Lost in the Middle East

摘要

"Stuff happens," said a nonchalant Donald Rumsfeld, as looters trashed Baghdad. "The birth pangs of a new Middle East," claimed Condoleezza Pollyanna Rice last week as Hiz-bullah's rockets slammed into Israel and Israel's aircraft pulver- ised Lebanon. This week America was conspicuously resisting calls for an immediate Israeli withdrawal. Whatever else is go- ing wrong for America in the Middle East, the Bush administra- tion shows an unmatched ability to put its case in ways that make its friends squirm and its enemies fume with rage. Be- yond the tin ear, however, is American policy really as malign, muddle-headed and incompetent as its critics say?