The Wall Street Journal-20080111-Politics - Economics- Bush Faces Wall of Arab Ire- Skeptical View of President Attends His Mideast Tour
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Politics & Economics: Bush Faces Wall of Arab Ire; Skeptical View of President Attends His Mideast Tour
Beirut, Lebanon -- As President Bush tours the Middle East on his first official visit, he will encounter an Arab public deeply critical of his policies in the region and skeptical that the U.S. means what it says.
Almost everyone here believes that no other American president has had such a big impact on the region's political and social landscape, but critics say the change hasn't produced improvements.
"Democracy in the Middle East is now part of history. Nobody believes Bush any more. He has turned the Middle East into a big mess, and you can't bring democracy and change with instability," said Sateh Nour Eddine, managing editor and columnist at Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper, which is aligned with the U.S.-backed government here.
Mr. Bush began his presidency with lofty goals for this region: Iraq would serve as a model for democracy, Iran would be tamed, and a Palestinian state would be created to pave the way for peace. But in his last year in office, Iraq remains unstable and chaotic; Iran has emerged as a regional superpower, and peace between Israel and Palestine is elusive.
The prospect of a more open, modern Middle East was initially welcomed by many Arabs and Iranians, particularly dissidents and intellectuals who have for years strived to reform their autocratic regimes. Mr. Bush argued for the invasion of Iraq as a way to democratize the Mideast and bring about wholesale reforms. Iraq's success, Washington argued, would gain America clout and influence in the region.
Nearly five years later, Iraq continues to cast a shadow on Mr. Bush's legacy here. Arabs and Iranians have watched Iraq sink in deepening sectarian rifts among Shiites and Sunnis. Islamist militancy has gained a new breeding ground in Iraq, prompting fear that terrorism could spill across its borders.
Autocratic Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt have set aside overhauls in human rights and democracy, arguing that change is synonymous with chaos.
Iran has been a central focus of the Bush administration's foreign policy. In his tour of the region, as Mr. Bush makes scheduled stops in Israel, the West Bank, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, he plans to rally support among Sunni Arab nations against Iran. Mr. Bush has said that he still considers Iran a threat, despite a National Intelligence Estimate that Iran abandoned enriching uranium for military purposes in 2003. U.S. officials note that Iran continues to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel under what it calls a civilian program.
The Bush administration has persistently attempted to isolate Iran's regime by imposing tough economic sanctions and by pressuring America's allies to sever business ties with Iran. Sunni Arab countries were initially eager to see Iran weaken, but Iran is relishing its new role as the region's superpower, emboldened by the rise of Shiites in Iraq and awash in cash from high oil prices.
To the dismay of the Bush administration, Iran has successfully maintained Cold War-style proxy battles with the U.S. in Lebanon and Iraq through Shiite political parties and militant groups such as Hezbollah and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
Arab countries have now departed from the U.S.'s confrontational stand and have adopted a more conciliatory approach toward Iran. Saudi Arabia's royal ruling family -- perceived to be allies of Mr. Bush -- hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for an official pilgrimage in Mecca in December. Egypt hosted Iran's envoy, Ali Larijani, for two weeks, and the two sides discussed normalizing diplomatic relations that have been cut for nearly three decades.
"A popular proverb in Iran says that 'they wanted to fix a person's eyebrow but instead they made him blind.' In our view, this summarizes Bush's policies in the Middle East," said Ali Reza Jalaeepour, a reformist political analyst in Tehran.
The creation of a Palestinian state is a universal dream among the people of this region. Previous American presidents actively pursued a road map for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but as America became entangled in Afghanistan and Iraq under Mr. Bush's administration, the peace process moved to a back burner.
Further damaging America's popularity among Arabs was the U.S.'s staunch support of Israel during the one-month war in summer 2006 between Lebanon and Israel. Now Mr. Bush's rekindling of the Israeli- Palestinian peace process has struck the public here as disingenuous and a hurried effort that is more rooted in the president's concern for his legacy than concrete peace efforts in the region.
In Egypt, one of the U.S.'s main allies in the region and the Arab world's most populous country, some lawmakers outside the ruling party said they didn't welcome the U.S. president's visit -- a sentiment voiced by people in other capitals, who say the president is coming too late and doing too little.
"We know that [Mr. Bush's visit] does not aim to realize the best interests of our region but will only reinforce the existing U.S. foreign policies," independent lawmaker Moustafa Bakri said.
A newspaper of which Mr. Bakri is editor in chief plans to call for a gathering in Cairo's Journalists' Syndicate next week to protest the visit. In Bahrain, university students also have called for protests against Mr. Bush's visit.
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Mariam Fam in Cairo and Nada Raad in Beirut contributed to this article.
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Corrections & Amplifications
Israel and Hezbollah fighters engaged in a five-week war in Lebanon in 2006. A Jan. 11 Politics & Economics article on President Bush's recent trip to the Middle East didn't clarify Hezbollah's involvement.
(WSJ Jan. 19, 2008)
