1115.org

We hadn’t heard from Condoleezza Rice for a while, so this was clearly overdue.

David Rose has a story in Vanity Fair that confirms every worst suspicion you have ever had about Condi, George Bush and their thoroughly misguided notions of Middle East policy. One has to imagine that when they insisted on hosting what they were pleased to call their Middle East peace conference last November, everyone who felt compelled to show up was laughing up his or her sleeve the entire time they were here. Because two things have been clear about the Condi-Bush combine for a good long while: they understand diddly squat about the Middle East and they understand diddly squat about peace.

The story itself confirms both my diddly squat propositions (do read the whole story; the excerpts here are just a teaser-trailer for an excellent piece of journalism):

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by (Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan), and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Some sources call the scheme “Iran-contra 2.0,” recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.’s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.

Onee of the rave reviews this Bush-Rice-Abrams policy has drawn from insiders in the know:

The botched plan has rendered the dream of Middle East peace more remote than ever, but what really galls neocons such as (David Wurmser, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007) is the hypocrisy it exposed. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”

There are other interesting tidbits.

It was Bush who was responsible for pushing the elections that brought Hamas to power:

Dahlan says he warned his friends in the Bush administration that Fatah still wasn’t ready for elections in January. Decades of self-preservationist rule by Arafat had turned the party into a symbol of corruption and inefficiency—a perception Hamas found it easy to exploit. Splits within Fatah weakened its position further: in many places, a single Hamas candidate ran against several from Fatah.

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council.

Cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority after the elections, far from pressuring Hamas, just weakened Fatah relative to Hamas, making it easier for Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

The first step, taken by the Middle East diplomatic “Quartet”—the U.S., the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations—was to demand that the new Hamas government renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and accept the terms of all previous agreements. When Hamas refused, the Quartet shut off the faucet of aid to the Palestinian Authority, depriving it of the means to pay salaries and meet its annual budget of roughly $2 billion
[…]
The irony of the blockade on foreign aid after Hamas’s legislative victory, meanwhile, was that it prevented only Fatah from paying its soldiers. “We are the ones who were not getting paid,” (Youssef Issa, who led the Preventive Security Service under Abbas) says, “whereas they were not affected by the siege.” Ayman Daraghmeh, a Hamas Legislative Council member in the West Bank, agrees. He puts the amount of Iranian aid to Hamas in 2007 alone at $120 million. “This is only a fraction of what it should give,” he insists. In Gaza, another Hamas member tells me the number was closer to $200 million.

When Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government in February 2007, Condi was apoplectic, and the U.S. immediately drew up plans to collapse the government:

Unwilling to preside over a Palestinian civil war, Abbas blinked. For weeks, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had been trying to persuade him to meet with Hamas in Mecca and formally establish a national unity government. On February 6, Abbas went, taking Dahlan with him. Two days later, with Hamas no closer to recognizing Israel, a deal was struck.

Under its terms, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would remain prime minister while allowing Fatah members to occupy several important posts. When the news hit the streets that the Saudis had promised to pay the Palestinian Authority’s salary bills, Fatah and Hamas members in Gaza celebrated together by firing their Kalashnikovs into the air.

Once again, the Bush administration had been taken by surprise. According to a State Department official, “Condi was apoplectic.” A remarkable documentary record, revealed here for the first time, shows that the U.S. responded by redoubling the pressure on its Palestinian allies.

The State Department quickly drew up an alternative to the new unity government. Known as “Plan B,” its objective, according to a State Department memo that has been authenticated by an official who knew of it at the time, was to “enable [Abbas] and his supporters to reach a defined endgame by the end of 2007 The endgame should produce a [Palestinian Authority] government through democratic means that accepts Quartet principles.”

Like the Walles ultimatum of late 2006, Plan B called for Abbas to “collapse the government” if Hamas refused to alter its attitude toward Israel. From there, Abbas could call early elections or impose an emergency government. It is unclear whether, as president, Abbas had the constitutional authority to dissolve an elected government led by a rival party, but the Americans swept that concern aside.

It’s uncanny, isn’t it, how Bush’s foreign interventions have this knack of blowing up in his face, and creating a much bigger mess than there was before, a mess that future Presidents will spend years trying to restore just to its original size and scale?

And the irony gods have sent us the perfect note to end on: on Tuesday in the Middle East, Condi Rice “pushed hard … to resume Israeli-Palestinian peace talks”. Maybe she has a dream, our Condi. But the universe seems to have just one message for her: dream on, lady!