Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

It was Rice who waited more than a week, giving Israel time to pound the daylights out of Lebanon, before finding time to visit Beirut and Tel Aviv and attend a crisis summit in Rome. It was Rice who spent her trip categorically ruling out a quick cease-fire, which made one wonder if she really needed to travel at all, since she could have just thumbed out a text message: "2 soon 2 stop boom boom."

The most significant development from Rice's swing through the region was that she took personal ownership of the bloody, escalating war between Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas with a single breathtaking pronouncement:

"It is time for a new Middle East. It is time to say to those who do not want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail, they will not."

Take a moment to absorb those two sentences. The bit about how "we will prevail" is just standard chest-thumping from the Bush administration, the equivalent of George W. Bush's "bring it on" challenge to the Iraqi insurgents. It's the "new Middle East" part, which she repeated at every opportunity, that makes this Condi's war and that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of the region.

What secretary of state hasn't dreamed of a new Middle East where peaceful, democratic nations live in harmony? They all have, I suspect, but any utopian fantasies they might have entertained inevitably ran smack into dystopian realities. The current-model Middle East is replete with legitimate grievances, non-negotiable demands, ancient resentments, Machiavellian alliances, religious fanaticism and modern weapons of war. The idea of a grand stroke that would somehow create a "new" model is not just unrealistic, it's downright frightening.

Does Rice envision that in her "new" Middle East, Palestinians will somehow develop amnesia and forget their aspirations for a viable independent state? Does she believe the autocrats in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere will allow free and fair elections -- and that voters will reject the militant faith-based factions that for years have been providing needed services that corrupt governments can't be bothered with? Does she think anyone is going to see the uncontrollable Frankenstein's monster we created in Iraq as a model to emulate?

The one thing that's clear so far is that Rice believes that allowing Israel to decimate Hezbollah and drive what's left of the group out of southern Lebanon is such a valuable step toward her "new" Middle East that it's worth crippling a nascent Arab democracy with hundreds of civilian casualties and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure damage.