George Will Tees Off On Condi and the Neo-Cons

George Will takes his stand -- the illusory stability of despotism and resentment is preferable to the frightening possibilities of democracy revealed by the present Mideast crisis. He writes:

"GROTESQUE" was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's characterization of the charge that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was responsible for the current Middle East conflagration. She is correct, up to a point. This point: Hezbollah and Hamas were alive and toxic long before March 2003. Still, it is not perverse to wonder whether the spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson - one that conservatives should not have to learn on the job - about the limits of power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies.

He sees no hope for the future of the region.

America's intervention was supposed to democratize Iraq which, by benign infection, would transform the region. Early on in the Iraq occupation, Rice argued that democratic institutions do not just spring from a hospitable political culture, they also can help create such a culture. Perhaps.

But elections have transformed Hamas into the government of the Palestinian territories, and elections have turned Hezbollah into a significant faction in Lebanon's parliament, from which it operates as a state within the state. And as a possible harbinger of future horrors, last year's elections gave the Muslim Brotherhood 19 percent of the seats in Egypt's parliament.

Read it here.

To which the only appropriate response is the one President Bush gave to Putin -- "just wait."

The optimisim of the neo-conservatives, so roundly denounced by Will, may be a fantasy, but so, too, are the dystopian visions he accepts. Condi's point is broader and far more significant that Will admits. There were Arab-Israeli conflicts before Bush. The Islamic Republic and Iran's dreams of regional hegemony long antedate Bush -- so do the Jihadi NGOs and the evil they wreak. Condi is right when she notes that the stability of the past was largely illusory. Terrorism was on the rise before Iraq, major conflicts plagued the region, the jihadi movements were already active in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and elsewhere throughout the region long before Bush.

And are things today really worse? Until the Israeli attack Lebanon was prospering under a weak, but democratic government, finally freed from a brutal and lethal Syrian domination. It is by no means clear that Afghanistan and Iraq are, as Will seems to assume, lost causes. It is an open question as to whether positive trends outweigh the negative. The opponents Israel faces in this round of conflict are far less formidable than those arrayed against it in the past. Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab states are remaining aloof, and of course Iraq is no longer a threat. And we are still awaiting the apparently mythical rising of the "Arab street." The situation is hardly as bad as Will seems to think.

Condi is perfectly right to assert that in a post-9/11 world the kind of disengagement Will seems to favor is no longer possible. Will is right to assert that instability is not a sign of progress, but that is not the case the administration is making. The current instability, as Condi would be quick to point out, may be frightening, but it also affords the possibility of progress -- something that was lacking in the long period of despotic "stability" and festering resentment out of which jihadism was born.

It is far too early to jump to conclusions. Have some patience. One thing is certain -- the past is no adequate guide to the future and that, as a famous criminal mastermind might say, is a "good thing."