Bush the Bystander

"A common thread in the three crises is Iran -- for its support of the two Islamist groups, its alleged funding and arming of Iraqi militias and extremist groups, and its refusal to give a final response to the Western package of incentives designed to prevent it from converting a peaceful energy program into one to develop nuclear weapons."

But Bush's Middle East policy -- especially the invasion of Iraq -- has if anything emboldened Iran.

Wright quotes Robert Malley, director of the International Crisis Group's Middle East program, as saying: "They have cornered themselves out of a lack of influence on any of the parties that are driving this -- Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran. Counseling restraint or condemning actions is pretty meager when you think of the influence the United States should be wielding."

Janine Zacharia writes for Bloomberg: "President George W. Bush and U.S. diplomats, distracted by threats from North Korea to Iraq, are playing a minor role as an escalating confrontation between Israelis and Arabs risks wider Middle East violence.

"David Welch, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and Elliott Abrams, deputy assistant to the president, only arrived in the region yesterday, 17 days after the abduction of an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip set off the crisis. Bush hasn't spoken to any Middle Eastern leaders in the past couple of weeks, according to National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones."

Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel who now heads the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, tells Zacharia that American involvement may be too late.

"We should have been much more active earlier when it might have been easier to head off this disaster."

Warren P. Strobel writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush's foreign policy has been driven by blunt talk, a willingness to threaten or use military force, and a belief that American power can reorder the world.

" 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,' a White House aide famously told journalist-author Ron Suskind in 2002.

"Reality has bitten back. . . .

"Virtually every president faces a plethora of global crises, sometimes simultaneously. What's new is that the United States' ability to influence events has shrunk, largely because U.S. troops and treasure remain mired in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Iraq war has diminished foreign confidence in American leadership, according to foreign policy experts and some U.S. officials."

Strobel quotes Gary Samore, a nonproliferation expert who worked in the Clinton White House and is now a vice president of the MacArthur Foundation: "The administration is seen as so deeply wounded by Iraq and by the fading presidency, that a lot of people (in other capitals) are thinking about the next presidency."