US Gets No Traction in the Middle East

More than five years after invading Iraq as a first step toward "transforming" the Middle East, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush seems to have lost its footing – let alone its unquestioned domination – throughout the region. The talk of "democratizing" the region has almost entirely disappeared from the administration's rhetoric as Washington has had to sacrifice whatever pressure it had been willing to exert on "friendly authoritarians" among Arab states to bolstering their rule against popular sentiment that has become considerably more hostile toward the U.S. than before the invasion. Similarly, its plan after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war to forge a de facto coalition between Jewish state and those same "moderate" authoritarians against the threat posed by Iran, Syria, and their allies in the Levant has... [read full story]