For leaders in democracies, perhaps the most difficult decision is to change course. Decision-making is hard enough. Revisiting decisions and acknowledging mistakes is simply beyond the capabilities of most leaders. Once they have chosen a strategy, they stick with it for better or for worse.

For a leader to change strategic course, he must first be convinced that his own fortunes are inextricably linked with maintaining failure or moving on towards success. He must believe, in other words, that he has no choice other than to change course.

The current issue of the Weekly Standard contains two articles which lay bare this basic truth. In one, "How Bush decided on the surge," Fred Barnes describes how US President George W. Bush decided to adopt a new strategy for winning the campaign in Iraq. In the other, "Ehud Olmert's Israel," Peter Berkowitz describes how Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has refused to revisit his own strategies for contending with the burgeoning threats to Israel's national security.

Barnes's article depicts a president who at the end of 2006 found himself isolated from the military, Congress and his own Secretary of State as the campaign in Iraq appeared increasingly unwinnable. The going consensus asserted that the reason the war was unwinnable was because US forces themselves were the cause of the fighting. If the US left, or simply hid in big bases outside the population centers and sufficed with training Iraqi forces, then the war would end.

Bush didn't believe them. And he couldn't accept the view that victory was unattainable. As he put it to Barnes, "Failure was no option…. I never thought I had to give up the goal of winning."

So he didn't. Instead, working with his National Security Council and relying on the work of people outside the administration and the Pentagon, he embraced the view that the war was the fault of the terrorists - not the US. Bush recognized that far from wishing for the US forces to withdraw from the country, the Iraqis wished for the Americans to stay and protect them. The surge strategy - which involved an increase in forces, and an intimate engagement of the forces in securing the lives and property of Iraqi civilians - has done just that. And the results have been dramatic.

As Max Boot reported in the Weekly Standard, "Iraqi and American deaths fell by approximately 80 percent between December 2006 and December 2007, and life is returning to a semblance of normality in much of Baghdad." Wherever the Americans are operating, al-Qaida is being defeated, the Shi'ite militias are fading away and life is changing for the better as more and more Iraqis come to trust and support the Americans and the Iraqi security forces working with them.

WITH THE presidential race moving into full swing, the sustainability of Bush's new strategy into the next administration is a key concern. The media's coverage of the campaign in Iraq has been so negative for so long that in spite of the transformation of the security situation in the country over the past year, the public still considers the war to have been a failed endeavor. More Americans trust the Democrats, who have pledged to withdraw from Iraq, to handle the war than Republicans, who have pledged to see it through to victory.

On the other hand, in spite of the media's condemnation of the war, Americans today believe they are winning the war in Iraq. According to an NBC News - Wall Street Journal poll, 39 percent of Americans believe that the situation in Iraq has improved over the last six months and only 16 percent believe it has gotten worse. Even if the Democrats win the White House in November, it is hard to see the next president convincing the American people to turn their backs on victory.

Barnes is impressed by Bush's courage to move forward, almost alone and change the war-fighting strategy in order to enable victory in Iraq. If Bush hadn't acted as he did when he did, there can be little doubt that the US would have lost in Iraq. The public was willing to accept defeat. Congress was positively demanding defeat. The New York Times might have even granted Bush 15 minutes of sympathetic coverage if he had behaved "pragmatically" and embraced defeat in Iraq.

THE FACT that a failed leader can expect to find public support for his weakness was manifested in Berkowitz's portrait of Olmert. Just as the media has manufactured false realities to convince some 60 percent of the American public that the Iraq campaign is not only unwinnable but that the US doesn't deserve to win, so too, the media has labored for years to convince the majority of Israelis that we cannot win and indeed have no right to victory.

Berkowitz's opening paragraph attests to the success of their labors. He began his profile of Olmert by noting that some 70 percent of Israelis support the establishment of a Palestinian state. He asserted, as the media does, that the only people in Israel who don't support the establishment of such a state are right-wing extremists who no one would want to be associated with.

Having established that the only socially and morally acceptable view of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians is that Israel must feel bad for controlling Judea, Samaria and united Jerusalem, and that Israelis must feel happy that Israel no longer controls Gaza, Berkowitz goes on to uphold Olmert as a competent and socially acceptable leader.

This is the same Ehud Olmert who led Israel to defeat in the 2006 war in Lebanon. Thhis is the same Olmert who has exhibited unconscionable incompetence in contending with the Hamas caliphate in Gaza, its rocket and mortar war against southern Israel and its takeover of Gaza's international border with Egypt. And this is the same Olmert who now fervently advocates surrendering Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. Such a land handover would place all of Israel within Palestinian and Lebanese rocket, mortar and missile range.

Moreover, Olmert has done nothing to stem the Bush administration's abandonment of Israel as a strategic ally and has been so feckless in his handling of Iran's nuclear weapons program that Israel finds itself completely alone to face Iran as the mullahs surge toward nuclear capabilities.

TO DEFEND Olmert as a competent leader, Berkowitz turned to political consultant Eyal Arad who served as former prime minister Ariel Sharon's and Olmert's public relations guru and strategic counselor. This was a reasonable move. Arad oversaw the infantalization of Israeli politics and the trivialization of the national discourse. It was Arad who together with his fellow public relations consultants convinced Sharon that his political survival was contingent on adopting the radical Left's strategy of surrender and appeasement. Arad, and his partner Reuven Adler, convinced Sharon to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria. They then convinced him to destroy Likud and form the Kadima party. After Sharon was felled by a stroke two years ago, they managed Olmert's campaign as the head of Kadima in the 2006 elections.

As Yediot Aharonot reported after the elections, Arad and Adler viewed Kadima not as a political party, but as an ad campaign. They viewed its candidates not as leaders of a threatened country, but as products they had to sell like chocolate bars to Israeli consumers at the ballot box. And indeed, like actors in candy commercials, Kadima's candidates were taught to parrot the Arad and Adler line that if they formed the next government, they would make Israel a country that's "fun to live in."

SPEAKING to Berkowitz, Arad kept to his script portraying Israel as an amusement park. He downplayed the significance of the fact that thanks to Sharon and Olmert Israel is threatened as never before. What is really important, he said, is that Israelis - particularly in Tel Aviv - are enjoying the economic benefits of the free market and buying all sorts of fancy gadgets as the Tel Aviv skyline grows taller and shinier. And Berkowitz believed him.

Berkowitz extolled Olmert's assertion at the Herzliya conference last week that the fact that Hizbullah hasn't been fighting Israel in 18 months means that Israel restored its deterrent capabilities in 2006 war. The fact that Hizbullah is currently otherwise engaged in taking over Lebanon is apparently of little concern or relevance to either Olmert or Berkowitz.

What the contrasting tales of Bush and Barnes and Olmert and Berkowitz show clearly is that strategic shifts, even when necessary, can never be foregone conclusions. Bush would have had no trouble finding a reporter to extol his prudence in accepting defeat in Iraq if he had decided not to buck the media and indeed his own administration in order to win in Iraq and secure his place in history. There would have been a multitude of reporters like Berkowitz willing to tell the 60 percent of Americans who want to leave Iraq within a year that they are right to believe that you can win a war by losing it.

The articles though also show something else. They show the difference between leaders who believe in using their power to advance ideas and leaders who use their power to advance themselves. While Bush recognizes that historians will judge him not by whether he was liked, but by whether he left America safer than he received it, Olmert couldn't care less how history judges him. He just wants to be prime minister, and to maintain power he finds it more convenient to tell Israelis to have a good time than to ask us to join him in defending the country from those who seek our destruction. It is easier to tell us that defending our country is socially unacceptable and that good Israelis choose to empower terrorists instead -- in the name of peace.

Or maybe Olmert has it right and Bush is a fool. After all, if he could convince Berkowitz to trust him, perhaps future historians will truly believe that the best way to secure one's country is to accept defeat with a grin.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Tuesday Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had his first reported telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Their conversation was a sign of the rising intimacy in Egyptian-Iranian relations in the wake of November's US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons program. According to media reports, the two men discussed the situation in Gaza.

Their conversation brought immediate results. Wednesday Mubarak allowed Hamas to take control of the international border between Egypt and Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans streamed across the border. Mubarak maintained his faith with Ahmadinejad even after the US began demanding Wednesday afternoon that he reassert Egyptian control over the border. Wednesday evening Mubarak said that the border would remain open.

Wednesday's border takeover by Hamas was but the latest escalation of the Palestinian campaign for control over the international border. This campaign has been ongoing since Israel withdrew in 2005 and was sharply escalated after Hamas seized control over Gaza last June.

Many claim that Hamas's aim of attaching Gaza to the rest of the Arab world by opening its border with Egypt is good for Israel because it allows Israel to disengage completely from Gaza. And there is some truth to this claim. With an open border with Egypt, Gazans will be far less dependent on Israel. To a degree this may help Israel to ease international pressure on it to continue to support Gaza by providing its Hamas-supporting population with electricity, fuel, food and employment opportunities.

But that is not the main significance of the move. Supported and directed by Iran and Syria, Hamas is uninterested in maintaining ties with Israel. Its short term goals are to end its diplomatic isolation in the West, and to force Fatah to accept its control over Gaza and reinstate open negotiations towards the reestablishment of a unity government between Fatah and Hamas. Its medium term goals involve extending its control over Gaza to Judea and Samaria and then unifying the west and east banks of the Jordan River by overwhelming the border with Jordan in much the same way it took control over the border with Gaza.

For its part, in the lead-up to the Hamas border takeover on Wednesday and in its aftermath, Fatah has shown itself to be wholly incapable of influencing events either in Gaza or in Judea and Samaria. It has been unable, despite its massive financial resources, to in any way degrade Hamas's popularity in Gaza. It has been unable to keep its own forces in Gaza from integrating with Hamas. It has been unable to stem Hamas's rising popularity in Judea and Samaria.

Hamas's border takeover was synchronized to take place at the same time as Hamas leaders were meeting with their Palestinian and Lebanese jihadist counterparts at an anti-peace conference in Damascus. The conference, held under Syrian and Iranian sponsorship, was supposed to be held at the same time as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's peace conference at Annapolis. But since the State Department decided to invite Syria to attend that conference, Damascus decided to delay its anti-peace conference until this week. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas went to Syria in recent weeks to beg Syrian President Bashar Assad to cancel the conclave, organized to demonstrate Fatah's weakness and unpopularity, but his appeals failed.

In this regard, it also bears noting that Fatah's response to the erosion of its power has been to escalate its support for jihad. Its television and radio broadcasts are indistinguishable from Hamas's. Its security forces in Judea and Samaria actively engage in terrorism against Israel. Its residual forces in Gaza are full partners in the rocket and mortar attacks on the Western Negev.

THE STRATEGIC significance of Hamas's border war clearly escaped the attention of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. In her address before the Herzliya Conference on Tuesday, Livni spoke as if Hamas can simply be wished away. The day before Egypt surrendered control over its border to Hamas, Livni claimed that in the Arab world, "Nobody wants to see Hamas succeed."

Livni then went on to justify the negotiations she is holding with Fatah's Ahmed Qurei towards an Israeli handover of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, claiming that by negotiating massive Israeli land giveaways she is preventing the Palestinian conflict with Israel from turning into a religious conflict. She also claimed separately that Israel's conflict with Iran is not related to its conflict with the Palestinians.

All of Livni's statements are demonstrably false. Discussing the surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem with Fatah does not weaken Hamas. It strengthens Hamas. Either the discussions will succeed, in which case Hamas will seize control over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem from Fatah the minute that Israel withdraws, or the talks will fail, in which case Hamas will say it just goes to show that there is nothing to talk with Israel about. It will then reunify its forces with Fatah and increase its subversion of Israel's Arab citizens. In all cases, Hamas, with its clear vision of Israel replaced by an Islamic caliphate, comes out the winner.

Livni's assertion that Iran is unconnected to the Palestinians is similarly ridiculous. Livni was a member of Ariel Sharon's government in January 2002 when Israeli naval commandos seized the Iranian cargo ship Karine A in the Red Sea. That was a ship purchased by Fatah, filled with Iranian weapons en route to Fatah forces. It was commanded by Fatah officers and manned by Fatah sailors. Livni was there when the decision was made to use Fatah's clear connections to Iran as a reason for not conducting negotiations with the group.

And of course, Iran today is Hamas's primary sponsor. And its sponsorship of Hamas is facilitating Iran's bid to secure Arab support for its war against Israel and the US. So Livni's contention that Iran is unrelated to the Palestinians is both ridiculous and dangerous.

Livni's championing of Fatah and continued Israeli territorial surrenders to the Palestinians is identical to her boss Ehud Olmert's. So too, her dismissive treatment of the threat arising from Hamas's continued control over Gaza, like her dismissive treatment of Hizbullah's reinforcement in Lebanon and the importance of the US's retreat from strategic rationality towards Iran in the wake of the NIE, is no different from Olmert's.

IT IS important to note this fact because a week before the publication of the Winograd Committee's final report on the Second Lebanon War, Olmert's blood is in the water. The publication this week of an open letter by 50 reserve company commanders essentially demanding that Olmert resign after the report is released is a preview of the public calls for his departure from office that will sweep the country starting January 31.

While the leaders of the radical Left in Peace Now, Meretz, and Haaretz are supporting Olmert's bid to remain in office and launching smear campaigns against all forces rising against him, the fact is that even his most ardent supporters know that it will be difficult to protect Olmert from the public after the Winograd Report is published. Consequently, leading figures on the Left, in Labor and Kadima are seeking ways to force Olmert out of office and replace him with Livni.

Livni escaped the public's wrath over the consequences of the failed 2006 war with Hizbullah. During the war she took a backseat to Olmert and then defense minister Amir Peretz, rarely speaking publicly. Yet from the outset of the war Livni led the diplomatic campaign for a cease-fire. And her campaign was flawed and failed - no less, and indeed more than the military campaign.

Livni began her diplomatic machinations with two incorrect assumptions. First, she assumed that Israel could not defeat Hizbullah militarily. As a result, from the very beginning she opposed any escalation of Israel's campaign in Lebanon. Second, she believed that the international community would agree to fight Hizbullah for Israel. As a result she worked hard to get a Chapter VII - that is legally binding - UN Security Council resolution setting up such a force.

The government's refusal to authorize a timely ground assault in Lebanon ensured that Israel would not defeat Hizbullah. Livni's belief that the international community would be interested in fighting Hizbullah led to Israel becoming the main champion of UNIFIL which both before and since the war has acted as a shield for Hizbullah against Israel.

And yet, Livni's diplomatic skills couldn't even secure her own limited and incorrect goal of securing a binding, strong international force in south Lebanon. In his book, Surrender is not an Option, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton wrote that on the eve of the Security Council vote on Resolution 1701, which set the terms of the cease-fire, Livni complained to Rice, "You've given away the cease-fire, you've given away Chapter VII, you've given away Shaba Farms, now tell us why we should sign on to the resolution?"

But of course, when the next day the resolution passed unanimously in the Security Council, Livni was quick to tout it as a strategic success. And ever since, in spite of the fact that under 1701 Hizbullah has rearmed and reasserted its control over south Lebanon; paralyzed the Lebanese government; expanded its influence over the Lebanese military and intimidated UNIFIL, Livni continues to uphold the resolution as proof of her own competence. And she has yet to be called on this.

In his own speech on Wednesday at Herzliya, Olmert tried to silence critics of his government's incompetent response to the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Olmert argued "If the quiet prevailing in the North would prevail today in the southern part of the country, would we be occupied with a daily counting of the number of rockets and missiles which would be hoarded there in storerooms?"

That is, in Olmert's view, the nature of both Hizbullah and Hamas, their ties with Iran and Syria, and their burgeoning arsenals are unimportant. The only thing that matters is if they are presently shooting at Israel. And Livni's view is just as outrageous.

In her speech on Thursday at Davos, Livni proclaimed that the threat Iran poses to global security stems not from its nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorism but from its opposition to her negotiations with Qurei. Livni was quoted as remarking, "Iran is a global threat which threatens the peace process."

The Olmert-Livni government's ineptitude has brought about a situation where Israel is threatened by Iranian proxies on three borders. Its diplomatic fumbling of Iran's nuclear program has led to a situation where Israel finds itself alone against Iran's Manhattan Project. Its diplomatic fumbling of Hamas's takeover of Gaza has led to a willingness of ever-widening circles of Western diplomats and policymakers to recognize the jihadist movement as a legitimate player in the region. Its diplomatic failures during the war with Hizbullah enabled Hizbullah to emerge from the war strengthened diplomatically and positioned to reignite the war whenever Iran orders it to do so.

Next week's publication of the Winograd Committee's report has the potential to finally end Olmert's premiership. But if the post-Winograd political reshuffle is limited to replacing Olmert with Livni, Israel will be no better off.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

It is hard to believe, but in just two weeks, American voters will all but determine the identities of the Democratic and Republican nominees for this year's presidential elections. It is hard to believe because today, after a handful of early primaries, neither side has even identified a frontrunner.

The open race, unprecedented in recent history, is a consequence of the fragmentation of America's political center. Ten years after Bill Clinton's impeachment; seven years after President George W. Bush's contested victory in 2000; and five years into the Iraq campaign, the cleavages both between the two major parties and within them have given purchase to candidates and policies that would have previously never made it out of the starting gate.

On the Republican side, this phenomenon is being played out in the campaigns of Congressman Ron Paul and Governor Mike Huckabee. On the Democratic side of the aisle, it is manifested in Senator Barack Obama's campaign.

Last Saturday Congressman Paul placed second in the Nevada primaries with 14 percent of the vote. Paul, who has raised some $20 million in three months, owes much of his mainstream support on both the Left and the Right to his pointed opposition to the war in Iraq. At the same time, his campaign's quest for mainstream respectability has been stymied repeatedly by the fact that neo-Nazi Web sites have embraced Paul's candidacy.

Paul's showing in Nevada was particularly impressive because a week before the Nevada primaries, James Kirchick of The New Republic published an in-depth investigative report on Paul's ideological background which showed that the neo-Nazis' support for him is not unjustified. Kirchick's report was based on a study of some three decades worth of mass-mailing political reports that have been published under Paul's name.

Kirchick's report, "Angry White Man" showed that between Paul's newsletters - whose articles are generally unsigned - and his public statements, there are strong indications that Paul shares the white supremacists' hatred of blacks, Jews and homosexuals. Moreover, Paul has spoken in warm support for the slave-owning Confederacy and the militia men who believe they must defend themselves against the Federal government and a web of global governance conspirators. He has also praised former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke.

Before Kirchick's report, Paul outpolled Giuliani threefold in the early primary states. And after the report, he had his best showing to date in Nevada.

LESS SHOCKING, but still depressing is the candidacy of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher is running an almost purely sectoral campaign for the evangelical vote.

Huckabee targets evangelicals by calling for the strengthening of America's Christian identity. Interestingly, in his bid for Christian support, Huckabee has not embraced evangelical advocacy of hawkish foreign policies and defense of Christian communities in the Muslim world. To the contrary, like former president Jimmy Carter, Huckabee advocates an emasculated foreign policy based on being nice to other countries. He likens disputes with foreign countries to family squabbles that can be solved by better communications. Following from this, Huckabee claims that America's problems with Iran are the result of America's lack of diplomatic relations with Iran.

To date, Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses, and has achieved strong second and third places in the other primary states. He lost South Carolina to Senator John McCain by a mere three points. But he doesn't appear to be made to last. His appeal to non-evangelical voters is almost nonexistent and without non-evangelical supporters, he has no chance of winning the Republican nomination.

IN CONTRAST to Paul and Huckabee, Barack Obama has a good chance of securing his party's nomination for president and winning the general election. And this is disturbing because like Paul, he enjoys the support of hateful bigots. And like Paul and Huckabee, he holds foreign policy positions which are based on the notion that the global jihad is not a serious threat.

Although the rumors that Obama - whose father and step-father were Muslims and who was educated in Muslim schools in Indonesia - is a Muslim are demonstrably false, his Christian affiliations are a cause for alarm in and of themselves.

Obama belongs to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. Its minister and Obama's spiritual adviser is Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

In an investigative report on Obama published last week by the American Thinker Web site, Ed Lasky documented multiple examples of Wright's anti-Jewish and anti-white animus. Wright has called for divestment from Israel and refers to Israel as a "racist" state. Theologically, he believes that the true "Chosen People" are the blacks. Indeed, he is a black supremacist. He believes that black values are superior to middle class American values and that blacks should isolate themselves from the wider American society.

Wright is a long-time friend of the virulently anti-Semitic head of the Nation of Islam - fellow Chicagoan Louis Farrakhan. The two traveled together to Libya some years ago to pay homage to Muammar Gaddafi. Last year Wright presented Farrakhan with a "Lifetime Achievement" award.

Although last week Obama issued a statement condemning Farrakhan for his anti-Semitism, he did not disavow Wright - who married him and baptized his daughters. Obama has taken no steps to moderate his church's anti-Israel invective.

OBAMA'S affiliation with Wright aligns with his choice of financial backers and foreign policy advisors. To varying degrees, all of them exhibit hostility towards Israel and support for appeasing jihadists.

As Lasky notes, Obama has received generous support from billionaire George Soros. In recent years, Soros has devoted himself to replacing politicians who support fighting the forces of global terror and supporting Israel with politicians who support appeasing jihadists and dumping Israel.

As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama opposed defining Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group. He calls for the US to withdraw from Iraq - only to return if genocide is being carried out and then, only as part of an international force. He also supports opening negotiations with Iran even if the Iranians continue to enrich uranium. In forming these views, he is assisted by his foreign policy team which includes Zbigniew Brzezinski, Mark Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, Susan Rice and Robert Malley.

All of these people are known either for their anti-Israel views or their pro-Arab views - or both. Malley, a Palestinian apologist invented and propagated the false claim that the 2000 Camp David summit between the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then prime minister Ehud Barak failed because Israel wasn't serious about giving the Palestinians a state. This view is disputed by Barak and Clinton.

For her part, as chief foreign policy advisor to Senator John Kerry during the 2004 presidential elections, Susan Rice reportedly convinced Kerry to announce that if elected he would appoint Jimmy Carter and James Baker to serve as his envoys for Middle East peace.

Mark Brzezinski has openly called for unconditional negotiations with Iran. For more than 30 years, Zbigniew Brzezinski has distinguished himself as one of Israel's greatest foes in Washington.

UNFORTUNATELY, in the anti-war frenzy now gripping much of the Democratic Party, one could say that there is nothing notable about the fact that Obama has hired anti-Israel foreign policy advisors, attends an anti-Israel church, and receives financial backing from anti-Israel billionaires. But even in this atmosphere Obama stands out - for not only does he theoretically support appeasement, he is actively advancing the interests of Islamists seeking to take control over a state allied with the US.

Kenya currently teeters at the edge of political chaos and civil war in the wake of the disputed Dec. 27 presidential elections. Those elections pitted incumbent President Mwai Kibaki against Raila Odinga who leads the Orange Democratic Movement. While the polls showed the public favoring Odinga, Kibaki was declared the winner. Odinga rejected the results and his supporters have gone on rampages throughout the country that have killed some 700 people so far. Fifty people were murdered when a pro-Odinga mob set ablaze a church in which they were hiding.

Kibaki is close ally of the US in the war against Islamic terror. In stark contrast, Odinga is an ally of Islamic extremists. On August 29 Odinga wrote a letter to Kenya's pro-jihadist National Muslim Leaders Forum. There he pledged that if elected he would establish Sharia courts throughout the country; enact Islamic dress codes for women; ban alcohol and pork; indoctrinate schoolchildren in the tenets of Islam; ban Christian missionary activities, and dismiss the police commissioner, "Who has allowed himself to be used by heathens and Zionists."

Although Odinga is an Anglican, he referred to Islam as the "one true religion" and scorned Christians as "worshipers of the cross."

Obama strongly supports Odinga who claims to be his cousin. As Daniel Johnson reported recently in the New York Sun, during his 2006 visit to Kenya, Obama was so outspoken in his support for Odinga that the Kenyan government complained to the State Department that Obama was interfering with the internal politics of the country. After the Dec. 27 elections Obama interrupted a campaign appearance in New Hampshire to take a call from Odinga.

THE PAST 10 years have not been good ones for the American political landscape. And in times of acrimony and fragmentation, people tend to vote their prejudices. The candidacies of Paul, Huckabee and Obama are testimonies to this fact.

It can only be hoped that in the coming weeks and months ahead of the presidential election, the political center of American politics will reassert itself and that the final race will be between leaders who abjure bigotry and understand that foreign policy is neither about minding your business nor being polite. It is about opposing enemies, supporting allies and knowing the difference between them.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

At the end of the Second Lebanon War, Israel rumbled at the edge of a political volcano. Demobilized reservists marched to Jerusalem demanding that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resign in the wake of his incompetent handling of the war.

Just as the reservists' protests were gathering momentum, in walked Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the rightist Israel Beiteinu party, and saved the government. Without so much as haggling over the price Olmert would pay for his surprising support, Lieberman joined the government in the ill-defined and powerless role of strategic affairs minister.

Lieberman defended his move on patriotic grounds. The threats facing Israel - particularly from Iran - are so great, he argued, that the country can ill afford the political instability that new elections would cause. In the present dangerous circumstances, he claimed that all patriots must set aside differences to defend the country - under Olmert's leadership.

Unfortunately, even if his motives for supporting Olmert were as pure as he claimed, his decision was ill-advised. The same government that led Israel to defeat against Hizbullah maintained its incompetence after the war to the point where Israel's strategic rationality has been tattered beyond recognition.

The question now is what will happen politically in the wake of Lieberman's departure from the Olmert government. Will his exit be as insignificant as his tenure in office, or will it spark the disintegration of the government just as his entrance into the government saved it?

All eyes today are turned toward Shas. Ahead of Lieberman's decision to pull out of the coalition, Shas leader Deputy Premier Eli Yishai told Lieberman that if the government conducts negotiations on the status of Jerusalem, his party will bolt the coalition. His promise was an odd one given that the day before he made it, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni began negotiations with the Palestinians on Jerusalem.

With Lieberman now in the opposition, it is hard to imagine Shas remaining in the government for much longer. Although Olmert is trying to convince the ultra-Orthodox party to stay on board by reinstating the Religious Affairs Ministry, as opposition leader and Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu noted recently, Shas voters will not be impressed if their party trades Jerusalem away for control of ritual baths and religious councils.

If Shas withdraws, Olmert would be left with a minority government of 55 members of Knesset - six shy of a majority. But with the support of the radical Left, Olmert would be able to survive no-confidence votes. On Wednesday Yossi Beilin announced that Meretz with its five seats will block no-confidence votes. The Arab parties, with their 10 seats, will similarly protect Olmert from new elections. So Shas's leaving would still not bring down the government. Others must go as well. And there are two groups that may step up to the plate. First, the Labor Party could bolt the coalition after the Winograd Committee publishes its final report on the war in Lebanon at the end of the month.

Labor Party leader and Defense Minister Ehud Barak is under enormous and growing pressure from the reservists to fulfill the pledge he made last year to take Labor out of the government if the report determines that Olmert failed in his leadership of the war. Unfortunately, Barak today is doing everything he can to back out of that promise.

Barak knows that if Labor leaves the government the Likud, not Labor, will be elected to form the next government. And so at present, he would rather stay with Olmert than allow the people to elect Netanyahu.

But like Yishai and Lieberman, Barak also knows that at the end of the day he has to consider the demands of his voters. The backbone of the Labor party is the kibbutz movement. And the kibbutz movement still sends its sons to serve in combat units. The sons of the kibbutz movement served in the Second Lebanon War. They expect Barak to abide by his pledge. If he doesn't they will make him pay for his dishonesty. And he knows it.

If Barak goes into the next election - now scheduled for 2010 - as the man who lied to his voters and kept Olmert in power, his political foes will discredit him. On the other hand, if he keeps his word, it is possible that even if he loses the general elections to Netanyahu, he could either join a Likud-led coalition or, with his credibility intact, he could set himself up to replace Netanyahu in a future election.

Second, there is the possibility that 11 members of Kadima's 29-person Knesset faction will bolt the party and form a new, independent party. With Israel Beiteinu and Shas out, if 11 Kadima faction members left the government, the opposition would have the requisite 61 votes to pass a no-confidence measure and move to early elections.

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz has already distinguished himself as a potential leader of such a faction. In a speech this week, Mofaz placed the blame for Israel's defeat in Lebanon squarely on Olmert's shoulders.

And Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, for his part, has been outspoken in his criticism of Olmert's mishandling of the situation in Gaza and Iran's nuclear program. Given that the polls show Kadima shrinking to 10 mandates in the next election, a number of Kadima backbenchers interested in a political future would be happy to join a breakaway party. Disgruntled Labor voters, angered at Barak's refusal to resign the government, but unwilling to vote for Likud, would likely find a new electoral home with the Kadima breakaways.

THE ABOVE analysis is no mere gossip. Today, the most pressing question facing Israel is how long our politicians will allow Olmert and Kadima to remain in power.

In every sphere of government, the Olmert government is capsizing the country. Domestically, Olmert is overseeing the demise of Israel's education system. This is due largely to his political weakness. That weakness made him unable for two months to force Israel's high school teachers to end their strike. Olmert sat on the sidelines and did nothing as the nation's children walked the streets and cruised the malls while being denied an education.

Then there are the public universities, which due to the prolonged strike by senior lecturers are about to cancel their fall semester. Rather than scaring the lecturers - whose salary demands are unjustifiable - by threatening to move government funding away from public universities to private universities and to approve the opening of more private colleges and universities, Olmert has sat back and watched the university system collapse.

And then there are the security threats, which grow by the day due to the actions and inactions of the Olmert government. Although Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is unwilling to recognize Israel's existence as a Jewish state, and despite the fact that Abbas's security forces are actively involved in terrorism and collaborating with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their missile offensive against Israel, Olmert and Livni are negotiating an agreement that would render Israel indefensible in the interest of "strengthening" Abbas, the moderate.

Also in the interest of "strengthening" Abbas, Olmert is refusing the pleas of the IDF to take control of Gaza and defeat and disarm Hamas's Iranian-trained, Iranian- and Saudi-funded, and Egyptian-supported army. Not only are the IDF's limited incursions into Gaza incapable of ending the rocket and missile assault on southern Israel, they serve to teach Hamas the IDF's tactics. Presently, due to Olmert's incompetence, Hamas holds all the advantages.

But Olmert and his government don't care. As his spokesman explained after Olmert accepted Lieberman's resignation on Wednesday, from Olmert's perspective, "There is no alternative to serious diplomatic negotiations in an effort to achieve peace... The prime minister is determined to continue diplomatic talks because he recognizes that this is the only real chance to guarantee peace and security for the citizens of Israel." So there can be no serious campaign against Hamas - only talks with Hamas's chief defender, Abbas.

Then there is Lebanon. Olmert and Livni continue to uphold UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended the war with Hizbullah as a great diplomatic and strategic achievement. But this is a lie. Under 1701, Hizbullah has rebuilt and expanded its arsenal of missiles to beyond pre-war levels. Under 1701, Hizbullah has reasserted its control over south Lebanon and renewed its pre-war intimidation of UN forces to the point where they have become a strategic liability to Israel. Under 1701, and in collaboration with Syria and Iran, Hizbullah has successfully paralyzed the Lebanese government by blocking presidential elections. Its co-option of the Lebanese army - already apparent during the war - has reached new highs.

As for Iran, since entering office, the Olmert government has stood on the sidelines as the US-led international community has done nothing to prevent Teheran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Today, in the wake of the US National Intelligence Estimate that foreclosed the option of a US assault against Iran's nuclear installations, Olmert remains on the sidelines. He does nothing as the Islamic Republic openly demonstrates its ability to attack Israel with missile-borne nuclear warheads. He does nothing as Iran openly expands its uranium enrichment and speaks of the day that Israel is no more.

Last week Olmert praised US President George W. Bush's friendship with Israel effusively. And yet, throughout his trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, both Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made it clear that the Bush administration is no longer Israel's friend. Bush no longer insists that the Palestinians end their terror war against Israel before they can get a state. Bush insists that the Palestinian state must be "territorially contiguous." This means that he supports cutting Israel into two equally indefensible parts.

Although Olmert insists the US will take care of Iran's nuclear program for Israel, Bush took pains to make clear that Olmert is wrong to believe in him. The US president said that if Iran attacks Israel, the US will come to Israel's aid. That means that the US would only act against Iran after hundreds of thousands of Israelis were killed by a nuclear attack. That is, the US will only act when it is too late to do anything except prevent Israel from retaliating. In short, far from enhancing Israel's relationship with the US, in its infinite ineptitude, the Olmert government has come close to destroying it.

AN OLD Jewish proverb explains the difference between a wise man and a smart man. A wise man, it says, is someone who knows how to get out of a mess that a smart man would never have gotten into.

Lieberman acted wisely this week when he resigned from the government. The greatest challenge facing the Israeli people today is to convince Shas and either Labor or 11 Kadima MKs, or both, to quickly follow in his footsteps.
 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Monday Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni opened negotiations with her Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qurei regarding the partition of Jerusalem; the destruction of hundreds of Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem; the expulsion of between a hundred thousand and half a million Israelis from their homes; the borders of Israel; and the right of immigration of millions of foreign, hostile Arabs to Israel.

The Olmert government's Palestinian policies are overwhelmingly rejected by the Israeli public. In a recent B'nai Brith poll, two thirds of the public said that the government has no mandate to conduct negotiations on these issues. Two thirds similarly said that they oppose any Israeli concessions in Jerusalem.

Since the end of the war in Lebanon a year and a half ago, the Olmert government's approval ratings have remained in the single digits. Last Friday's media polls showed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his government enjoying the support of a mere eight percent of their fellow citizens.

Given the public's rejection of the government's policies and contempt for its elected leaders, it would be reasonable to assume that the Israeli "street" would be ablaze with protesters. But there are no fires and no impassioned cries - just an eerie, unsettling silence.

WHAT IS going on? How is it that the Olmert government is still in power? There are five main factors contributing to the Olmert government's staying power. The first, and perhaps least problematic was pointed out on Monday by investigative journalist Yoav Yitzhak. Yitzhak reported on his news Web site that Olmert's bureau secured positive media coverage of US President George W. Bush's visit to Israel last week by setting up interviews with Bush for Channel 2 television's anchorwoman Yonit Levy and Yediot Aharonot's senior diplomatic commentators Shimon Shiffer and Nahum Barnea. Yitzhak argues that it is scandalous for the government to trade access to policymakers for positive coverage. But the fact is that such arrangements are the stock in trade of politics.

More interesting than Olmert's use of the media is the media's use of Olmert. Olmert's need for sympathetic coverage is clear. But what do the local media need Olmert for? Their star reporters would be granted the same access by any Israeli government.

An examination of a recent incident involving the editor of Israel's supposed "newspaper of record," the radically left-wing Haaretz provides the beginning of an answer. Two weeks ago, the New York Jewish Week reported that Haaretz's editor in chief David Landau asked US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to "rape" Israel. Landau also told Rice that it was his "wet dream" to tell the Secretary of State to "rape" his country.

Landau made this shocking appeal to Rice at a dinner in September at the home of US ambassador Richard Jones. Also in attendance were Israeli intellectuals and media elites.

Jewish Week's report was a major scoop. But it raised troubling questions. Why did it take three months for Landau's statements to be reported? Why were they not reported by the Israeli media? One of the participants in the dinner was Yediot commentator Barnea. He preferred not to publish the story. After another participant at the dinner told him about Landau's statement, a spokesman for a major academic institution sought to interest Israel's largest dailies and television stations in the story. Appeals to Yediot editor Rafi Ginat and Barnea's colleague Shimon Shiffer were rebuffed. Similarly, Ma'ariv's deputy editor, Avi Bettelheim refused to publish the story. Channel 2 reported the story but without exposing Landau's identity. Two weeks after the Jewish Week broke the story, the Hebrew media still continues its blanket refusal to report it.

How is the media's belief that protecting their colleague (and competitor) outweighs the public's right to know connected to the Hebrew press's insistent and seemingly unnecessary support of Olmert? Ahead of the withdrawal from Gaza, both Landau and his colleague from Israel's Channel 2 Amnon Abromovich said openly that in order to ensure that the withdrawal from Gaza went through, the media needed to protect then prime minister Ariel Sharon from all criticism. Landau openly admitted that he ordered his reporters not to report on allegations of criminal misdeeds by Sharon and to underplay the significance of the ongoing police investigations against Sharon, his sons and his close associates.

Abromovich called for the media to protect Sharon like an etrog - the delicate citron used to celebrate the high holiday of Succot. Like etrogs, Abromovich argued that Sharon needed to be insulated by layer after layer of protection to make sure that he wasn't indicted or criticized for his actions or policies.

The media's protection of Sharon was all-encompassing. For instance, to enhance his chances for reelection, the media refused to report Sharon's visible physical deterioration and mental disorientation in his last year in power. And they reported Sharon's first stroke as a minor episode. Consequently, the public was shocked when two years ago Sharon was felled by his massive and eminently foreseeable stroke.

AFTER SHARON was succeeded by Olmert, the media oligarchs from Haaretz, Channel 2, Yediot and Ma'ariv made clear that the extension of their "etrog" treatment to Olmert was conditioned on his adoption of their radical leftist agenda of land surrenders and settlement destruction. To ensure Olmert's election, the media ignored the significance of the Hamas electoral victory in the Palestinian Authority and the post-withdrawal transformation of Gaza into an international terrorist hub.

After Olmert led Israel to defeat in Lebanon, the media rallied to his side. Reservists calling for his resignation were demonized as "settlers" and "agents of settlers." State radio and television refused to cover the reservists' protests against Olmert. And the media heavyweights overwhelmingly supported the establishment of a commission of inquiry as a way to block the call for immediate elections.

The media are so arrogant in their assertion of control over public debate in Israel that they don't even try to hide their political agenda. On Monday, Haaretz ran a column by Akiva Eldar calling for Olmert to refuse the IDF's request to conduct a major ground operation in Gaza. The column ran under the title, "The etrog is Abu Mazen."

The meaning was clear. Just as the media protects Olmert despite his incompetence in the interest of advancing their agenda of destroying Israeli communities located beyond the 1949 armistice lines and expelling their residents, so Olmert must protect PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, (aka Abu Mazen), despite his defense of Hamas in Gaza, in order to advance the same agenda.

The leftist media do not simply prevent attacks on Olmert from gaining coverage and momentum. They also intimidate into silence people who might otherwise protest. In the case of Landau's rape remarks for instance, there were several people at the dinner party who clearly did not agree with his statements. They came as representatives of the "moderate" Right. Yet they did nothing to protest or publicize his remarks. They made no calls to the media. They did not post them on their Web sites.

And why would they? They know that the price one pays for breaking ranks with the leftist establishment is enormous. Those who break ranks are boycotted by television and radio. If they are employed by leftist organizations, they can expect to be fired from their jobs. And so they say nothing, do nothing, and in the end, accomplish nothing.

WORSE EVEN than the media's intimidation of Zionists is the official harassment suffered by those who insist on speaking out. And as Olmert moves ahead with the leftist establishment's program of expelling Israelis from their communities and transferring them to Palestinian terrorists, that harassment is becoming more and more palpable.

To prevent protests of Bush's call to establish a Palestinian terror state and divide Jerusalem, the government and the police placed Jerusalem under virtual martial law last week. Fully a third of Israel's entire police force was transferred to the capital. Schools and businesses were closed. Jerusalemites were strongly encouraged to stay off the streets.

On January 9, three activists stood in front of the Dan Panorama hotel in the capital where the foreign press accompanying Bush on his visit to Israel was being housed. Jeff Daube, Susie Dym and Yehudit Dassberg were attempting to distribute a report on Fatah's support for and involvement in terrorist attacks against Israel to members of the foreign press. The report, written by veteran researcher Arlene Kushner, contained no policy recommendations. It simply documented Fatah's terrorist activities. For their efforts, they were detained by the police and accused of distributing "seditious materials" and causing a public nuisance.

Beyond its harassment of street protesters and activists, the government is now attempting to silence online protests of its policies. Last week, the ministerial committee on legislation approved a bill that would make Web site owners and editors legally responsible for comments published on their sites. Given the government's arbitrary and biased definition of sedition and incitement, if the law is passed it will effectively force bloggers and Web site operators to block all comments to their Web sites. Yet another avenue of protest will be silenced.

The cumulative impact of these phenomena has been the fifth and perhaps determinative factor enabling Olmert to continue in office. Simply stated, between the media's intimidation and the official harassment of citizens who dare to protest or even disagree with the government's policies, the public has simply lost faith its ability to influence the course of the country. This sense of disenfranchisement has demoralized the public into silence.

For those who wish to help end the tenure of a government pushing a radical, post-Zionist agenda with the support of a mere eight percent of the public, it is important to understand this state of affairs. All ameliorative actions must be geared towards ending the stranglehold of the radical Left on the national debate, and towards defending the civil rights and upholding the reputations of those who protest.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

US President George W. Bush arrived in Israel at the start of an eight-day tour of the Middle East at an interesting moment. In the lead-up to his trip, enemy forces, of both the terrorist and statxe variety, clarified their strategic outlook and the scope of their ambitions. Unfortunately, the president seems not to have noticed.

For the past several weeks, the leaders of the global jihad and their state sponsors in Syria and Iran have escalated their rhetorical and military attacks against Israel and the US. Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and his American lackey Adam Gadahn all issued video and audio appeals on the eve of Bush's trip. Their messages were devoted mainly to the campaigns against US forces in Iraq and against Israel. Bin Laden labeled Iraqi opponents of al-Qaida in Iraq apostates and called for Iraqis to rally around his allied forces. Gadahn called for Bush's assassination. All three men called for Israel's annihilation and for the unification of the forces of global jihad.

Then there is the al-Qaida affiliate Fatah al-Islam. Fatah al-Islam is considered a creation of Syrian intelligence. It is led by Shaker al-Absi, a Palestinian and a former member of the Syrian military. Syrian intelligence dispatched Absi to Lebanon last year to launch a campaign against the Lebanese military. Under his command, Fatah al-Islam took over the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp where it pinned down the Lebanese Army for four months before being overrun.

Despite assertions by the Lebanese military that Absi had been killed, his body was never found. This week, ahead of Bush's trip, Absi surfaced alive with a videotape attacking the Lebanese army, calling for a jihadist takeover of the Levant and announcing his allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Western intelligence agencies have claimed that he is currently operating from Syria. Jihadist Web sites claim that Absi has based himself in northern Iraq. There, they reported that he is combining forces with al-Qaida in Iraq.

Whether he is in Iraq or Syria, allegations that he is collaborating with al-Qaida terrorists in Iraq make sense given that Absi was formerly allied with Abu Musab Zarkawi, who led al-Qaida forces in Iraq until he was killed by US forces in June 2006.

Absi's Syrian-supported operations have also extended to Gaza. Over the past several months, Gazan terror cadres claiming membership in Fatah al-Islam have been actively involved in recruitment and propaganda activities. Last month, the organization in Gaza claimed it fired missiles at southern Israel.

Absi's videotaped message was followed by Monday night's Katyusha attack on the Galilee and Tuesday's roadside bombing of UNIFIL forces near Sidon. When seen as component parts of a larger whole, it is clear that Fatah al-Islam's various groupings are acting to unify al-Qaida forces in Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon under one banner.

Like al-Qaida, Hamas too spent the period leading up to Bush's visit escalating both its missile offensive against southern Israel and its anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric. The massive anti-American protests in Gaza on Wednesday were followed by an RPG attack against an American school in northern Gaza early Thursday morning. Moreover, Bush's visit was greeted by a ferocious shelling of southern Israel with rockets and mortars.

FOR ITS part, the Palestinian Authority government led by Mahmoud Abbas stepped up its own anti-Israel propaganda drive in December. According to a Palestinian Media Watch report, Abbas's television station intensified its rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel by advocating the "liberation" of Haifa, Tiberias, Acre and Tel Aviv. Then too, in his press conference with Bush, Abbas restated his hope of renewing negotiations with Hamas over control of Gaza.

Noting that his government spends 59 percent of its Israeli- and internationally-funded budget in Gaza, Abbas stated that if Hamas were to agree to roll back its control over Gaza, "recognize international legitimacy, all international legitimacy, and… recognize the Arab Initiative, as well… we will have another talk."

Then too, Fatah's own terrorist forces in Judea and Samaria have not ceased their efforts to join their Gazan and Lebanese counterparts in their missile war against Israel. Last week's major IDF operation in Nablus was directed against Fatah terror squads which had begun producing rockets to attack central Israel.

With Bush's arrival in Israel on Wednesday, the Sunni terrorist groups' Shi'ite counterparts launched their own rhetorical attacks against the US and Israel. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a televised speech excoriating Bush for his support and recognition of Israel. Against the backdrop of "Death to America and Israel" chants from the crowd, Nasrallah intoned, "Bush is a faker, who fails to protect the Arabs from the real murderer and instead argues that he wishes to defend them from a fictitious enemy. He is attempting to convince our Arab and Muslim people of a bogus danger. It's a deception."

Nasrallah's Iraqi counterpart Muqtada el-Sadr made a call on Wednesday for Arab leaders to boycott Bush. Sadr condemned Bush and the US stating, "You brought the wars and you can't bring peace. . . . Get out of our land and you will be safe from us." Addressing Arab leaders, Sadr said, "Don't be partners responsible for the blood of your own people. If you will accept his visit, then you are collaborating with him on the blood of your brothers in Palestine, Iraq and others."

The jihadists' state sponsors - Syria and Iran - also took pains to demonstrate their anti-American and anti-Israel animus. As Bush landed in Israel, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's representative Ali Larijani was rounding off a week-long official visit to Syria. There he met with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and reasserted Iran's strategic alliance with Syria. He also met with representatives of Iran's terrorist and political proxies headquartered in Syria and Lebanon. Larijani held talks with the heads of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups as well as representatives of Hizbullah and the Lebanese Shiite Amal militia and political party.

Finally, a week after US military spokesmen in Iraq released contradictory statements about Iran's continued support for the insurgency in the country, Iranian forces directly challenged US naval forces in the Straits of Hormuz. Although US leaders angrily referred to the Iranian operation as a dangerous provocation, a more constructive way to view the Iranian attack on US naval ships is as a probe.

The Iranians probed both the US's defenses and its willingness to take action against Iranian aggression. Whereas the ships apparently demonstrated their readiness to engage, in their decision not to open fire on the Iranian boats, they signaled clearly that the US is unwilling to actually fight Iran.

Today in Iraq US forces are concentrating their efforts not on Iranian proxies but on Syrian-supported al-Qaida in Iraq units and cells. After flushing al-Qaida forces out of their former sanctuaries and operating bases in Anbar Province and Baghdad, Tuesday US forces mounted a major offensive against al-Qaida in its current operational hub in Diyala province. Apparently tipped off in advance of the attack, most of the terror operatives reportedly fled the area ahead of the US offensive after laying roadside bombs and booby traps in the towns they abandoned.

Rather than contend with the destructive power and influence of Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias in southern Iraq to US strategic interests, US military commanders and US diplomatic chiefs in Iraq brush them off as an internal Iraqi affair. US diplomats maintain open relations with Sadr's representatives in Baghdad in spite of his overt incitement against the US and its efforts in Iraq.

And after the confrontation between the US navy and Iranian forces in the Straits of Hormuz, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced that the US would soon begin a fourth round of talks with Iran about the situation in Iraq. Zebari announced that these talks - the most intensive to date - will include discussions of how to control militias, how to cooperate in fighting militant networks and monitor the border and how to prevent the flow of weapons, money and fighters through Iraq's borders. Given Iran's bellicosity in threatening US naval ships in one of the most vital waterways in the world, it is hard to see why the US would believe that Iranian cooperation in policing and defeating its own proxy forces in Iraq would advance US interests in the country or in the larger war.

BUSH STATED that he has come to the Middle East to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians and to ensure US allies that the US is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet on both scores US actions do not accord with the president's message.

On the Palestinian front, his calls for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians and for Palestinian statehood make little sense given the central role that Palestinians play in the global jihad. Bush repeatedly stated that he will not support a Palestinian state that will serve as a base for terror operations against Israel. And yet, under the current circumstances when all Palestinian forces - from Fatah to Hamas to al-Qaida - are committed to Israel's violent destruction, there is no chance that a Palestinian state will be anything other than a base for terrorist attacks and not only against Israel.

Even if Israel were to conclude an agreement with Abbas that sets out the contours of a Palestinian state in the next year, such an agreement would not engender peace. Given the current jihadist state of Palestinian society as a whole, such an agreement would simply serve to empower jihadists still more.

As to Iran, Bush's decision to visit the Middle East was made immediately after the National Intelligence Estimate effectively removed his most potent threat against Iran's nuclear ambitions. The thought was that by visiting the region, Bush would be able to convince US Middle East allies that America is still serious about thwarting Iran's nuclear and regional ambitions despite the NIE.

Unfortunately, the US navy's refusal to open fire on the Iranian boats in the Straits of Hormuz and America's continued refusal to combat Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias in Iraq send the opposite message.

In their statements and actions in the run-up to Bush's visit, jihadist groups and state sponsors made clear that they are serious about fighting their war for regional and indeed global domination. Had Bush acknowledged their plans and expressed a strategic plan for countering their actions and intentions, his visit here could have gone a long way towards cementing alliances to combat and defeat them. Unfortunately, both Bush's statements and US actions on the ground give the jihadists every reason to believe that they will be able to continue their war without fear of America.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

During his tenure as President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld often likened the administration's foreign policy decisions to those of the Truman administration during the first years of the Cold War. As President George W. Bush makes his way to Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states with a stated agenda of advancing the goal of Palestinian statehood, it is worth examining president Truman's achievements and comparing them with those of President Bush.

President Harry S. Truman was in some ways an accidental president. Elected vice president in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fourth term in office, he assumed the presidency when Roosevelt died in April 1945, a month before the Allied victory in Europe and four months before the surrender of Imperial Japan.

As the war wound down, Truman was quick to understand the threat that Soviet imperialism and communist ideology posed to US national security. A world dominated by communism was a world in which America, as the beacon of human freedom and liberty, could not be safe. Consequently, he recognized that the rising Cold War between the Soviet Union and the US would be the defining contest of the postwar era.

DURING HIS tenure, Truman established the instruments of government and international affairs which, in the years to come, would counter and contain the Soviet threat. He also took military action to begin to combat the Soviets with the intention of rolling back Soviet domination of East-Central Europe and preventing the Soviet Union from expanding its influence globally.

Truman established the Defense Department, the National Security Council, the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency. He set forth the Truman Doctrine, which prevented Soviet domination of Greece and Turkey and stemmed the political advance of the communists in France and Italy. He established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to provide for the military defense of Western Europe. Through the Marshall Plan, he enabled the postwar economic recovery of Western Europe.

Militarily, Truman conducted the Berlin airlift to ensure the economic development of western Germany as the anchor of postwar Western European unity against the Soviets. He also waged the Korean War to contain communist expansion in Asia.

After the Soviets surprised the US with their acquisition of the atom bomb in 1949, Truman moved speedily to test the hydrogen bomb. Moreover, quick to realize that with the advent of Soviet nuclear power the US could no longer rely simply on its nuclear deterrent to fight the Soviets, Truman revamped and expanded US conventional forces which had been largely scrapped in the rapid demobilization after World War II.

ON THE IDEOLOGICAL and political front, Truman worked to educate the American people about the threat of communism and took steps to root out Soviet agents from the US government. Truman also set up the infrastructure to combat the Soviets in a war of ideas inside of the Soviet bloc. He founded Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty which brought American ideals, culture and credible news directly into the Soviet Union and Soviet-controlled East-Central Europe.

Beyond all that, Truman willingly took on his foreign policy bureaucracy when he felt that its members were wrong. Against the virulent opposition of his popular secretary of state George Marshall and what Truman referred to as the "striped pants conspirators" in the State Department, he recognized the State of Israel.

By the time he left office, then, Truman had ensured that the US had the institutional wherewithal and the political and ideological will to fight the Cold War, and had upheld the principle of presidential control over US foreign policy.

LIKE TRUMAN, Bush too was in some respects an accidental president. His electoral victory in the 2000 presidential race came despite his failure to win the popular vote. Like Truman also, Bush has been forced to contend with a foreign policy establishment openly hostile to his stated foreign policy objectives. Truman left office with the lowest popularity ratings in modern US history. The war in Korea was overwhelmingly unpopular and his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, based his campaign for office on his pledge to take US forces out of Korea.

Although Bush was considered a foreign policy lightweight when he entered office, the September 11, 2001 jihadist attacks on America made it clear that foreign policy would dominate his presidency. And, like Truman, Bush's legacy would be determined by his conduct of the war against the new epochal struggle with Islamic fascism and global jihad.

Bush clearly understands this. In his interviews with the Israeli and Arab media ahead of his trip to the Middle East this week, Bush claimed that, like Truman in his day, he hopes that history will remember him as the leader who clearly identified the threats of the 21st century and set up the institutional, military and ideological foundations for the current epochal struggle.

Yet although the historical parallels between Bush and Truman are clear, unlike Truman, Bush has not yet struck a clear course for fighting the war and so, with a year left in office, he has not ensured that those who follow him will have either the administrative and international tools to fight the war, or the ideological and political clarity to understand that the war with Islamic fascism is in fact the central security challenge of the new century.

Since September 11, Bush has made numerous speeches that have indicated that he does indeed grasp the challenges of our times. In a speech before the National Endowment for Democracy in October 2005 for instance the president said, "The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century."

In that address and several others like it, Bush argued that jihadists must be denied control over any territory; that there can be no distinction between jihadists and their state sponsors - both have to be defeated - and that the message of democracy and human liberty has to be communicated clearly in an ideological war against those preaching jihad.

Bush eschewed appeasement, claiming, "No act of ours invited the rage of the killers - and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.

"On the contrary: They target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory."

Yet speeches like this one have been in large part superseded by the president's actions. With al-Qaida and the Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and with Iraq's borders with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia still unsecured, the president's sometimes assertive definition of the road to victory has been largely obscured by bumps in that road.

THEN TOO, although Bush, like Truman, set out to form institutional tools to fight the long struggle against the forces of jihad, these institutions have done little to advance the cause. The Department of Homeland Security has not stymied the strength of Islamic agents of subversion in the US. And the National Intelligence Directorate has caused grave harm to Bush's foremost objective of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In what has been cast as a bureaucratic assault on presidential power to determine US foreign policy, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran stripped Bush of the political capacity to act forthrightly to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The Defense Department's decision last week to sack Stephen Coughlin, the only expert on Islamic law in the Pentagon's joint staff, because his documented report on American Muslim institutional support for jihad angered pro-Muslim forces in the Pentagon, is another indication that the foreign policy bureaucracy is successfully scuttling the president's agenda.

Most important, though, is the fact that the new centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy agenda is to establish a Palestinian state. Bush's support for Palestinian statehood, stated first just two months after 9/11, has always been difficult to square with his recognition of the global jihad and its radical Islamic ideology as the central challenges of our age.

After all, when America was attacked the Palestinians were entering the second year of their jihad against Israel. The Palestinians greeted those attacks with open delight. And now, after the Palestinian people popularly elected Hamas to lead them and transformed Gaza into an operating base for global terrorists; while Fatah leaders like Mahmoud Abbas refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state and official Fatah security forces wantonly murder Israeli civilians, Bush's main foreign policy goal in his last year in office is to establish a Palestinian state.

WHILE BUSH argues that the Palestinians have to be shown what they can achieve if they eschew terror and accept Israel, he never mentions what price they must pay for their continued, open support for Israel's destruction and support for and involvement in the global jihad. In his treatment, then, of the Palestinian war against Israel and its central role in the global jihad, Bush has done more to undermine the coherence of his recognition of the challenges of the 21st century and his own legacy in shaping the free world's war against the forces of terror and jihad than anyone else.

Truman is today considered one of the great American presidents because his forthright clarity and consistent policies in office set the US on a steady course for victory against Soviet communism even as specific actions - like the Korean War - were deeply unpopular.

In his last year in office, Bush's central challenge is to clarify what he himself has allowed to become muddled about the nature of the current generational struggle. Unfortunately, though his commitment to Palestinian statehood, and his refusal to assert his own foreign policy against the wishes of a hostile bureaucracy, he calls to mind not Truman, but another American president who led his country at the cusp of another formative crisis. Like Bush, James Buchanan - the last president to serve before the Civil War - understood the nature of the gathering storm; yet rather than confront the dangers, he was overwhelmed by them.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The day before President Bush arrives in Israel, onejerusalem, a great organization dedicated to protecting the unity of Israel's capital city is organizing an important demonstration to protect the city from partition. Here's the information from the onejerusalem.org website:

I'll try to be there and I urge everyone who can participate to come and bring your friends and family.

Last Wednesday, New York's Jewish Week reported that the editor of Israel's self-described "newspaper of record" asked the US secretary of state to rape his country and told her that his erotic fantasy is to watch America rape Israel.

On September 10, at a dinner at the home of US Ambassador Richard Jones, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with a group of Israeli "elites." Among the elitists was Haaretz editor David Landau. According to the Jewish Week, Landau "referred to Israel as a "failed state" politically, one in need of a US-imposed settlement. He was said to have implored Rice to intervene, asserting that the Israeli government wanted "to be raped" and that it would be like a "wet dream" for him to see this happen.

When questioned by the paper, Landau claimed this account of his comments was inaccurate, but then confirmed saying that "Israel wants to be raped" into a settlement and that he told Rice it was his "wet dream" to address her on the issue. He added that several people came up to him afterwards and congratulated him for his remarks, claiming, "I articulated what many Israelis feel."

Actually, almost no Israelis feel what Landau expressed. But his views are shared by his newspaper and by a significant portion of the elitists who dominate the country.

The pro-rape crowd's influence, which rose after Israel's defeat in the war with Hizbullah in 2006, became decisive over the past few months as the date of the publication of the Winograd Committee of Inquiry's final report on the war approaches. The report, set to be issued later this month, is expected to find Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responsible for Israel's failure to defeat Iran's foreign legion in Lebanon.

To offset the public's demand for his resignation that the report will likely trigger, Olmert has worked overtime to woo the Landau crowd. To this end, he courts Syria, advocates Israel's withdrawal from Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem, and refuses to act against either Iran or the burgeoning Iranian-trained Hamas army in Gaza.

Then too, a week before George W. Bush's first presidential visit to Israel, Olmert gave an interview to The Jerusalem Post where he went out of his way to prove that Landau is right. His government does wish to be "raped" by the US.

Sounding more like a Palestinian spokesman than the leader of Israel, Olmert attacked his own country, claiming that it isn't abiding by its obligations to the terror-supporting Palestinians. In his words, "There is a certain contradiction... between what we're actually seeing and what we ourselves promised. We always complain about the [breached] promises of the other side. Obligations are not only to be demanded of others, but they must also be honored by ourselves."

Olmert argued that Israel must withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines with minor modifications, not because doing so will ensure peace with the Palestinians, but because if we don't we'll lose our Jewish majority.

The prime minister's contention is questionable for two basic reasons. First, the 1949 lines are not demographic borders but cease-fire lines. On the eastern side of the line live a half million Jews, and on the western side live one million Arabs. Second, the cease-fire lines are indefensible. So while not solving any demographic problem, withdrawing to the 1949 lines would imperil Israel militarily.

Beyond that, there is the fact that Olmert's dark demographic projections are based on falsified census data published by the Palestinian Authority in 1997. As the American-Israeli Demographic Research Group proved conclusively in January 2005, the PA's numbers were inflated by some 50 percent. Although demography is a problem, Israel is in no immediate danger of losing its Jewish majority.

The immediate danger Israel faces stems not from demography but from the ideology of jihad that has convinced the Arab and Islamic world to seek Israel's destruction rather than to accept it. Shrinking into indefensible borders will only exacerbate that problem by telling the jihadists that Israel can be destroyed through violence and terror.

Olmert also argued that Israel must give up its sovereignty over Jerusalem because Israel's supporters want it to. In his words, "The world that is friendly to Israel... that really supports Israel, when it speaks of the future, it speaks of Israel in terms of the '67 borders. It speaks of the division of Jerusalem."

So in an English-language interview a week before Bush's arrival in the country, Olmert essentially asked Israel's friend in the White House to pressure Israel to concede its vital national rights and interests.

In the same interview with the Post, Olmert acknowledged that his putative peace partner - Fatah leader and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas - does not recognize Israel's right to exist and demands the so-called "right of return" for millions of foreign descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948. But, he soothed, this is not a cause for worry.

Olmert's not worried, because he can see into Abbas's soul. As he put it, "If you ask [Abbas] to say that he sees Israel as a Jewish state, he will not say that. But if you ask me whether in his soul he accepts Israel, as Israel defines itself, I think he does."

For Olmert, intent as he is on securing the support of the pro-national rape crew, his faith in Abbas's peaceful soul is more important than the visible reality on the ground. And that reality is not merely reflected in the fact that Fatah and Hamas are rhetorically indistinguishable from one another. That reality is also reflected in the fact that the three Israelis murdered in the last six weeks - Ido Zoldan, David Rubin and Ahikam Amihai - were all killed by official, Abbas-commanded PA security forces.

The three terrorist murders show clearly that the PA itself, rather than Hamas, is the most lethal terrorist group in Palestinian society. And the same PA security organs involved in killing Israelis are funded and armed by Israel and the US - which together with the Europeans and the Russians also train them.

Rather than contend with this sordid reality, the Olmert government makes excuses for it. On Thursday, Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev told the Post that Israel will raise the involvement of PA security forces in the murder of Israelis with Bush, but Regev took pains to underplay the significance of the fact that the PA security forces themselves are the ones killing Israelis. He referred to the killers as "rogue, extremist elements inside the Fatah machine and the Palestinian security apparatus," and so sought to distance them from their leaders who encourage and celebrate their behavior.

Through their actions and statements, the Palestinians themselves show daily that there is no difference between Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, or between Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. None of them is interested in peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state - whatever they may or may not feel in their souls. Just as happened in Gaza, so in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, any land that Israel transfers to their authority will be used as a base for operations against Israel. Any Israeli community relinquished will be transformed into terror training bases and missile launching pads.

But then, the reality of war doesn't have much to recommend itself under the looming specter of the Winograd Report. The only reality that interests Olmert is the reality of his quest to survive in office. And to stay in office, Olmert needs Landau and his friends. And so Israel's strategic straitjacket grows tighter by the day.

THIS WEEK, Iranian strongman Ali Larijani paid an official state visit to Egypt. He met not only with President Hosni Mubarak and Foreign Minister Ahmad Gheit, but with Egypt's chief cleric, the head of the Al Azhar Mosque and Islamic University Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi. During his visit, Larijani offered nuclear collaboration with Egypt. He also worked to settle religious disputes between Shi'ite and Sunni Islam to facilitate jihadist collaboration against the common enemies of all Muslims.

On the heels of Larijani's visit, Mubarak broke his pledge to Defense Minister Ehud Barak from a week ago not to allow the thousands of Hamas terrorists seeking to return to Gaza after traveling to Saudi Arabia to enter the Strip through the Rafah crossing, where Israel has no security presence. On Wednesday, the terrorists marched across the border unopposed. Some were reportedly carrying more than $100 million in cash that they received from Iran and Saudi Arabia. Others were returning after receiving military training in Iran.

The Olmert government had nothing to say about Egypt's open collusion with Israel's enemies. And how could it? Admitting that Egypt is an enemy state would harm the pro-national rape gang's peace narrative. For them, Egypt is the head of the "moderate camp." Rather than acknowledge this reality, Olmert showers Mubarak with praise. In his interview with the Post, he said, "When I even think of how things would be if we were dealing with people other than Mubarak, well, I pray every day for his well-being and good health."

The truth is that so far, Olmert's gambit has been successful. All of the public's attempts to force him to resign - over Lebanon, Gaza and allegations of Olmert's massive corruption - have been scuttled. Guarding their man, the pro-national rape camp has given little to no media backing to popular calls for his removal from office. Landau and his friends are fully willing to lose wars and to be led by morally impaired, incompetent leaders if doing so facilitates the international rape of their country.

Take for example Landau's Haaretz employee, columnist Yoel Marcus. In his December 14 column, Marcus called for Olmert to be forced from office. Just one week later, emphasizing the importance of the peace process, Marcus said that Olmert must stay in power after the Winograd Report is published.

There are officials in Washington who claim that Bush is angry at Olmert. They say Bush expected Olmert to stand up to Rice when she became overtly hostile to Israel in the leadup to the Annapolis conference. These officials argue that if Olmert were just to stand up to Rice, the president would finally have the opportunity to marginalize her.

It is hard to know what to make of this claim. Unfortunately, we won't see it tested any time soon. Controlled by the rape-Israel crowd, Olmert needs Rice's pressure. And so he told the Post that Bush, (and by extension Rice), is "not doing a single thing that I don't agree to. He doesn't support anything that I oppose."

Bush's first presidential visit to Israel could have been a great opportunity for the country. But in his interview with the Post, a week before Bush's arrival, Olmert made it clear that the visit will be a disaster. Whether Bush wants to or not, ahead of the publication of the Winograd Report, Olmert will leave him no choice. Bush will be forced to rape Israel.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

One of the natural and negative consequences of political assassinations is that they personalize the general and simplify the complex. Policies formed in the aftermath of assassinations are rarely wise and tend to focus on secondary - personal - issues while ignoring larger strategic ones.

It is fairly clear that this is what is happening in the international reaction to last Thursday's assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zadawi and her teenage son have now taken charge of her political party in the interest of maintaining her "legacy." Backed by the Bush administration, they are insisting that Pakistan's parliamentary elections be held on January 8 as scheduled.

Pakistan's military dictator, President Pervez Musharraf will likely postpone elections for several months. And pushed by Zadawi and the media, the Bush administration will probably strongly object to his decision. Debate over whether or not Musharraf is destroying Pakistan by delaying the vote indefinitely will likely dominate international coverage of the country.

And this is a shame because the issue of elections in Pakistan is irrelevant when seen in the context of the current state that country - and it was irrelevant before Bhutto was murdered.

Indeed, since she returned to Pakistan from exile in October, Bhutto herself served merely as a distraction. She focused international attention on her democratic rhetoric and away from the dangers that she was completely incompetent to handle - whether elected or not.

The Pakistan which Bhutto insisted she could save is a pro-jihadist nuclear-armed state. The Pakistani public, military and intelligence services stand in sympathy with al-Qaida and the Taliban. With the support of the public and the collusion of sectors of the military and intelligence services whose ranks they have seamlessly infiltrated, the Taliban and al-Qaida daily extend their control over more and more of the country.

US officials claim that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is secure and under the full control of the military. Yet given the Pakistani military's sympathy for al-Qaida and the Taliban, it is irresponsible not to consider the possibility that at least some of the forces charged with securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal have operational links to the jihadists.

The Bush administration had hoped that by forcing Musharraf to work with Bhutto, the Pakistani government would be more effective in routing out the jihadists. Yet there was little reason to believe this to be the case. Musharraf's declaration of a state of emergency, his arrest of democracy activists and parallel release of senior al-Qaida terrorists from custody show that he is far more prepared to combat his liberal opponents than the jihadists.

And Bhutto herself was anything but an ideal candidate to change the direction of Pakistan. Bhutto was many things, but she was neither a liberal democrat nor a strong leader. Her two brief tenures in office were marked by corruption. She was ousted from office in 1996 and forced to flee the country due to suspicions that she and her husband had purloined some $1.5 billion from Pakistan's national treasury.

In addition to racketeering, Bhutto was also suspected of engineering the assassination of her younger brother and political rival Mir Murtaza Bhutto. He was murdered by policemen in 1996 while she was prime minister. Indeed, when judged by her actions, Bhutto appeared less like a Pakistani James Madison, and more like an Al Capone from the Indus.

BEYOND THAT, Bhutto was the godmother of the Taliban and played an important role in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. It was during Bhutto's terms in office that Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI formed the Taliban and backed Mullah Omar's war for control of Afghanistan. Bhutto recognized the Taliban government in 1996. Pakistan was one of only three countries to do so.

Although she denied any knowledge of Pakistan's nuclear program, it was during her tenure in office that A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear project, was most active in proliferating nuclear weapons technology and bomb components to countries like Iran, Libya, Egypt and North Korea. As the New York Times reported on Friday, Khan's associates allege that in one of her visits to North Korea as Pakistani premier, Bhutto picked up missile designs that were supposed to be matched to Pakistani nuclear warheads.

So in pushing for elections and democracy in Pakistan, the US has been ignoring the chief problem that nation poses for global security and focusing its attention on relatively irrelevant side-issues of governing institutions and hoping that two corrupt, ineffective leaders would be better than one.

PAKISTAN IS today the most dangerous country in the world. It is the home base for al-Qaida and the Taliban. Musharraf has failed to take effective action against them just as he has refused to work credibly with the US military. Due to his failures, from their Pakistani sanctuaries, the Taliban and al-Qaida have successfully waged their insurgency in Afghanistan. They now control the majority of Afghan territory and the British, reportedly with some US backing, are apparently negotiating with Mullah Omar's men.

Back in Pakistan, the Taliban and al-Qaida have violently transformed the safe havens Musharraf provided them in 2001 into independent enclaves from which they have launched their campaign to take control of the entire country. The fact that Bhutto was murdered in Rawalpindi - the garrison of the Pakistani security forces - is a testament to the deep tentacles of jihad in the Pakistani establishment.

In its preference for democratic processes over counter-jihad campaigns in Pakistan, the Bush administration is following a consistent, generic policy template. From the Palestinian Authority to Iraq and Egypt to Lebanon and now to Pakistan, the Bush administration has studiously ignored popular support for jihad and pushed for elections.

In 2005 the Bush administration's near obsession with elections had yet to be tested against reality. But after the elections in Egypt, the PA, Lebanon and Iraq empowered jihadist forces, the pro-election policy was no longer defensible in the context of the fight against jihad. Then too, the policy which the administration has adopted towards the Palestinians - of empowering a society that openly chose to be led by forces of jihad in Hamas - makes little sense.

THE ONLY way to make sense of the Bush administration's advocacy for empowerment of jihadist societies through democratic processes is to see it not as a tool for countering jihad, but rather as a way to ignore jihad and wish away the war.

In the Palestinian case, the administration's decision to react to the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006 and its seizure of power in Gaza in June 2007 by strengthening the terror supporting, yet unpopular Fatah party is a textbook case of a policy based on avoiding difficult realities. The reality is that Palestinian society is the enemy of the US and its stated intention of defeating the forces of jihad and global terror. Rather than account for this and base its policies on an acceptance of this reality, the administration - with the support of the Israeli government - has ignored reality in the hopes that Palestinian jihadism, like Pakistani and Egyptian jihadism can simply be wished away.

IN THE 1990s, the Clinton administration ignored Pakistan and so enabled it to complete its nuclear weapons program unchallenged. The moment that Pakistan became a nuclear power, the US lost its leverage to influence events in that country. Some of that leverage was regained in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Fear of the raging American tiger could have been used to force Musharraf to permit US forces to operate inside of Pakistan and so deny al-Qaida and the Taliban safe havens to flee to from Afghanistan. But rather than confront Musharraf for his regime's sponsorship of the Taliban, the US preferred to pretend that he was a reliable ally. And so Musharraf maintained his double game of overtly supporting the US, (and so pocketing some $25 billion in US financial and military assistance since 2001), and covertly supporting the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Once the US squandered its post-Sept. 11 leverage with Pakistan it was left with only bad options for coping with the nuclear-armed jihadist incubating country. And these too, it has ignored in favor of the chimera of democracy and elections.

After Sept. 11, President George W. Bush declared war on the forces of global terror and their state sponsors. But as the years have passed since then, he has done more to lose the war than he has to win it simply by ignoring it.

Bhutto's murder is not a sign that elections and democracy frighten al-Qaida and therefore must be pursued. It is a sign that the Taliban and al-Qaida - together with their supporters in the Pakistani military and intelligence services and Pakistani society as a whole - don't like people who are supported by the US. Her assassination was yet another act of war by the enemies of the West against the West.

If democracy and freedom are the US's ultimate aims in this war, the only way to achieve them is to first fight and win the war. Bhutto - like her Palestinian, Egyptian and Lebanese counterparts - was a sideshow.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.