"Don't overestimate the West's naiveté - or its resolve"

Rubin is annoyed by the fact that the US & its allies have opted for something else than slaughter! In the JPOst, here

 

"... in the Middle East the equivalent sign would say, "It's the Islamist revolutions (what are these?), stupid." And yet instead we see strategies based on a desire to believe or do anything to avoid confronting this great challenge, ...

IRONICALLY, MUCH of the Western Left seems to think that empowering the most reactionary forces in the world will somehow contribute to its vision of a better world. Much of the Right appears to believe that this strategy will be pushed far enough to lead to a grand sellout of Israel.....

It would be a mistake to overestimate the naiveté of Western governments, but it might be an equal mistake to overestimate their resolve. Consider the words of the two Obama administration appointees to the highest State Department posts focusing completely on Middle East policy in their confirmation hearings.

Jeffrey Feltman, to be assistant secretary of Near East affairs, explained: "When you traveled around the [Middle East] five, six, seven years ago, almost everywhere you went, the first thing that came up was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When you travel around today, what you are going to hear about is Iran." But then he added: "We want to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to remove one of the tools that Iran uses to distract the region from what Iran is doing,"

From this, it sounds like, by his own testimony, his policy is seven years out of date. Even he acknowledged the paradox that Iran is a "spoiler" on making progress. So if Iran, along with Syria, the Gaza Strip regime (Hamas), the soon-to-be Lebanon regime (Hizbullah) and the main opposition groups seeking power in every Arab country (Islamists) are all spoilers, how are you going to "address" this issue effectively? Especially if your friends - the Saudis, Egyptians and others - won't do much to help?

Meanwhile, the nominee for assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, Robert O. Blake, congratulated the Pakistani government for fighting the Taliban, even while that regime is quite happy to live with them and al-Qaida as long as they stick to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. "We do think that important progress is being made." Yes, it is: by the enemies of freedom, democracy and Western interests."