Middle East triple vision

This week I have decided to write three short columns to give a snapshot of my thinking on various flashpoints in the Middle East. Enjoy the unusual format.

A funny thing happened on the road to inevitable defeat and retreat in Iraq — we started to decisively beat the insurgents. While two weeks is far too short a time for anything to be definitive, the impact of even minimal U.S. reinforcement on Baghdad has been immense. Since the first additional U.S. Brigade arrived — and four more are scheduled to deploy — the civilian death toll has declined by 70 percent, and overall attacks have dropped by 80 percent. While one death is too many, a 70 percent drop, if sustained and improved upon, is a major victory and a steppingstone on the road to future success.

I'm not going to go all Dick Cheney and argue that the insurgency is in its last throes. It's clear that there will continue to be people in Iraq willing to kill and die for their cause for the foreseeable future. It appears possible, however, to weaken the insurgency enough that reasonably rational people can regain control over their country.

The extremists on all sides seem to have grasped that the cycle of violence and retribution has been interrupted and are trying to restart it. Sunni insurgents staged a large and coordinated assault on a U.S. outpost near Baghdad. The attack, which was trumpeted as an insurgent success by our media, ended with the insurgents all but annihilated, highlighting the tactical advantages U.S. troops have over their opponents. Moqtada al-Sadr, our Shiite antagonist, also seems to have determined that the government is serious about the crackdown. Speaking from an undisclosed location, which in itself speaks volumes, al-Sadr denounced the new offensive.

That this is all going on against a domestic political backdrop in which advocates of immediate withdrawal are ascendant is astonishing. As I wrote in December 2005, "rhetoric on Iraq is based more on political hopes than martial reality," a situation that has never been truer than it is today. Hopefully our leaders have the stomach not to abandon the mission just as we finally, after years of mismanagement and indecision, seem to have found a promising strategy.

Unfortunately, there hasn't been any change in the Iranian nuclear standoff. Iran is still moving inexorably towards acquiring atomic weaponry. Israel is still trying to figure out how they could effectively bomb the Iranian program and is still creating a missile shield in case Iran does go nuclear. The Russians are still actively assisting Iran in its quest, and China is still blocking any meaningful international response.

Europe is still pretending that Iran cares about the minimally invasive sanctions that the Security Council might enforce at some indeterminate future date. The United States is still pretending that the Iranian government is rational and might be swayed by negotiations. The Democrats and Republicans are pretending they have a clue about what to do, and everyone, except Iran and Israel, is pretending that this situation isn't almost certainly going to end in violence because of our inability to take a stand.

Watching the United Nations flail around on this issue reminds me of a line from "Team America," where Hans Blix lays out the consequences of noncompliance with inspections to Kim Jong-Il: "We will be very angry with you ... and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are." It's a shame that the real United Nations can't do more than that.

What passes for progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process these days is depressing. Apparently, the fact that the different Palestinian factions are no longer actively fighting one another is a major breakthrough. Hooray! Things may be incalculably worse than they were a year or two ago, but at least the Palestinians aren't fighting a civil war anymore.

The only possible change that could break this deadlock would be for Hamas to lay down its arms, officially recognize Israel's right to exist and somehow hold onto its public support afterwards. That's unlikely to happen, but as long as the Palestinian Authority is run by an unreconstructed terrorist organization, this conflict will fester.

Just to be clear: the onus here is not on Israel. Unless Hamas accepts past agreements between the two sides and the Palestinians move past their obsession with intentionally unworkable conditions such as an unlimited "right of return," which is little more than cover for the destruction of Israel, no actual progress is going to be made. Barry Caro is a sophomore from White Plains, N.Y. He can be reached at bcaro@princeton.edu.