Neocons got Iraq wrong. Ditto liberals with 2 states
When you hear someone say "solution," run
Twenty years is a good amount of hindsight. Looking back, we see what happened with the neocon intellectual paradigm that dominated the Bush W administration. Those men had brilliant, pedigreed analyses of post World War II history, economics and statesmanship. They had high octane degrees, media credentials, think tank support and wealthy patrons. They held court at the pinnacle of global power.
They promised that an America led by an unfettered executive could remake countries like Afghanistan and Iraq into freedom-loving lands with Walmart superstores, Apple consumers and fair elections. It would take brute strength and looking the other way as contractors’ guns massacred innocents. It would take Ivy League+ institution-building by experts like Noah Feldman. It would require billion dollar infrastructure contracts with multinational corporations with board seats for sale, and then — voila! Free markets and democracy would bloom.
Just one problem. Didn't happen.
After decades of American service members pointlessly dying and American taxpayers burning Himalayas of cash, you still can’t use the Target app to schedule a parking lot pickup at the Baghdad store for baby supplies. Afghanistan is even worse.
Trump’s Gaza golf jingoism aside, literally no one on the planet talks about state-building anymore.
Now let’s talk about it's older sibling which slightly predates the neocons - the liberal two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
A few years before 9/11, similarly pedigreed people on the other side of the aisle also promoted a utopian/colonialist discourse for “solving” Middle East instability and violence. Shockingly, most still do.
It emerged from the Clinton administration, the pages of important media outlets, in classrooms with a pedagogy of ideology instead of facts, and in all future administrations regardless of party: Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden.
The two-state solution, born in the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s with origins in 1937, would resolve the wars between Jews and Palestinians. But after 30 years, the wars keep going as of right now, this very second. No one can tell you with a straight face that Palestinians are capable of creating, managing and enhancing a peaceful democracy that's safe for it's own majority, let alone minorities like Christians.
When you examine the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the lesson is that only Sunni military dictators or monarchies create stable states with Syria being TBD. Democracy failed in Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq and anywhere else it was tried.
Regardless of this reality, the diplomatic two-state formulation continued to evolve until it's now become a metaphysical incantation. It's like prayer. Important to say over and over again, yet ineffable and transcendent of reality.
The words are still said by liberal Jews who have semi-acknowledged the perverse antisemitism of the left. They use it as cover. Like, “I’m Jewish so Israel is important to me like Ireland is important to Irish Americans, BUT OF COURSE I support the two-state solution. Please don’t attack me. I’m not like those bad Zionists, I mean, Jews.” That's the subtext of the Jewish left.
You also hear it from mainstream non-Jews who can’t stomach the bigotry of an activist left that literally demands violence everywhere against Jews — that’s what “globalize the intifada” means. (Does this apply to ISIS in New Orleans?) But they also pander to those progressives, so they repeat the prayer.
Kamala Harris and whoever’s in charge of the trainwreck clown car of the Democratic party continue to use this magic formula to signal that they’re on the right side of history. Arabs, Progressives and Jews can vote for them without conflict.
The Queers for Palestine suicide-pact ultra orthodox left and white shoe liberals with property in Martha’s Vineyard all agree.
It’s a solution. For two states! Everyone wins.
Trouble is, the two state solution is about as utter and total nonsense as neocons spending a trillion dollars and sacrificing the lives of 2,459 American soldiers so folks can buy a $12 latte in Kabul.
Has history shown that the neocons were fundamentally immoral and should be publicly humiliated for all time? Ask the families of the fallen service members.
Are liberals any better, even if they're willing to sacrifice others?
The idea for two states for two people started with the British in an attempt to partition their Levantine colony (AKA a “mandate”) into an Arab part and a Jewish part in 1937.
The Arab leadership said no, and later joined forces with the Nazis. I’m not making that up.
Later, the British decided to unilaterally create an Arab state in Jordan and hand off the Jews and local Arabs in Palestine/Israel to the UN, which soon recognized the State of Israel as the Jewish homeland. Those are two states for two different people — even if Jordan refuses to accept millions of Palestinians as citizens for over 70 years.
Going back to the beginning, every ten years or so the idea for a “two states for two people” appeared in powerful diplomatic venues that could make it happen. Every time local Arabs, who eventually honed their identity as Palestinians, said no.
You may see a pattern here that PhDs from the Kennedy school and wealthy columnists can’t. It’s only two letters. They appear in order in the alphabet.
Not only have one of the two groups of people required to have a two-state solution refused to let it happen; they have also clearly and consistently, in military and diplomatic terms, stated their preference for a one-state solution. Remove Jews by violence, create international vibes to denigrate Jews globally, and we're good! Problem solved. That’s the solution they want.
I know this by opening my eyes and looking.
Again, if you have a PhD, have served in office or written for a respected media outlet, for some reason it’s impossible to see this.
Surrounding each diplomatic push by super powers with two-letter acronyms — the UK, the UN, and now the US — there were always Arab-led violent atrocities against Jews. It began with early 20th century riots in Jerusalem and later Hebron, it grew in dimension with various multi-country land wars against Israel in 1948 onwards, and most recently, we see the same dynamic with the 10/7/23 Hamas invasion of Israel. (I love it when NPR calls this the Gaza War. Um, the Palestinians were really hoping it’d be called the Israel War!)
Now we’ve learned by Israeli journalists that the Hamas invasion was supposed to be coordinated with Hezbollah and others, via Iran, to form a pincer movement. Thankfully that collab didn’t happen — this calls to mind the sardonic observation that Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity — but the point is that Palestinian political intentions have been crystal clear for over 100 years.
A minority of Israeli politicians also have a solution, but even when they’re in power, they don’t act on it. There are millions of Arab citizens in Israel. There are millions of Arabs in the West Bank. In Israel, there are Arab political parties, Supreme Court justices, business tycoons and so on. Yes, they are excluded from certain institutions like the military (duh) and live in relative poverty — which is far better than how the entire non-Gulf Arab world lives in extreme poverty — but they do in fact live and vote and succeed or fail as citizens. No Israeli extremist has changed that fact since 1948. In no other Middle Eastern country can an Arab citizen cast a real vote.
Now ask yourself, how many Jewish politicians or citizens succeed or fail in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria or Iraq, even if they had to live as minorities? Those countries once held huge Jewish populations for 2,000 years.
No matter what you think about the moral travesty of settler violence in the West Bank, there’s still a West Bank. It’s full of Palestinians. None of them are going anywhere. Yet there are zero Jews in Alexandria or Baghdad.
Bringing this back to America, the idea of a two-state solution has no historical precedent or any evidence of ever working, with Jordan being the obvious exception. Peace requires warring parties to stop fighting. Empirically, since Palestinians don’t pursue peace and the UN invented the concept of multi-generational refugees that sustains their dreams of a Judenrein one-state solution, history reveals that peace won't happen.
It doesn't matter what you want, it matters what people on the ground want.
Why do establishment Americans — in politics, in the media, in the academy, in cultural institutions — speak piously about a two-state solution if it’s a fiction?
My sense is that this fiction helps these left wing celebrities, academic experts and public figures achieve their goals, which have nothing to with helping Jews or Palestinians. The repeated pieties elevate their electoral pitch to various constituents or it shields them from left wing antisemitism. That is useful domestically. Those uses aren’t diplomatic and have nothing to do with the Middle East. It’s great to win elections if you’re a politician who needs Arabs, Progressive Antisemites (redundant term, I know) and Jewish votes. It’s great to protect yourself from bigotry if you’re a Jewish professor who wants tenure or a Jewish politician who wants to stay in office, but that’s it.
Israelis and Palestinians remain untouched by these blandishments.
Trump’s plan for remaking Gaza without Palestinians has about as much legitimacy as a timeshare scam, but at least it’s not a repeated fabrication. It’s simply a new fabrication that may prod nearby Arab states to change their policies of warehousing previous generations Palestinians in refugee camps and denying new generations of Palestinians entry.
Anyone reading this understands that a land acknowledgment at a museum or college campus does nothing for a descendant of the Iroquois. Land acknowledgments, plaques and carefully worded preambles aren’t designed to help Native Americans, they’re designed to make the people saying it — usually financially secure people who have the time and money to enjoy museums, theaters and higher education — feel good about owning the land of dead Iroquois.
My argument is this is, at best, the utility of the two-state solution. It has domestic utility for those who repeat it. It has domestic utility for those who listen and and don’t question it, much like how people don’t question who the Iroquois killed to make their homes and culture.
At worse, the two-state solution is as dangerous, anti-intellectual, immoral and misguided as the neocon policies for Afghanistan and Iraq. The only difference is that instead of sacrificing American soldiers on the altar of ego and avarice, liberals are willing to sacrifice Israelis and Palestinians on the altar of their superior morals.
Last thought. My bête noire is how the Democrats have become actors in a Samuel Becket play — waiting for something better that isn’t coming.
If they want to mount a successful opposition to Trump, and hopefully form a credible alternative to post-Reagan Republican authoritarianism, they need real plans for real people with real results. A focus on certain identities at home — some authentic, some invented — and mystical beliefs about the Middle East isn’t what Americans want, so they don’t vote for them. Again and again and again.
Republicans moved on from neocons to forge a different foreign policy that focuses on ending mass immigration and not launching unwinnable wars. I don’t like the inherent racism targeting migrants who simply seek a better life, just like my grandparents did when they came here, but at least the Republicans aren’t launching new wars anymore. That’s popular for a reason.
It’s time for Democrats to drop their falsehoods — like that a two-state solution will work, or that niche innovations like gender-identity are a priority, or that raising taxes while lowering services is smart — and create plans and policies that work. Could be in Israel, could be in the USA.
Right now it’s nowhere.