In two excellent articles, here and here,Thomas Friedman gets to the heart of the problem facing US Middle Eastern policy. To summarise, both Israelis and Palestinians are stuck with leaders who have repeatedly failed them, and led them into a cycle of attacks and reprisals. While the cycle goes on, neither side is prepared to gratify the other by dumping their failed leader and electing one who will make peace. By backing Sharon, the US ensures that it is hated by all those who support the Palestinians, which means virtually everybody in the region outside Israel. This in turn means that the idea of a democratic revolution in Iraq is doomed from Day One. Any democratically-elected government would be more fundamentally anti-American than Saddam (an American ally who merely miscalculated what he could get away with in Kuwait).

I’ll add my own analysis to this. What this means is that the Administration got its policy in the wrong order. It should first have leant hard on both sides until they agreed on peace terms essentially on the lines of the Clinton plan (though the paternity would obviously have to be denied). Once people in the rest of the region saw Israeli settlements actually being dismantled, Bush would have had a free pass as regards Iraq, and democratic reconstruction would actually have been possible.

It might still be possible to resurrect this strategy, by dragging out inspections and keeping the pressure on Saddam as long as possible. If the Israeli elections produce some swing to the left, and the US starts applying pressure, it might be possible for the Palestinian leadership to curb terror attacks long enough to reach an agreement. Then we might see a Palestinian state with democratic elections – Arafat might win the first of these, but not the second. And as I’ve said, success on this front would give Bush plenty of political capital to use in justifying an attack on Saddam.,

That’s a lot of ‘mights’ and ‘ifs’ but I think this offers a better chance than occupying Baghdad and then working out what to do next.