Pundits assess US policies in the region after President Bush ended his tour of the Middle East six months before the end of his term, writes Rasha Saad In the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat Maamoun Fandi wrote that President Bush's second visit to the region was held within a complicated regional and international discourse. Fandi wrote that the US administration insists that the purpose of the visit was to achieve the vision of the Palestinian and Israeli two-state solution. He quoted officials as saying that Bush's speech at the Knesset, exaggerating US relations with Israel, was merely an attempt to assure sceptics in Israel that the United States was committed to their security, and that they should be assured that the president will preserve their rights in any final settlement. Fandi argues that while this argument might sound reasonable there are indications that the Americans and Israelis have a new obsession -- Iran -- not Palestine. He wrote that President Bush's Knesset address contained threats and accusations directed at Iran, which were repeated from previous statements made by Bush and his secretary of state who stated that Iran is the cause of all troubles in the Middle East today. "If this is the case, would it not be wiser for the United States and Israel to isolate Iran from its regional environment by winning the Arabs to their side through the two-state solution?" Fandi asked. Fandi concluded that the present policy of the US administration cannot persuade either the pessimists or optimists in the Arab world. "It will only do so when a solution and an agreement are reached between the Israelis and the Palestinians." Also in Asharq Al-Awsat Abdul-Rahman Al-Rashed warned that while Bush "might seem like a lame duck president since his term is coming to an end, he can turn into a lame hawk able to bloody his adversaries." Al-Rashed wrote that Iran thinks that the American president is weak because he is in his last days. Hizbullah believes the same thing, as does a worried Syria. Even allies of the United States are uneasy, believing Bush has become a protocol president, and are afraid of the consequences of his impotence. Al-Rashed, however, reminds readers that when Bush invaded Iraq it was not in his first year in the White House but in May 2003, i.e. one year from the end of his first presidential term. "Imagine, he made his decision and carried out the largest military operation in the history of the United States since World War II. He launched a war when president Saddam Hussein was excluding the possibility of such a war, relying on the views of Arab television analysts. They told him not to worry about the threats and the massing of fleets. They assured him that anti-war demonstrations, public opinion surveys, and the approaching end of the president's first term would prevent war. How wrong they were!" Al-Rashed warns that while it was true that Bush has only six more months in office, it is nevertheless a long time in the history of our region and enough for Bush to commit new foolish acts if the other side goes too far in provoking him. For Hussein Shobokshi, calling Bush's latest visit to the region a farewell trip is "an incomplete description of a president described as a lame duck. Comparing him to the Titanic is closer to the truth." In Asharq Al-Awsat Shobokshi argues that Bush embarked on a final tour of the Middle East, the region which saw his biggest failures. Shobokshi says in this region is the war in Iraq, which was built on flimsy excuses, leaving behind it loads of innocent victims, whether from the American occupation army or innocent Iraqis. Bush also failed to achieve his famous promise of establishing a Palestinian state, particularly in view of the continuing blatant Israeli attacks on innocent Palestinians and the continued Israeli cancerous settlement activity in the occupied territories in insolent defiance of all international resolutions and rights. "Actually when looking closely at the reason for Bush's visit to the region now, his preparation for the post-presidency and promoting himself as a public speaker or promoter of giant investment companies, like those who had preceded him, cannot be ignored. But there is one direct question to be asked unabashedly: who would hire him?!" In "The menace of George W Bush's last months in office" Patrick Seale wrote in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper: "In the troubled, conflict- ridden Middle East, President Bush has done everything wrong. But his mandate still has half a year to run and unless restrained, he can do a lot more damage, to the region and to America, before he retires to his ranch at Crawford, Texas, and to the obscurity he amply deserves." Seale charges that instead of the United States being a benign superpower, or honest broker, helping to resolve the region's many conflicts, as it could have been, Bush has turned it into a malevolent hegemon, exacerbating conflicts and spreading chaos and death. Instead of recognising his failure in Iraq early on, and bringing the war to a speedy end, Bush has ploughed on, at enormous cost to the US armed services and to US public finances, and, of course, to Iraq itself, now a broken and divided "failed state", a fifth of whose wretched population has either fled abroad or been internally displaced. Instead of using America's great leverage to bring about a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, resolving Israel's conflict not only with all the Palestinians, but with Syria and Lebanon as well, Bush has obstinately sought to isolate and sanction Syria. In 2006, he backed Israel's disastrous Lebanon war, and has followed Israel's lead in demonising Hamas as a "terrorist" organisation, thereby tolerating and excusing Israel's outrageous siege of Gaza, which has reduced 1.5 million people to abject penury. Instead of helping to bring Fatah and Hamas together, as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Norway, and now even France are trying to do, Bush has armed Fatah against Hamas. Yet, Seale continues, without inter- Palestinian reconciliation, peace talks, such as the ones Israel's Ehud Olmert is conducting with the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, are absolutely meaningless. Instead of using American influence to mediate between all factions in Lebanon, as Qatar, the Arab League and France did, Bush has pushed the government in Beirut to challenge Hizbullah, and has supplied it with money and weapons to do so. Bush and his Israeli allies, writes Seale, are now obsessed with a so-called threat from Iran, and its nuclear activities. The same people in Washington who pushed for war against Iraq are now pressing for war against Iran. Instead of using his influence to reconcile Iran and its Arab neighbours, in particular Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Bush has attempted, so far fortunately unsuccessfully, to mobilise them against Iran. "Everything Bush has touched has turned to dross. But he still has another half year in the White House, and who can say what further destructive follies he might yet be capable of," wrote Seale.
