Mr. Bush’s Travels

Editorial

The New York Times, May 20, 2008

President Bush’s visit to the Middle East last week offered a graphic primer on his failed policies — and the many dangers his successor will face.

The Peace Process: In Israel, President Bush spoke again about his vision of a two-state solution with Palestinians and Israelis living side by side in peace. But after ignoring the conflict for seven years, the negotiations he opened in Annapolis last November have made little apparent progress. And Mr. Bush did not use the trip to press either side to make even minimum concessions.

The Israelis need to halt all settlement activity. The Palestinians need to do more to end attacks on Israel. The United States needs to be ready to press compromise proposals, something Mr. Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, show little interest in doing.

After a three-day stay in Jerusalem, Mr. Bush met the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Egypt — not Ramallah — a fact that was duly and angrily noted by Palestinians. The next president will have to make a much stronger, and earlier, commitment to the peace process, appoint a more skilled and creative team of advisers and resolve to be a more sensitive and honest broker than Mr. Bush.

Saudi Arabia: Two months after Vice President Dick Cheney went to Saudi Arabia to plead for increased oil production, President Bush was there making the same pitch. The Saudis were only slightly more accommodating, agreeing to a modest increase that will do nothing to lower prices at American gas pumps or America’s dependence on imported oil. Such special pleading is unseemly. The next president is going to have to do a lot more to reduce America’s consumption of fossil fuels, and its dependence on the Saudis.

Lebanon: While Mr. Bush traveled the region, Lebanon’s pro-Western government was losing ever more ground to Hezbollah. Mr. Bush offered little help to the prime minister, Fouad Siniora — once a poster boy for Mr. Bush’s claimed rising tide of democracy — beyond promising to speed delivery of American military aid and urging Arab leaders to rally to Mr. Siniora’s side.

Mr. Bush is still stubbornly refusing to talk with either of Hezbollah’s backers — Iran and Syria — and accused all those who urge direct negotiations of appeasement, a barely veiled attack on Senator Barack Obama.

Mr. Bush has strengthened the region’s radicals with his failed Iraq war. And his refusal to talk has also made it easier for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions. The next president is going to need a better approach.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan: In Egypt, President Bush also met with leaders of the three countries that will present his successor with the greatest challenges: planning and executing an orderly withdrawal from Iraq, defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and helping nuclear-armed Pakistan defeat those same extremists while not unraveling. He made no progress on any of these dangerous fronts.

Americans need to hear from the presidential candidates — now — about how they plan to reverse this disastrous legacy.