President Bush’s recent trip to the Middle East was met with skepticism from both his usual critics and surprisingly from some of his allies as well. This is really not so surprising. Middle Eastern Muslim countries tend to harbor a deep hatred for the president. The United States’ stance regarding Israel has long been a lightening rod between their region and ours. The war in Iraq, has simply just fanned the flames of hate and suspicion.

The foreign minister of Iran spoke out, saying that President’s Bush’s visit to the region, gave Israel a green light “to perpetrate new crimes” against the Palestinians, while a high ranking Shi’ite cleric in Lebanon called President Bush a “criminal, butcher, and murderer of our blood.” Considering the ongoing war in Iraq, I can understand the latter comment, but regarding the first, I’m not sure how his visit to the region, equates to giving Israel license to act criminally against the Palestine. It seems that hate is the veil that most Middle Easterner’s see George Bush and handshakes and camera ready grins, without substantive dialogue, will do little to change that fact.

Besides the war, most of the skepticism seems to revolve, not surprisingly, around a piece of land. There is a general sense of unbelief that President Bush is really serious about establishing a Palestinian state. Middle Eastern leadership is also a bit upset on the Presidents’ effort to get Iran to get rid of their nukes. This is disheartening, because a major focus of Bush’s visit was to build a coalition to pressure Iran to give up their nuclear program. It didn’t go over well. In fact after he visited Kuiwait, the countrie’s foreign minister was pictured with the foreign minister of Iran, where he exclaimed that “My country knows who is our friend and who is our enemy and Iran is our friend.” This is believed to be an obvious swipe at George Bush and subsequently the United States.

This is really not terribly shocking. Most people are pretty used to seeing effigies of President Bush being burned or hanged in the street. But never has America been so dutifully dismissed and seen as an enemy. It seems that our attempts at developing real partnership or reconciliation is seen as either non-existent, only on our terms, or just down right bubbling.

It is becoming obvious that we must definitively decide on what type of relationship we want to have with the Middle East, and then attempt to develop any real partnership. I think that they see as an arrogant nation that is asking and perhaps even demanding that they help us in the war on terrorism, but with no real commitment to giving back to them and their region. Maybe that is the real problem. Insincere summits and picture ops’ are no longer enough.

American society has increasingly become style or substance and it appears that it has spilled over to our governmental affairs and policies. As a result, our foreign relations have suffered. It is no longer enough for an American official to show up in a country and take a picture. This is in part, because it seems that America has lost a lot of its’ luster in the foreign community. More and more we are seen as insensitive, a bully and self-serving. In some ways this may be true, but we are also givers. In fact, we give more aid then any country in the world, so we have a right to ask for help when we need it. However, someone , somewhere in Washington needs to decide on a direction for this country, especially in how it relates to foreign policy and the Middle East.

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