George Doesn't Make It Easy

While I still wonder what exactly George Bush and his little cadre of freedom fighters are smoking in the Oval Office, with their rosy tales of dancing Iraqis and peace in the Middle East just around the yellow brick bend, they have made one statement that I reluctantly have to agree with; namely that someone has to see this unholy mess in Iraq through to the end.

This is a view that has been bandied about by every pundit from Thomas Friedman to Richard Gwyn for months, and for the sake of our own hides, our government and others should consider taking it seriously before the images of car bombings, suicide attacks and riots jump out of our televisions and kick our complacent asses into action.

The question, of course, is who that someone will be, and unless you've been vacationing in Antarctica for the last six months, or perhaps getting your news from Fox cable, it should be quite obvious that while the U.S. is very adept at blowing things up and doling out rebuilding contracts to companies with former executives in high places, their skills at peacekeeping make the Crusades seem diplomatic.

And if the trial run through Afghanistan is any indication of what "seeing things through to the end" is after it was bombed to even finer rubble and then abandoned like a corpse in a trash bin, I suggest you hold off on Halliburton stock for the foreseeable future.

Sadly, George Bush has a knack for making people want to pull on that noose around his neck instead of helping him untie it, with the result that you'd take longer counting your fingers than the numbers willing to lend a hand to help the world's most infamous Texan. Whether it's his infuriating sense of paternalism (like his recent history lecture to Europeans about how their freedom was won through war, as if they somehow missed that whole World War Two thing), his utter ignorance of local culture (the only thing more crazed than wanting Turkish peacekeepers in Iraq would be to call in the Israeli army), or his insistence that any UN or foreign assistance will come under U.S. control despite months of blunders and ad hoc responses masquerading as a master plan, the world so far has answered the President's famous "with us or against us" question with thundering silence.

The world is not with the United States.

Yet, as the recent bombings in Turkey (that rare example of a democratic Islamic state with strong, supportive ties to Israel which has been left out in the cold by both the U.S. and Europe while Bush tries to remake the Middle East in the image of...well Turkey) should make clear, the world does not have the luxury of sitting back and smugly watching Bush hang himself while shouting "we told you so" as he and half the Middle East twists in the wind. The nation that once boasted it could fight two wars simultaneously is doing little more now than holding its finger in the dike, and most agree it needs at least double the troops to effectively restore control long enough for any sort of lasting order to take hold.

It's time for the UN and all its jilted members to stop finger pointing and commit troops, supplies, and money and do what it was mandated to do, something it has been sorrowfully deficient in fulfilling for years (just ask Romeo Dallaire). Regardless of their making, the problems facing Iraq require a massive effort to even offer the hope of resolution in a region that grew skeptical of the West's good intentions long ago.

Let's be clear, however, that such action will be only the first, tiny step towards stemming the tide of terrorism, a problem that never existed in Iraq until Gen. Tommy Franks roared across the Tigris like some modern day Rommel and created yet another breeding ground for extremism. Freeing the American war machine to concentrate on Al-Qaeda itself will do more for world security than operation "Iron Hammer" or its like.

But it is in Israel that the most gains can be made, and if Israel's strongest ally and the world's only superpower can be convinced to do more than fire off toothless admonishments from Washington and finally use its clout to push for real, tangible reconciliation, there might one day be something that resembles peace in the Middle East. And supporting the U.S. in solving its problems in Iraq would go a long way towards convincing them to do it.

If George can keep his mouth shut, that is.