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April 17, 2002, 1:45 p.m. Lost A disastrous policy. By NR Editors, from the May 6, 2002, issue of National Review

he idea that the Bush administration should restrain Israel from a full-frontal war on Palestinian terrorism has always been defensible as a theoretical matter. If it would actually buy Arab support for eventual action against Iraq, it would be a worthwhile tactical move in furtherance of an important strategic goal. Yes, it would be inconsistent (preventing Israel from acting on the Bush Doctrine the way the U.S. has), but high state policy sometimes is.

The Bush administration's three-week foray into peace-processing, however, has only made the prospect of an Iraqi invasion seem all the more distant. The administration has leaked away prestige and credibility with nearly every new statement, and has bent to the logic of the Arab world, which is that nothing can ever be done in the Middle East without bullying Israel first. It is exactly this linkage that the first Bush administration successfully resisted in the run-up to the Persian Gulf War. If it had not, Saddam Hussein would still be in Kuwait City — or maybe Riyadh — today.

So there has been no tactical up-side to countervail the considerable disadvantages of Bush's position: The administration has retroactively vindicated the critics who maintained that the Bush Doctrine was too "simple-minded." It has tried to prevent Israel from killing and arresting terrorists. It has established that Arab street protests can alter American policy. It has deliberately ignored evidence of Saudi complicity in stoking suicide bombings, in order to puff up the Saudi "peace plan." It has seemed adrift, confused, and weak, emboldening Democratic foes who wouldn't have been so critical even on domestic matters three weeks ago. In other words, the Bush policy has been a disaster, and it can't be laid at the feet of anyone — including Colin Powell — but the president himself.

During the fight in Afghanistan, pundits argued that any president would have carried out the war there, that the immediate military reaction to Sept. 11 was in some sense inevitable. But nothing in politics is inevitable; it always depends on will and leadership. This is why it can't be taken as a given that the war on terrorism will be won. Indeed, on some days recently, it has been possible to imagine the unthinkable: that the war on terrorism might have already seen its greatest success and will gradually peter out in a series of far-flung military-advising missions (the Philippines, Georgia, etc.), while the main event — transforming the Middle East — founders on Arab opposition.

We continue to consider this prospect unthinkable because of the moral commitment and toughness of President Bush, who does not seem to have wavered in his determination to oust Saddam Hussein. One of Bush's best qualities is that he reverses mistakes quickly, and there are signs that, in this case, the reversing may have already begun. In a speech at the Virginia Military Institute, Bush repeated his "axis of evil" phrase, starkly demanded that Arab states end their incitement of suicide bombing, and — in a pregnant hint of things to come — said that the Taliban was "the first regime to fall in the war on terrorism." This is all encouraging.

But so far there has been only one definite bright spot in the Middle East over the last few weeks: the resounding victory that the Israeli Defense Force has won over the soldiers and terrorists of Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. You don't have to sign off on every last detail of Ariel Sharon's ultimate vision for the West Bank or condone every tactic of the IDF (for instance, using Palestinian civilians as human shields) to recognize that in its fight against Palestinian terrorism, the Israelis are fighting another front in our war.

The connection between the two is unmistakable. Not only are the Iranians and the Iraqis — charter members of the axis of evil — arming and funding the Palestinians, the intifada seems to be a strategic ploy meant to distract the United States from taking on Iraq. This is why the administration loses in so many ways when it bows to the idea that it must resolve the Mideast crisis by pressuring Israel: It risks letting Iranian- and Iraqi-supported militants off the hook, diverts our attention from Iraq, and creates the incentive for yet more Palestinian violence — because the hotter the conflict burns, the more "engaged" the administration will have to be.

A sound policy in the region must begin with a fundamental fact: Israel, despite what "moderate" Arab states say, is not the problem in the Middle East. Instead, the region's violence and instability emanates chiefly from three major countries, which represent three distinct ideologies with which the United States is, broadly speaking, at war: the Baathist fascism of Iraq; the Shiite radicalism of Iran; and the Sunni radicalism of Saudi Arabia. All these regimes (along with Syria, Iraq's junior partner in Baathism) must be confronted, although in different ways.

Only Iraq is amenable to an immediate military solution. The U.S. has already partially dismembered the country and is formally still in a state of war against it. Ousting Saddam and replacing him with a pro-Western reformer will, in turn, make pressuring the other two countries easier: emboldening the reformers in Iran and lessening American dependence on the Saudis. American assertiveness in the region will also presumably make the Palestinians more responsive, since it will enhance U.S. prestige and constitute a blow to Arab radicalism generally. Victory in the Persian Gulf War, after all, set the predicate for the initially promising "peace process" that now lies in ruins.

But to move on Iraq, the administration needs a clean break from its current path. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute will not be soluble until Palestinian society as a whole eschews terrorism. Only then can the legitimate grievances of the Palestinians be usefully addressed. That may be a long process, possibly involving more Israeli incursions and the construction of a security perimeter until a new Palestinian politics arrives. There is no clever plan or negotiating gambit that the Bush administration can come up with to short-circuit this process — the real peace process.

Secretary Powell's mission can still be redeemed if the administration makes clear that Arafat, having been given innumerable last chances, has finally exhausted those chances. And that until the Palestinians create and support a respectable leadership, the U.S. will not expend political energy trying to save them from the disastrous consequences of their terrorism. If the administration takes this stance, the last three weeks will begin to seem only an unfortunate interlude in the broader war, and in fact may make it easier for the administration to make the case to the world that it tried its best to redeem the unredeemable Arafat. Then the U.S. can begin to concentrate again on a benefit to the region that it actually has the power to deliver — the fall of the Baathist regime in Iraq.