Courtesy of the White House
President Bush speaks on the phone to Ariel Sharon on Saturday from the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Road to Baghdad now runs through Jerusalem

DOYLE MCMANUS AND ROBIN WRIGHT, LOS ANGELES TIMES

Originally published Sunday, April 7, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Since the shock of Sept. 11, President Bush has pursued a sharply focused foreign policy agenda with single-minded zeal: Terrorism was civilization's mortal enemy, he said, and his historic mission was to stamp it out, beginning in Afghanistan and moving on to Iraq.

"My job isn't to try to nuance," Bush said recently. "My job is to tell people what I think. And when I think there's an axis of evil, I say it. I think moral clarity is important."

But Bush's one-track agenda appears to have been hijacked by events in the Middle East -- and by Arab and European allies who want less attention to moral clarity and more to the nuances.

As a result, the president finds himself stepping grimly into the nuance-ridden landscape of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Saturday, that meant taking the unfamiliar step of scolding Israel for ignoring his plea to withdraw its tanks from the West Bank.

Bush has continued to make his larger aim clear: Keep the global war against terrorism on track. That still includes overthrowing the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the president said Saturday.

But the Bush administration's road to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, now appears to run through Jerusalem.

The uproar over Israel's military offensive in the West Bank could endanger the stability of Egypt and Jordan, key allies that the United States wants on its side for any action against Iraq.

Stopping the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians will be difficult enough. But as Vice President Dick Cheney discovered on his trip through Europe and the Middle East two weeks ago, none of the United States' major allies is willing yet to join in a public threat of war against Iraq.

If the road to Baghdad leads not only through Jerusalem, but also through Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Paris and Moscow as well, it might be a long journey.

"Almost every Arab state and the Europeans were uncomfortable with the logic of the war on terrorism and where it was taking them," said Leslie H. Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Refocusing on the Arab-Israeli conflict "was a way to re-establish the old game. And they won."

To Democratic foreign policy experts, the administration's struggle with the ambiguities of the Middle East was an occasion for satisfaction and sympathy.

"What happens to this administration happens to everybody; they came up against reality," said James B. Steinberg, a former aide to President Clinton. "When you run for office, it's tempting to have a clear-cut, fairly black-and-white view of the world. It makes for a more effective campaign, and it gives clarity. Then when you come into office, it becomes complicated."

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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