The Billiken's Bluff

Mark Twain is famous for saying that "the reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."

Well the reports that there is A Brave New Arab World in the Middle East that was born sometime in early February have also been greatly exaggerated. A quick glance at the news shows that the region is still plagued by many of the same problems that it faced this time a year ago.

Saying that things are far from settled in the Middle East seems like a fairly obvious statement. But over the past month The Independent , The NY Times, Newsweek, The Daily Show, and even The Billiken’s Bluff, were all asking the same question; Was Bush Right?

Last week, after the pro-Syrian Lebanese government stepped down (they have since been voted back into office) The NY Times' lead editorial was almost apologetic and questioned if in fact, Bush was some sort of visionary.

On Tuesday, David Brooks gave Paul Wolfowitz, who is very much in the Bush Inner Circle of Trust, a big pat on the back. Brooks talked about him in glowing terms, writing about him as if he was composing a Friendster testimonial for his buddy Paul. He all but dubbed him Wolfowitz the Wise.

Things were looking good in the Fertile Crescent.

But then there is this story. US troops killed an Italian intelligence officer and injured the journalist he was shielding, when their van failed to stop at a security checkpoint. We keep giving Europeans reasons to dislike us.

And then there is this story.

Yesterday’s discovery of two mass graves that contained 15 beheaded bodies of Iraqi children and women at two separate places in Iraq., with scores more bodies found bullet-riddled, some of which are believed to be of Iraqi soldiers kidnapped and executed by insurgents.

And finally this story.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shiite mosque during a funeral Thursday, killing 47 people, an attack that came as Iraq's main Shiite party and a Kurdish bloc said they reached a deal that sets the stage for a new government to be formed.

And as I wrote earlier today, Lebanon doesn’t look as prime for democratic revival as it did a week ago. And I know all of these events can be looked at through the glass half-full perspective. Uncovering a mass grave filled with victims of the Iraqi insurgency can show that their truly is democratic progress underway in the region, and that terrorists will do everything in their power to stop it. The US and the Iraqi people must not lose their resolve. Glass Half-Full.

But naïve as I am, I wanted to believe that after these elections in Iraq, and the developments in Lebanon, that some tranquility would all of sudden fall over the region. Instead if anything things are status quo, or worse. America is still the demon from the west. There are daily suicide bombings in Iraq. And Hezbollah may end up running Lebanon, which will go over just beautifully in Israel.

As for the Bush Administration's vision for a pan-Middle Eastern democracy, let’s take it down a notch and give each other some high fives after a few months of peace in the Middle East.

As Jon Stewart says, it’s still a Mess-O-Potamia. Emphasis on the mess.