reserve. Abrams envisioned a future war in which the regular Army of about one million would be supported by the reserves. That Army was structured for a war with the enemies of the 1970s: the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Cuba.

After the Cold War, the Clinton administration slashed that million-soldier force to 485,000, placing even more emphasis on the National Guard and Army Reserve. Conventional wisdom in the 1990s was that the active-duty force, given the tremendous “leverage” offered by high-tech weaponry (especially air power), could defeat most enemies with the National Guard and Army Reserve available to deliver the “coup d’ grace” if needed. The armed forces of nations like North Korea, Iraq or Iran would be decimated through high-tech wizardry coupled with maneuver and focused fires. Home by Christmas, Easter at the latest. This Easter, the sixth of this war, many units of the National Guard are headed back for additional tours.

This past week, Iran humbled the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Britain—a “seafaring nation”—and by extension the United States. Iran’s military force in doing so consisted of a handful of speed boats.

If the United States continues along this strategically inept course, it will be defeated by enemies who have nothing to match our stealthy B-2 bombers, super-sonic cruise F-22 fighter planes or super-carriers. Al Qaeda, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and their supporters are on the same road to victory trod by North Vietnam 40 years ago—a road paved with superior strategy. Their strategy of erosion simply is more appropriate than our strategy, which is unclear and ill-defined. Superior strategy wins wars. Poor strategy cannot be overcome by high-tech weapons, by superior firepower, the effusion of blood or heroic acts of warriors.