What's worse, it was unnecessary for the president to publicly renounce U.S. policy. After all, the Egyptians, Palestinians, Jordanians, Saudis and Syrians -- indeed the entire Arab world -- recognize the reality of any solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians: Israel is likely to retain a number of settlements in the West Bank including Maale Adumim, the Gush Etzion block and others that abut the Green Line. Moreover, Palestinian refugees will not be permitted to return to the lands they lost during Israel's creation.

The administration and its Israeli partners are under the impression that Washington's public recognition of this eventual reality will permit more pragmatic Palestinian leaders to emerge. This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of both the cultural sensitivities of the Palestinians, who are likely to resist what they regard as American and Israeli dictates, and Arab political dynamics. In the current climate of anti-Americanism, in which extremists frame the terms of debate in the Arab media, there is little reason to believe that any Palestinian leadership would or even could submit to a Washington-blessed Israeli plan to deny what the Palestinians regard as their historic and just claims. These mythic leaders would have no credibility or legitimacy in Palestinian and Arab eyes. Rather than encouraging a more forthcoming Palestinian position, the administration's coordination with the Israelis is likely to make it more difficult to draw the Palestinians into negotiations. From their perspective, there is now nothing left to negotiate.

The administration's approach to Arab-Israeli peace brings the larger and more fundamental problem of current U.S. Middle East policy into sharp relief: lack of credibility. The yawning gap between the principles that ostensibly guide the United States in the world -- freedom, justice, decency and national self-determination -- and objective reality produces outrage among Arabs. The recent revelations of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison further reinforce the image of the United States not as a liberator, but as yet another repressive colonial power.

The president's "forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East" is an empty phrase so long as U.S. Army reservists, intelligence officers and private contractors are emulating the practices of Saddam's sadistic intelligence organizations. The words of editorial writers in the May 4 edition of the Jordanian daily Al-Arab Al-Yom are particularly revealing: "In the minds of Arab citizens, Abu Ghraib's pictures exactly match the ugly image of America, the occupier and the invader. All this talk by America of democracy and a greater Middle East is being exposed as a lie."

At least the abuse of Iraqi prisoners does not seem to be an administration policy. Far more worrying is the situation in Fallujah, where the security environment has deteriorated to such a degree that the CPA is engaged in a search for an acceptable Iraqi general to assume control of the city. In a moment of clarity, U.S. officials determined that Jassim Mohammed Saleh -- a senior officer in Saddam's Republican Guard -- was not, after all, an appropriate choice to rule the troubled city. The CPA and Central Command have settled on a former intelligence officer and reported opponent of Saddam, Mohammed Latif, to take over security operations in Fallujah. Regardless of Latif's profile, however, the decision to place a former Iraqi military officer in charge is a further blow to American credibility. Fallujah can be seen as a microcosm of all that has gone wrong in Iraq.

For all the talk of Iraq as a model of Arab democracy that will ultimately sweep away other authoritarian regimes in the region, at a moment of crisis the Bush administration has fallen back on a tried-and-true method of establishing order in the Arab world -- i.e., support for the military strongman.

Given this turn of events, it does not seem beyond the realm of possibility that as the security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, the United States would seek to place an additional Iraqi general in charge, but this time in Baghdad. Rather than be a model for the region, Iraq would take a place alongside other military-dominated regimes of the region like Egypt, Algeria and Syria. And with this outcome, everything that the Arab world has been saying all along about U.S. intentions and credibility would be confirmed. The false assumptions that guided the Bush administration into Iraq have clearly come back to haunt it. Indeed, it is fair to say that the neocons have been mugged by the reality of Arab politics.

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