MESSING UP THE MIDDLE EAST - AT 9:22 A.M. ET:  The president is about to take on the Middle East "peace process" again, from a kind of Jimmy Carter perspective.  The blunders have already begun.

There's a terrific writer on Mideast affairs, Michael Young, who works out of Beirut, and is a straight shooter.  I'm surprised he's survived.  He ridicules the Obama approach, a contradictory, sloppy, poorly thought out approach that we see in almost everything else this administration does:

There is great discomfort these days among those who backed Barack Obama’s “new” approach to the Middle East when he took office 10 months ago. That shouldn’t surprise us. Everything about the president’s shotgun approach to the region, his desire to overhaul all policies from the George W. Bush years simultaneously, without a cohesive strategy binding his actions together, was always going to let the believers down.

And...

As the president’s accelerated pullout from Iraq begins to look increasingly ill-thought-out, as his engagement of Iran and Syria falters, as Arab-Israeli peace looks more elusive than ever, and as Americans express growing doubts about the war in Afghanistan, Obama is discovering that personal charisma is not enough to alter the realities of a Middle East that has whittled down better men than he.

Well, actually, I don't think he's discovering it.  The rest of us are, but he's not.  I don't know if he's capable of discovering that.  He once remarked to a political associate, "I'm gifted."  I think he still buys that line.

On Iraq, the president's policy seems to be contained in one word:

That word is “withdrawal,” and Obama described his Iraqi policy this way in Cairo: “Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and to leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq’s sovereignty is its own.”

Those were noble thoughts, but how do they square with other American concerns, such as the containment of Iran, the avoidance of sectarian conflict that might engulf the region, the stability of oil supplies, and much else? Obama feels that an America forever signaling its desire to go home will make things better by making America more likable. That’s not how the Middle East works.

No, I guess not.  On Iran:

...there was always something counterintuitive in lowering the pressure on Iran in the hope that this would generate progress in finding a solution to its nuclear program. Engagement is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end among countless others. Where the Obama administration erred was in not seeing how dialogue would buy Iran more time to advance its nuclear projects, precisely what the Iranians wanted, while breaking the momentum of international efforts to force Tehran to concede something – for example temporary suspension of uranium enrichment.

Chalk up another failure.

He’s virtually folded over Iraq, is stumbling in Afghanistan, and does not occupy himself very much with Lebanon, all places where the Iranians can and are hurting the Americans. By placing most of his chips on engagement, the president has failed to develop a more multifaceted strategy while relinquishing other forms of coercion that could have been effective in Washington’s bargaining with the Islamic Republic.

That's not the kind of letter home you hope to get from the teacher.

Young notes that Obama has confronted Israel over settlements:

However, there is more to Palestinian-Israeli peace than settlements. Obama is exerting considerable political capital to confront Israel, but it may be capital wasted at a moment when Hamas can still veto any breakthrough from the Palestinian side. In other words, Washington is working on a narrow front whereas its failure to weaken Hamas may render the whole enterprise meaningless. But how can the US weaken Hamas when improving relations with the movement’s main regional sponsors, Iran and Syria, remains a centerpiece of American efforts?

Ah, no one thought these things out.

And finally...

Barack Obama’s devotees may imagine that because he spent a few years abroad as a boy, he is well equipped to understand our complicated world. Perhaps he is, but his approach to the greater Middle East, shorn of the soaring rhetoric, has been artless and arrogant. The president is being tied up every which way by his foes, who can plainly see that the Obama vision is an unsystematic one. If ever the US has been close to achieving potentially terminal self-marginalization in the region, it is now.

We award the grade of F- to the administration.  Re-take the course.  Maybe some different instructors are required.  And maybe the student should do less talking, and more learning.

August 28, 2009