HERE ARE the four things which, aside from Iraq, take up the most time on the agenda of Western leaders regarding the Middle East. All of them are doomed to fail, which makes one wonder about this set of priorities and manner of thinking:
1) Making friends with Iran while trying to persuade it, through relatively mild measures, to stop working on nuclear weapons.
The fact is that Iran is not going to abandon its drive to get atomic bombs and the missiles to deliver them on target, certainly not unless subjected to the toughest possible diplomacy. Everyone should know this by now. Yet the pretense is that watered-down diplomatic wrist-slaps are going to make some difference.
2) Making friends with Syria to get it to stop using terrorism to take over Lebanon, and terrorism against Iraq and Israel.
3) Trying to moderate Hamas. Like Syria and Iran, Hamas does not want to be moderate. Unlike them, it hardly pretends otherwise. It continues to make clear its virulent anti-Semitism and goal of destroying Israel. To their credit, the Europeans are by and large holding the line. But again, a huge amount of time and energy is going into this dead-end effort at moderating Hamas.
4) Suddenly, at the worst possible moment in history for success, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become the top priority for many governments. Fatah has collapsed; Hamas is extremist and believes time is on its side, and every Israeli concession has inspired escalation by the Palestinians and others.
I could add two other points: thinking it possible to "solve" the internal situation in Iraq, and expecting that radical Islamists can be reconciled to Western interests.
What do all these things have in common? Not looking at how the interests and ideas of extremists direct them; wishful thinking that concessions and empathy can resolve real conflicts, and so on.
Now ask yourself this question: With so much effort going into guaranteed failures, is it surprising that there are so few successes?
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