Bush Fiddles While Middle East Burns

President Bush said Friday through press secretary Tony Snow that Bush is "not going to make military decisions for Israel." Well our president better start making decisions because Israel is destroying his presidency and setting the Middle East on fire. Like the Emperor Nero, Bush fiddles while Israeli warmongers destroy America’s foreign policy.

It won’t be long before Americans are saying, "Bring back Saddam Hussein. Just get us out of here." That sort of tells you how bad things are becoming, all while our president is blissfully ignorant of recent developments and their devastating impact on Americans.

Vice President Cheney and company used to say "The road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad." In other words, once we conquered Saddam Hussein, Palestinians would meekly surrender and Israelis would rule the Middle East as our viceroys.

Today, it looks like the road back to Crawford, Texas is going to beckon Bush even earlier than he expected. The only thing American policy has created in the Middle East is conditions for a regional war that will end up undermining and eventually destroying the Israeli state.

Bush claims to be the most "pro-Israel" president in history. In terms of letting Israelis commit atrocities and engage in acts of self-destruction with impunity, he’s right. No other president has allowed Israel to terrorize the entire region. But this is hardly a policy that is going to lead to peace and democracy. Rather, it has led Israelis to provoke a new war they are certain to lose.

And Israelis have reminded yet another generation of Arabs why Israel is the implacable enemy, and a new generation of young Americans why the United States can no longer support the Israeli regime.

Not everyone is stupid. The Israeli prime minister’s son has already left the country and lives in New York.

Israeli war hawks have been itching for a war, and seeking to provoke hostilities by their blockade of the Gaza Strip and their attacks on civilians there. Well, Houston, "They got themselves a war." On two fronts, no less. Now all they have to do is find themselves a way out of it.

Israelis are like the children who love provoking fights in a playground. But they don’t like it when their provocations end up hurting them. Israelis are all for claiming they are in a "war," as long as they are the only ones who get to do the killing; and until the victims on the other side start fighting back and killing Israelis. The victims of Israel’s aggression, occupation and repression have begun to fight back. And Israelis don’t like it one bit. Now they are dying too.

Moktada al-Sadr must be celebrating tonight. He now has a mission every Iraqi will endorse: defeat the Americans to humiliate the Israelis. And there is very little we can do about it. The American puppet regime in Baghdad is not going to stand against the Iraqi people. Oh, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki will speak words of caution, but his actions will belie a hardening of opposition to the American presence.

Israel has endangered every American in Iraq and blown a hole in the Iraqi government that Bush & Co. have worked so hard to create.

The New York Times website has a picture of Iraqis marching against America and linking the United States to Israeli aggression. Well, it’s true. Bush has washed his hands of Israeli attacks on civilians and satisfies himself with blather about restraint. Bush may be restrained, but the Israelis are not.

Another celebrant tonight is the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez: While America and Israel drown in the Middle East, Venezuela is left unfettered to create diversionary mischief in South America

The bluster by some Israelis concerning the war they have triggered reflects words spoken by madmen. Issac Herzog, an Israeli cabinet member, was quoted by the New York Times as saying that "Isarel..has decided to put an end to [Hezbollah]." Oh really? Hezbollah might just put an end to Israel. All bets are off.

The reality is that the "war cabinet" in Tel Aviv is undermining Israel, by accelerating the decline and demise of the Israeli state. Speak about unintended consequences.

Israel has just made hundreds of thousands of Americans serving in the Middle East prime targets for retaliation. At this rate, no one will ever "stand up" so we can "stand down." If we are left standing at all. America will be pushed out of the Middle East by the actions of the very people that we have sworn to defend, the Israeli militarists.

It is not an exaggeration to say the death of Bush’s presidency is accelerating hour-by-hour as Israelis continue terror attacks on innocent civilians.

Iraqi insurgents have shown how a "superpower" can be brought to its knees by roadside explosives. Bush has been forced to confront that his "super-powers" have clay feet.

Friday, Hezbollah launched an aerial attack on Israeli ships. A new form of warfare has begun. Israeli sailors are dead. Some naval blockade. It looks like the Israeli Navy will soon rival the Swiss Navy. Gilbert & Sullivan, anyone?

The Israeli "superpower" must resort to terrorism and barbarities against innocent civilians because Israel is no superpower. They just think they are. It is a small country arrogantly bent on self-destruction. And America’s leaders are equally insistent that Americans fall into the abyss along with the Israelis.

Or, as Lloyd Bentsen might have said, "I knew Nero, President Bush. You’re no Nero. You can’t fiddle worth a damn." But Nero would be proud of Bush’s foreign policy. Come to think of it, even Saddam Hussein must like it. Saddam knows a little about self-destruction. He must be enjoying the show.

The new War in the Middle East ensures that the Bush presidency is dead. The problem is, every American is left endangered by the collapse of our government’s policy there: by the incompetence of our leaders; by the gullibility of our president. And by our obsession with doing the bidding of the Israeli regime. Self-destruction, anyone?