Her apology was not sufficient for the bloodhounds who wanted her fired. She spoke her mind, but, in a politically correct world, she had to pay by resigning. That was very unfortunate, because the push to be politically correct is creating a world where no one would dare challenge conventional wisdom of the West. If one does, one has to be ready to pay the price by ending their productive career.

As much as I am exposed to the American media, it never ceases to amaze me how powerful the pro-Israeli frame of reference really is in this country. It is more powerful than the legendary pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC. It is more pervasive and it is sharply honed to collect any comments about Israel that are considered derisive or even mildly offensive. No one dares to apply the same standards of freedom of speech regarding Israel as they do about everything that is not part of the United States. I was watching Washington Week in Review last Friday (June 4, 2010). The subject was Israeli commandos’ killing on the Turkish peace vessel that broke the Israeli embargo that day. All four journalists on that show were doing their best to dance around the issue. I invite the reader of this column to watch that show.

But entirely different standards are applied to Islam and most things Muslim. When I read about a cartoon contest insulting the Prophet of Islam, or damning Muslim women for wearing hijabs, or banning of hijabs in France in the name of secularism, or the recent vote in Switzerland about disallowing the building of the minarets to a mosque and the related hateful cartoons making the minarets looking like missiles, I wondered how those “fearless” practitioners and defenders of freedom of expression would behave when it comes to Judaism or Israel. There are even laws in some European countries making it a crime to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. I think it is idiotic to deny the occurrence of a shameful incident in history (or any other historical incident for that matter). However, sending someone to jail for denying it is a borderline insane act.

Then there is Helen Thomas, who had very unconventional ideas about the Middle East and Israel, as a dispatch of the Washington Post makes its quite clear. She asked hard questions that no regular American journalist dared ask about America’s war in Iraq: “Why are we killing people in Iraq? Men, women, and children are being killed there. . . . It’s outrageous” she asked. Regarding the Israeli intense bombing of Lebanon during the Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006, she told Tony Snow, one of many Press Secretaries of George W. Bush, that the United States “could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon” by Israel, but instead had “gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine.” Snow acerbically thanked her for “the Hezbollah view.” On another occasion, according to a freelance cameraman, she was reported to have said “thank God for Hezbollah” for driving Israel out of Lebanon, then added “Israel is the cause for 99 percent of all this terrorism.”

Okay, these are not conventional views, and some of them are certainly politically incorrect. However, the last time I checked, Helen Thomas is living in a democracy, and she has views like all thinking persons or journalists. She was not a reporter, but a columnist. As such, she could (and did) ask questions that were more editorial remarks than questions. So, what? Why shouldn’t she ask them? Just because she was the only person of the White House Press pool given an assigned seat did not mean that she should have become a mouthpiece of whichever president was in the White House or should have never asked questions that would have rattled America’s special friends.

As much as we hear that there is freedom of expression and freedom of the press in the United States, one must also keep in mind a highly implicit aspect of that freedom which goes like this: if you ask politically incorrect questions, and especially anti-Israeli questions, you will pay the price by losing your career or being cast away as a “whacky” person or “nerd.” Almost all dispatches that I read on the Helen Thomas incident identified her as a Lebanese American. One of her former colleagues, Sam Donaldson, former ABC News correspondent and an obnoxious questioner of the powers-that-be during his career, without defending her comments on Israel, said her views likely reflect the views of many people of Arab descent.

If it is okay to relate Thomas’ views with her ethnicity, I wonder how others would react if I were to merely report that a Jewish-American columnist for National Review, Jonah Goldberg, said the following about Thomas: “She’s always said crazy stuff.” Or, another Jewish American, Ari Fleisher, former Press Secretary to George Bush, was reportedly leading the campaign for her ouster and was in the lead in “e-mailing journalists who might have missed her remarks.”

Ideological warfare is becoming too pervasive and strident inside the American political and social arenas. There are extreme right wing Tea Baggers and their pal, Sarah Palin. You want to get your blood boiling? Start or end your day by watching the “fair and balanced” Fox channel, or listen to Rush Limbaugh to find out how much the airwaves are being polluted with insult, bigotry, and other nonsense in the name of journalism.

What is important to know (and remember) is that for most of us there are rules, which we cannot violate even in the name of freedom of expression. For some selected few, no such rules apply. Helen Thomas belonged to the former category.

The Financial Times, a right of center but highly respected newspaper, could not resist about coming up with a sensational headline: “Hizbollah confirms broad aid for Hamas.”  The Hizbollah-Hamas connection is not exactly an unknown variable, only its specifics are.  Even after the admission of Hezbollah’s deputy leader that his organization is providing military assistance to Hamas, the issue still remains murky and unconfirmed by other sources.  Why, then, is there so much hoopla about Hezbollah’s admission of support for Hamas? Because that reality only underscores the effective exercise of “smart power” on the part of Iran—Hezbollah’s chief backer—in the Sunni Middle East.  That is also worrying the United States, which, under the Obama administration, is relearning to come up with its own smart power-related maneuvers towards Iran.

For the uninitiated, “hard power” is a euphemism for military power.  Soft power, on the contrary, describes the use of all other activities such as diplomacy, cultural variables, trade, and aid, etc.  Joseph Nye, a Harvard Professor and the coiner of the phrase “soft power” described smart power as: It “is about tapping into diverse sources of American power, including our soft power, to attract others. It is about how we can get other countries to share our goals without resorting to coercion, which is limited and inevitably costly.”

The United States has been one of the oldest practitioners of smart power without even coining that phrase or without even recognizing the necessity for harping on it.  The only reason that phrase appears as a novel idea during the Obama presidency is because it followed an administration (that of George W. Bush), which almost ruined America’s reputation as a practitioner of soft power. 

Bush’s exercise of unilateralism, his voluble pronouncements about “regime change,” his use of intolerable phrases such as “axis of evil,” “either you are with us or you are against us,” and “preemptive wars” created so much global antagonism toward the lone superpower that the international community has pretty much forgotten the unsullied role of the United States in rebuilding the global economic and political order from the ruins of World War II. 

The American exercise of hubris worldwide during the eight years of George W. Bush created an unpleasant impression on the collective memory of the international community.  So the global discussion of the potential demise of the United States as the presiding power of the unipolar global order was received as welcome news throughout the world.  However, President Barack H. Obama’s promise of the exercise of soft power has acquired the status of a soothing melody emanating from Washington, D.C., after a long-lasting thunder storm.

Iran has emerged as a leading practitioner of smart power in the wake of America’s invasion of Iraq.  However, it has deftly mixed that soft power with its own exercise of hard power, by challenging America’s invasion and continued occupation of Iraq.  Iran could do that, ironically, because the United States played a crucial role in the creation of a Shia-dominated political order in Iraq.  In the new Iraq, Iran supported those who hated the American presence—most significantly Muqtada al-Sadr and his ilk.  Even those who were not active in demonstrating their hatred toward the United States felt much empathy for the insurgent activities of the Mahdi Army (which was a pro-Muqtada Shia paramilitary force).  Iran was also one of the chief backers of Hezbollah during the aforementioned 2006 war against Israel.

There also have been rumors of Iran’s alleged cooperation with al-Qaida in Iraq in that organization’s asymmetric war against the U.S.  Iran was most effective in the use of its al-Quds elite force in creating an anti-American chaos in Iraq between 2003 and 2006.  That force specializes in working closely with non-state actors in such countries as Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Palestine.  Iran clearly understood that the most effective way of using smart power was to establish its credibility through the use of hard and soft power, which it also has been exercising in the aforementioned countries.

As the Obama administration contemplates having a comprehensive dialogue with Iran, it has remained wary about that country’s rising potential clout in the Middle East.  The Sunni Arab states—who have been most comfortable in dealing with the United States during and after the Cold War years—envisage Iran’s growing popularity with considerable apprehension.  They do not know how to deal with it because it is heavily slanted in favor of populism, which the Arab autocrats envision as a threat to their archaic rule.  Their memory of the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s is being revived.  At that time, the late Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini used the plight of the Mustadafeen (the underprivileged or the downtrodden) as a battle cry for ousting the pro-American Shah of Iran.  Now, even without that rallying call, Iran’s message is interpreted as an implicit message for anti-monarchical or anti-dictatorial changes in the Arab Middle East. 

The pro-American Sunni monarchs have long dominated the Middle Eastern political scenes without attempting to resolve the Palestinian issue.  By challenging the U.S. in Iraq and by supporting the Hezbollah of Lebanon, which challenged and survived the punishing military attacks of Israel in the war of July-August 2006, Iran is seen as the new liberator of the Mustadafeen of the Middle East.

As the United States edges toward negotiating with Iran, Iran’s hardline approach toward the lone superpower appears as an effective strategy for the Middle Eastern masses, a strategy no Arab ruler has the nerve to pursue on his own.  However, for Iran, its approach is more of an exercise of soft power than anything else. 

It is based on a blend of realism, Machiavellianism, rationalism of keeping its option of a dialogue with the United States very much open, and, above all, “Islamic populism” of a new variety.  This particular brand of populism is also open for a rapprochement with the U.S., which had maintained a strident anti-Iranian posture throughout the existence of the Islamic Republic.

If Iran’s exercise of soft power succeeds in reaching a comprehensive rapprochement with the United States, its leadership of the world of Islam will be an unquestionable reality.  While neighboring Pakistan has been reduced to a client state of the United States, and while Arab rulers are struggling to find common ground for the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran is beginning to be viewed by the United States as a major Muslim country, and a state with which it must reach a modus Vivendi.  That is the ultimate success of Iran’s exercise of soft power.

The administration of President Barack H. Obama has started the highly intricate process of developing its own strategy with a bang in different regions of the world.  Here are the ingredients of that strategy: multilateralism, looking for a fresh start—which promises to be substantially different from the preceding administration—search for common ground involving Russia, invitation of negotiations with America’s traditional adversaries like Iran and North Korea, and at least the initial hope that approaches toward Palestine, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are likely to be radically different than the one the Bush administration pursued unsuccessfully.  This is a huge agenda.  But Obama’s administration has the enormous characteristic of freshness, metaphorically as well as substantively, in the sense that it is not carrying any baggage that had so infamously bogged down George W. Bush in an ostensibly endless inertia.

President Obama has insisted in talking to everyone, especially to America’s traditional adversaries.  Talking is better than not talking, he uncomplicatedly observed during the presidential campaign.  America’s strict observance of this principle promises to open a lot of doors.  It will also lower the feeling of fear and paranoia on the part of Iran and North Korea, who were simplistically and wrongly depicted by the Bush administration as members of an imaginary “axis of evil.”

Multilateralism has served America’s interest in its entire post-World War II history.  The United States led the Herculean task of rebuilding global economic institutions and regimes like the United Nations, the Bretton Woods Agreement, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.  America had the required economic prowess while other global actors—the Soviet Union, the U.K. and France—were simply exhausted with their economies devastated by the ravages of war.  But it was the frame of mind and global vision of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt more than America’s economic power that enabled the United States to become the leader of the so-called “free world,” a position it has never really relinquished, even today.

America’s leadership position was seriously—and hopefully not permanently—damaged in the post-9/11 era, when unilateralism and the hubris of the Bush administration acted like termites,  voraciously eating up most of the goodwill that the United states had created all over the world.

Obama is off to a good start.  He already has spoken to the world of Islam, stating that America will deal with it respectfully and on the basis of pragmatism; he has invited Iran to unclench its fist and initiate an era of negotiations on the basis of mutual respect; and he has appointed George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke as special envoys for Middle East and South Asia, respectively.  He has sent his Vice President, Joe Biden, to talk to the Europeans and to the Russians. 

Cumulatively speaking, this is a radical departure from the Bush administration.   Now, an intricate series of negotiations must start.  What the Obama administration must keep in mind is the fact that although it is approaching a number of actors with an open mind and unclenched fist, it may not get an immediate enthusiastic response or positive results.

In the case of Russia, the United States is faced with a country that has decided to become significant by taking the wrong route of unilateralism and hubris, which were hallmarks of the Communist superpower.  Russia cannot assert itself in that manner toward its neighbors, who have the bitter experience of being the captives of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) throughout the Cold War years, and then wonder why they so eagerly seek the shield of NATO.  Russia’s neighbors are watching warily, and with dismay, the incessant de-democratization of that country.   They do not know what to make of Russia’s energy-related assertiveness, which has taken the form of neo-mercantilism.  They watched in horror Russia’s clear over-reaction to the stupid decision of Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia to confront it militarily.

While Vice President Joe Biden is suggesting that the United States wants to “press the reset button” of ties with Moscow, Russia was busy working up a deal with Kyrgyzstan, whereby its President, Kurmanbek Bakiev, invited the United States to get out of the Manas air base, a development that will complicate America’s logistical problems of keeping the supply lines open to its forces in Afghanistan.  However, the stateship of Russia also works like an aircraft carrier: it changes its direction rather slowly.  Thus, it will be awhile before positive responses to the U.S. overtures might emerge.  While it does not pay to be overly pessimistic about Russia’s response, one does not have to hold ones breath for a long time to envisage such a development.  The signals regarding Russia’s willingness to cooperate, or not, will come soon enough.

The U.S.-Iran ties have mammoth complications of their own.  The first hurdle is the bad blood related to America’s support for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from 1953 through 1978.  That era has the same legacy of shame and bitterness for Iran as China’s memories related to the “decades of humiliations” at the hands of the West and Japan.  At the same time, the United States has not forgotten the ignominy it had suffered during the “hostage crisis” of the late 1970s.  That crisis also played a dominant role in making Jimmy Carter a one-term President. 

The second hurdle is America’s Iran-Libya Sanction Legislation, which Iran envisions (quite correctly) as aimed at bringing about “regime change.”  All such legislation has to be categorically nullified before any serious negotiations take place between Washington and Tehran.  The United States has to accept the legitimacy of the Iranian government if it wishes to give real meaning to negotiating with it from the position of “mutual respect.”

The third hurdle is Iran’s nuclear research program, which the United States regards as aimed at developing nuclear weapons.  While it is hard to categorize America’s concerns as baseless, one must also fully understand Iran’s security concerns.  Iran has the same sense of insecurity that drove India to seek nuclear weapons.  At least India had the tacit support of, and some semblance of security guarantees from, the FSU while it was around.  Iran had no such support or guarantees from any major power.  What country would come to its assistance if the United States were to decide to bring about regime change in Iran?  What great power came to Iraq’s rescue when Iraq was similarly threatened by the Bush administration?  Could Iraq have gone through the bloody process of regime change if it had had nuclear weapons?  These questions are uppermost in the minds of the Ayatollahs, who are cavalierly and regularly demonized in America’s press and academic journals.

The negotiations between the United States and Iran have to seriously address Iran’s security concerns.  Given the nature of hostile attitudes that have prevailed between the two actors, it is hard to imagine a scenario when the lone superpower can believably guarantee Iran’s security and foreswear all actions aimed at regime change.  Even some European countries’ attempts to give verbal security guarantees to Iran will not do.  Thus, the nuclear issue remains a very obdurate problem between the two.  The Obama administration must summon all its creativity to resolve this aspect of U.S.-Iran conflict before any semblance of “normalcy” is restored between the two.

If one were to believe North Korea, it is already a nuclear power.  It has had a legacy of confronting a number of U.S. presidents who have threatened it with the use of nuclear weapons.  About the only realistic possibility under which Pyongyang might unravel its nuclear weapons is if it is protected under the nuclear umbrella of the People’s Republic of China.  That angle has not been pursued either by the U.S., the Chinese, or the North Koreans, at least in their unclassified diplomatic meetings.  In the absence of a nuclear umbrella, it is well-nigh impossible to imagine a circumstance under which Kim Jong Il would give up his nuclear weapons.   It might not be a bad idea for the Obama administration to consider pursuing that angle in future negotiations with the North Koreans and the Chinese.

The Palestinian-Israeli issue is a hostage to the upcoming Israeli elections.  If Benjamin Netanyahu is elected, then all bets are off about any resolution that is acceptable to the Likud and Hamas.  These two parties are equally fundamentalist and bull-headed about pursuing their respective version of the solution.  George Mitchell is likely to forget how complicated the Irish conflict was while he will tries to find common ground between the inflexible positions of Hamas and Likud.  On this issue, the U.S. strategy is likely to face frequent impasses. 

Regarding Pakistan and Afghanistan, the challenge for the Obama administration is no less daunting than the preceding issues.  Those two countries are places where al-Qaida has emerged as a major force.  The question is how to deal with the rising tide of religious extremism and problems of failing and weak governments.  President Obama wrongly considers that the immediate solution is in increasing the number of troops, since that approach supposedly helped lower the spiral of violence in stabilizing Iraq.  The fact is that it is much more complicated than that.  It was the fortuitous confluence of the decision of the “Sons of Iraq” to cooperate with the U.S. military against al-Qaida, along with the U.S. military’s decision not only to strengthen its number, but also to implement the “clear, hold, and build” strategy that helped stabilize Iraq.  The question is whether the Obama administration has correctly understood what actually transpired in Iraq, or is it merely repeating the process of raising the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan as a panacea for stabilizing that country.  The burden of evidence thus far is that it has not understood the intricacies of Afghanistan and is about to commit itself with the wrong-minded approach of using the military tool of America’s national power to resolve an enormously complicated situation.

Pakistan is a larger challenge than Afghanistan, in the sense that it not only negatively affects the stability of Afghanistan but also similarly affects the internal stability of India.  The Mumbai terrorist attacks have proven that fact.  The most ignored—and an extremely important—fact of South Asia is that neither India nor Afghanistan will be stable or peaceful places as long as highly visible measures are taken to soothe the security-related concerns of Pakistan involving India.  An important aspect of that concern is the lowering of India’s presence in Afghanistan, which Pakistan (rightly or wrongly) perceives as foreboding to its own security.  The Bush administration ignored that fact; and the Obama administration will ignore it at the risk of damaging its own interests in South Asia.

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President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have emphasized America’s resolve to use pragmatism, cordiality, realism, and firmness in its foreign policy toward the troubled regions of the world and about soothing the security-related concerns of America’s friends and especially its competitors and adversaries.  The coming months will be crucial to test their authenticity of purpose.

dispatch reads:  “Tony Blair makes his first trip to the Gaza Strip.”  In the growing global economic meltdown, the world has forgotten the suffering of the Palestinians who became victims of Israel’s “war” against Hamas.  How can there be a war between the most well equipped military of the Middle East and a state which does not even have an armed force of any credibility.  But this is the era of asymmetric war, and Hamas did launch rockets or missiles on Israel.  Those terror weapons did not cause much damage, but they provided a “justification” for Israel to let loose its military wrath on the civilian Palestinians.

In his book, Road to Lebanon, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times talked about Hama Rules established by the butcher of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, father of the current dictator, Bishara Assad.  According to those rules, if his authority were to be challenged by Islamist forces, he would completely destroy their villages, without any regard to civilian casualties.  He wanted to instill ultimate fear of destruction in the hearts and minds of the Islamists.  They understood that message, and Syria has remained just another “republic of fear” in the Middle East.  The other such republics are Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.  The message to all potential Islamists or those who challenge the political status quo in those states is that the brutal arm of the state will fall on them with utmost use of violence, and they will be eradicated.  That is how republics of fear maintain fear and, thereby, their continued rule.

Israel is also operating on the basis of a similar rule.  It tells the Palestinians within the occupied territory and the Hezbollah of Lebanon that if they challenge the Jewish state, it will be forced to “reestablish” its deterrence.  That phrase is merely a euphemism for using disproportionate military power to bring about enormous destruction of civilian infrastructure and human lives to sow so much fear in the hearts and minds of the Palestinians and the Lebanese that they will think twice about challenging Israel.  In this sense, Israel has remained another “republic of fear” for the Palestinians.

However, the Palestinians have not been impressed or fearful of what Israel’s American-supplied weapons will do to them.  In the information age, they understand how powerful the images of destruction and mayhem really are.  Those images continue to underscore the limits of using military power to deprive them of freedom and dignity.  The United States learned that lesson in Iraq the hard way.  Its proud campaign of “shock and awe” could not break the freedom loving spirit of the Iraqis.  Consequently, Washington worked diligently to pave the way for its departure from Iraq.  However, the Palestinians are not likely to encounter similar positive results aimed at ending the Israeli occupation of their land.  So, they periodically challenge the Jewish state, get killed, and have their properties destroyed as a result.  But in the process, they are also forcing the world to get its head out of the sand and face the urgency of bringing an end to the occupation of their homeland.  In the meantime, the Palestinians misery continues to grow.

When Barack Obama became President, there ensued a round of hoopla stemming from the appointment of Special Envoys to the Middle East and to Pakistan-Afghanistan.  George Mitchell became a special envoy for the Middle East, while Richard Holbrooke was named as a special representative for Pakistan-Afghanistan.  The high hope was that, by giving high visibility to conflicts afflicting those regions, the United States would be able to find solutions.  At least at first blush, no one can be critical of that approach.  However, what is lost in the period of high hopes following Obama’s election to the White House is that a lot of conventional thinking regarding the Middle East must also be discarded.

First, and foremost, it should be clearly understood is that the United States will not succeed unless it adopts a fresh approach toward Hamas.   The chief requirement of that approach is that Hamas should be dealt with directly by Special Envoy George Mitchell in his quest for common ground.  Isolating Hamas by depicting it as a “terrorist” organization will not do.  That was the simple-mindedness of the Bush era.  In the post-9/11 era, there were few entities in the entire world of Islam that the United States did not declare as “terrorists.”  After adopting such a wrong-headed blanket approach, one wonders why the lone superpower was perplexed as to why the Islamist groups were so persuasive in making an argument within the Islamic countries that their religion was under attack.  

In addition, there are two other obstacles in the way of the United States.  The first one is what emerges as the new government in Israel.  Considering the fact that the Likud and the Kadima parties failed to gain impressive majority votes in their own right, the coalition government—no matter who becomes Prime Minister—will only preside over an impasse on the Palestinian conflict for the foreseeable future.  There is nothing that Mitchell is likely to do or say to persuade the Israeli leaders to be daring or forthcoming in terms of offering major concessions to the Palestinians, when they have no such mandates from their voters.  

Then there also are ample divisions among the Palestinians.  Who really speaks for them?  Certainly not the Fatah Party, nor Mahmud Abbas who has a reputation among his people of being a sycophant of the Americans and the Israelis.  Hamas is too confrontational and Abbas is too diffident.   Under these circumstances, the issue of who speaks for the Palestinians remains unresolved.  Even though Hamas is elected by the Palestinians, there is that nagging question whether their representation should undergo a new endorsement through another round of elections.

So the real prospect of resolution of the Palestinian issue faces a very dim future.  In the meantime, special envoys called Tony Blair or George Mitchell periodically surface to make news without creating any real hope for realistic breakthroughs in negotiations between the warring Palestinians and Israelis.  The Israeli voters have established that they are not in favor of any major concessions, and concessions to whom?  Hamas, which has fired missiles over their homeland?  Certainly not Abbas, who has flimsy legitimacy—if any at all—among the Palestinians.  In the meantime, Israeli leaders might feel smug that they have established their deterrence, and Palestinians will think twice before launching more missiles toward Israel.   The new republic of fear is as much on shaky grounds as the ones led by Arab dictators.

The U.S. turned Iraq into hell between 2005 and 2006; Pakistan is steadily edging toward becoming a hellish place in the post-9/11 era; and Afghanistan is heading in that direction.  In the Horn of Africa, a similar situation prevails.

In the post-9/11 era, the militarily powerful nations have taken it upon themselves to set the “rules of engagement” for wars or war-like violence in Muslim lands, while the extremists are letting loose violence and mayhem from their side.  Iraq had its killing fields between 2005 and 2007, and Afghanistan’s most “fertile” killing fields started in the late 1970s, when the Soviet Union invaded it with a view to incorporating it into the Soviet empire.  Those killing fields continue to multiply in the first decade of the 21^st Century.  Lebanon’s killing fields come alive periodically, and—in view of its highly explosive internal dynamics—that country seems at the precipice of witnessing them on a regular basis.  Gaza’s killing fields are getting bloodier by the hour.  

The chief victims of this bloody phenomenon are the ordinary people, whose main aspirations is are to have productive careers, raise families, and live happily.  But happiness is increasingly becoming a rare commodity.

Here is the essence of the problem in many Muslim countries:  The U.S. has decided to wage violence in the name of that awful phrase “global war on terrorism,” which is as meaningless as the “war on poverty.”  Terrorism, like poverty, has been around forever, and no use of military power alone will eradicate it from the face of the earth.  Awful concepts like “regime change,” “preemptive war,” and the “war of choice” were applied to Muslim countries.  George W. Bush’s warning, “either you are with us or with the terrorists,” was also largely aimed at Muslim countries. 

The United States encountered something called the “Iraqi quagmire,” and almost lost its war in that country until the Sunni Muslims came to its rescue.  The same group (Sons of Iraq) is still crucial for the durability of peace and continued success of America’s “surge” strategy.  A strategy, which was aimed at clearing the hostile territory, by holding it, stationing security forces, and by rebuilding civilian authority and economic development.  But that is just one precondition; the other being a systematic inclusion of Sunni Muslims in the governance of Iraq.  Iraq remains a work in progress.  It is likely to return to its instability of 2005-2007, if the Sunnis do not become an important part of its ruling circles.

Israel has adopted the same approach—letting loose its military fury—in the name of establishing its “credible deterrence” among Arab nations, especially since it was humiliated by the Hezbollah in the “war” of July-August 2006.  Purely on a force-on-force basis, Israel did not lose that war.  Its mistake was that it established very precise goals of eradicating Hezbollah and having its own captive soldiers released.  When those objectives were not achieved and Israel stopped bombing Southern Lebanon, both the Western and the Arab media declared it the “loser” of that war.  To Israel’s bitter resentment, the Hezbollah not only survived, but became an inordinately popular organization in the Arab streets, as well as in Lebanon.  As such, it also challenged the governing authority of the U.S.-backed government of Premier Fouad Siniora.  Siniora has remained a weak head of the government in Lebanon primarily, if not solely, because Washington supports him.  Consequently, the legitimacy of the government in Lebanon remains shaky, at best. 

It has been a long-established fact that no outside power can institute its credibility inside a country through the use of military force or through occupation alone.  That is a universal principle. 

Syria learned that lesson at the end of many years of occupying Lebanon.  The U.S. has also learned that bitter reality after remaining an occupying power in Iraq for the past eight years.  It is likely to face the same fate in Afghanistan.  Israel refuses to learn that lesson as it invades Gaza and remains an occupying power of Palestine.  The gloomiest fact of that occupation is that the mounting toll of Palestinians will create new generations of even more enduring—and even more radical-minded—resistance to Israel than Hezbollah and Hamas have thus far demonstrated.

Unlike the historical accord between the U.S. military and the Sons of Iraq, no basis of rapprochement has been established between Israel and the Palestinians.  The Oslo Peace Accords of the early 1990s are long dead and buried.  Israel does not want to trade land for peace, and the Palestinians are much too divided to offer the Jewish state a great deal of confidence that they are ready to live in peace with their Jewish counterparts. 

Israel played a crucial role, if not in the creation of Hamas, then in definitely enhancing the presence and clout of that organization in the occupied territory many years ago.  As an Israeli historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Zeev Sternell, stated, “Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).”  Today, Hamas is the governing authority in Gaza.  Ironically, Israel’s stated objective of waging a war against Gaza is to weaken, if not eliminate, Hamas. 

However, no matter how badly the military conflict damages Hamas, it is likely to emerge as the most popular organization within the occupied Palestine as well as in the rest of the Muslim world.  According to a news dispatch from Egypt, “As the war in Gaza burned though its 14^th day, Arab governments have felt their legitimacy challenged with an uncommon virulence.”  It adds, “With each passing day, and each Palestinian death, the popularity of Hamas and other radical movements has ratcheted higher on the Arab street, while the standing of Arab leaders has suffered.”

The frustrations of the Arab masses stem from a reason that is larger than the occupation of Palestine, even though the mounting suffering of the Palestinians is also adding further fuel to those frustrations.  The chief reason for the Arab frustrations is the presence of authoritarian rule, which lingers on like an eternal curse over their existence.  From their point of view, their collective suffering will not end unless the United States stops supporting the status quo in their countries.  From the U.S. side, that authoritarian rule-based status quo is preferred over the alternative–the return of Islamist rule.  Two examples continue to haunt the U.S. decisionmakers–the Islamist-dominated rule in Iraq and the successful emergence of Hamas as the ruling entity after the elections of January 2006.  The Arab autocrats in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia suffer from the same fear.  The emergence of Hamas as the governing body over Palestine did not end their internal turbulence. 

The plight of the Palestinians was worsened when, after a bitter fight between Hamas and Fatah in June 2007, the latter took over the West bank, while Hamas maintained its political control of Gaza.  However, Hamas was unable to make a breakthrough regarding reaching a peace an agreement with Israel. 

Egypt did bring about a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in June 2008.  That agreement ended early last November.  The fact that Hamas was describing that agreement as tahdiya (a period of calm, which is temporary), as opposed to hudna (truce, which is concrete and lasting) underscored the fact that it was only a tactical maneuver.  The leaders of Hamas were adamant about describing on Al-Jazeera a tahdiya as “a tactic in conflict management and a phase in the framework of the resistance [meaning all forms of struggle].” The Israelis were not willing to fall for that ploy.  That so-called tahdiya ended early last November.  The escalating violence between the two sides since then has led to the Israeli military invasion of Gaza.

The systematic destruction of the already feeble institutional infrastructures and mounting human misery has already transformed Gaza into a hellish place.  Even though Hamas challenged Israel, and even though Hamas is also largely responsible for the breakdown of the tahdiya, the fact that Israel has been wreaking major havoc and is responsible for mounting civilian deaths in Gaza, Hamas’ popularity is most likely to escalate.  

In a perverse way, similar conditions prevail in Afghanistan.  The Western occupation forces are attempting to strengthen the authority of the government of President Hamid Karzai, whom most Pushtoon regard as a puppet of the United States.  The legitimacy of the Karzai government is a shrinking commodity.  Historically speaking, the occupiers of Afghanistan—from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union—have faced nothing but bloody battles and resulting defeat.  The Taliban—who are primarily Pushtoon—know that fact only too well.  They also know that history is on their side, as long as they do not let up on the use of violence.  The United States cannot afford to lose in Afghanistan, and the Taliban refuse to seek a rapprochement with the Karzai government.  In the process, Afghanistan has become a hellish place.

No single actor is more responsible in Pakistan’s emergence as a highly unstable country than Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and General Zia ul-Huq.  The former started the process of Islamization of that country, and the latter took it to the extreme.  The practice of using an extremist interpretation of Sunni Islam, which was intensified under Zia’s rule, was continued under the rule of General Pervez Musharraf, but with a different twist. 

Zia was forthright about his commitment to the extremist interpretation of Sunni Islam and used it unabashedly to maintain himself in power.  Musharraf, on the contrary, was duplicitous and cunning.  He presented the face of moderation toward the American interlocutor, while sustaining his alliance with the Islamists inside his country, especially in Baluchistan and in the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The extremist Islamist forces had a clear sense that Musharraf was creating a façade of suppressing or containing them.  They understood that game and played along until they decided to take on the Army, after the massacre at the Lal Masjid (red mosque) on July 13, 2007.  That bloody event marked the beginning of the end of the Musharraf regime.  But when he was forced out of office and democracy returned to Pakistan, it was a feeble government while extremist forces were very much on the offensive.

The continued escalated pace of violence—which resulted in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007, and an assassination attempt on the life of Prime Minister Yusuf Reza Gilani on September 3, 2008—numerous suicide attacks and the resultant deaths of civilians as well as military personnel, leave little doubt about the march of Pakistan toward further instability.

As the United States gets ready to enlarge the presence of its troops in Afghanistan, the biggest question is whether the Surge strategy can be successfully implemented in Afghanistan.  Even if one were to be optimistic about such prospects, it should be kept in mind that stability and security of Afghanistan has been intrinsically linked to the security and stability of Pakistan since the 1980s.  The United States has known that fact.  But, under the administration of President Barack Obama, it might not remember, at its own peril.

In summarizing the overall situation in many Muslim countries, what is needed in Gaza, for starters, is a reinstatement of indirect negotiations between the parties, with Egypt serving, once again, as an intermediary.  After that, the only alternative for the Obama administration will be to plunge itself into endless rounds of negotiations, first with Hamas and Fatah, and then by bringing all Arab and Israeli contenders to the negotiating table. 

Even under the heap of mounting bitterness, the Palestinians know that the United States is the only actor that can exercise its influence on Israel.  This is not about putting pressure on the Jewish state.  Israelis know better than anyone else that there is no way they can resolve the conflict with the Palestinians by resorting to military force alone.   However, there is no denial of the significant role of an intermediary.  And only the U.S. can play that role, largely because Israel trusts the U.S., and also because it is a major recipient of U.S. military and economic assistance.  Besides, the Obama administration does not carry the same baggage of high partisanship that the Bush administration demonstrated toward Israel.

In South Asia, there is an urgent need for the application of a new “surge” strategy.  Such a strategy must treat Pakistan and Afghanistan as two sides of the same coin and it should be multi-dimensional.  Its features include massive economic assistance, revision of educational curricula, building of civilian infrastructure, implementation of civil-military relations that assign supremacy of civilian authority, eradication of the opium trade culture, and elimination of the proliferation of small arms from both Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

The chief tactic to escalate the feeling of security in the Pakistani ruling circles (of which the Pakistan Army is the most important part) is to ensure that India has minimal diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.  Any heightened Indian diplomatic presence in Afghanistan—which is the current reality on the ground—will motivate Pakistan to destabilize Afghanistan, fearing collusion between Afghanistan and India, whose purpose it is to destabilize Pakistan.  A general suspicion is that Pakistan’s highly secretive intelligence service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), sponsored the terrorist attack on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan in July 2008. 

The most unfortunate part of the current reality is that both Pakistan and Afghanistan have become fertile places for the mushrooming of extremism.  The deteriorating quality of life in those countries—as is also the case in occupied Palestine—is definitely adding further momentum for the growth of that phenomenon.  No simple solution that comprises only the use of military force will work.  In the pre-surge days, Iraq was the primary example of that fact.  It was only through the multidimensional application of the surge strategy that Iraq is making steady progress toward political stability.  That reality becomes a powerful argument for the implementation of the aforementioned multidimensional strategy in Afghanistan.

There is some reason to be optimistic, however, that the United States will develop a sophisticated understanding of the significance of Pakistan in the coming days.  According to a recent New York Times dispatch, the outgoing Bush administration has handed over to the Obama transition team a lengthy report on Afghanistan and Pakistan.  That report concluded, “that in the end, the United States has far more at stake in preventing Pakistan’s collapse than it does in stabilizing Afghanistan or Iraq.”