“All politics is local.”
So said the late, great Tip O’Neill, Democratic speaker of the US House of Representatives. Israel’s assault on Lebanon? For US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, it’s just the run-up to the next campaign.
Look at the polls. Bush only supports Israel’s Lebanese incursion because it focuses American voters’ minds back to global terrorism — the only national issue that a slim majority of Americans agree Bush is handling well.
Look at the polls. The public’s strong disapproval of Bush’s “poor” leadership has held steady at over 60 percent.
Absent a small core of hardened conservatives, the American public soundly rejects Bush and the Republicans he leads on every single issue — the war in Iraq, the economy, the deficit, health care, education — except one: The metaphorical war on terror.
On this single issue, which retains a surreal quality as “the enemy” constantly is re-made and re-focused in the American mind, Bush has held a steady “approval” rating of 45 to 47 percent. Even so, Bush and by juxtaposition the Republican Party’s approval rating on the terrorism issue falls significantly short of even 50percent. But it is the highest rating on any public issue Bush has enjoyed in over a year. And that year has been abysmal for Bush and all Republicans. Any parliamentary politician would have voluntarily bid “adieu” to his office six months ago.
Israel’s war on Lebanon? It couldn’t come at a better time for Bush. Bush needs Olmert’s war to win interim elections. All politics is local. Those who vaunt Karl Rove as a genius strategist are kidding only themselves.
Rove’s client became president despite the fact that a majority of Americans voted against him, and Bush would not have won a second term were it not for the public’s fear and uncertainty — stirred up by Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 atrocities.
What’s alarming is that to keep winning public office, the Republicans will have to keep their already ubiquitous “war on terror” going for a very long time. How can they do this? Through a combination of a “volunteer” army and billions of tax dollars spent on private “contractors” who are professional mercenaries. If ordinary Americans start losing their sons and daughters in a national draft, the war on terror will wind up quickly. All politics is local, especially for Israel. Olmert, Ariel Sharon’s protégé and successor, is using Lebanon to prove he is Sharon’s equal, if not better. Olmert’s also using Lebanon to solidify support for his fledgling Kadima, the new party he created with Sharon shortly before Sharon’s disabling stroke.
With Sharon incapacitated, many seemed ready to abandon Kadima — and Olmert — for Likud. Olmert struggled to build broad support.
In the March elections, Kadima won 29 Knesset seats, making it the largest voting block, but analysts had expected Kadima to win more. To broaden and consolidate his conservative base, Olmert has issued veiled threats since Hamas’s successful elections, saying that Israel would “take her own fate in her hands” if Hamas refused to recognize the State of Israel.
But in facing down Hamas, Olmert and (implicitly) Bush had to acknowledge that through the very democracy they’d supposedly wrought, the Palestinian people had decided that Hamas would represent them. What to do? Focus on a more alarming enemy like Iran.
Olmert recently proclaimed: “There is a Western world. There is America. There is Great Britain and Germany and France and Russia and China and other nations. I doubt that there is one country amongst those I mentioned which has a desire to see Iran, with its fundamentalist, Islamic, extremist government, possessing nuclear weapons.” But all politics is local, not international. The idea of a nuclear Iran isn’t popular in Europe, but Muslims form significant minorities there, and Russia or China has different geopolitical interests than Israel.
Olmert detrimentally relied on Europe to defeat Iran, but he could still popularize Kadima by beating up Lebanon, reputedly a hotbed of Iranian intrigue. And Hezbollah makes a convenient Iranian proxy. Could Israel’s war in Lebanon be more local?
Even Hamas and Hezbollah’s kidnapping of Israeli soldiers is little more than these groups’ competition for Palestinians’ hearts and minds. Sunni Hamas took one soldier, Shiite Hezbollah took two. Both groups are jockeying for financial and moral support to keep the struggle against Israel alive. They also seek to solidify and maximize support from their established political regional base. Will there be a backlash?
Surely, because “all politics is local.” Right now, Americans remember 9/11, and identify with Israel. But who told the terrorists three years ago, “Bring them on?” It was a local guy, in politics.
