Is anyone out there really even slightly surprised, let alone shocked, at the past week’s events in Lebanon? If you are, then you might want to return to that hole in which you have apparently been hibernating for at least the past six years. If you have held any expectations the current administration had even a clue as to how to try to improve the situation in the Middle East, then please continue with your self delusion.

Let me state up front – I don’t have the answer; no one does. But I can tell you three things –

1. There is no single silver bullet that is going to fix things overnight;
2. Pouring our military resources into Afghanistan and Iraq is only going to exacerbate the situation;
3. The GW administration has done nothing constructive to ease tensions in the Middle East and foster an environment in which peace can at least begin to put down its fragile tendrils.

We Americans are used to “quick fix” solutions. In business, the health of a company is viewed in quarterly increments and when things go awry in one quarter, management looks for an immediate fix the next quarter. When kids in high school fail to attain the somewhat arbitrary acceptable scores on standardized tests, we bring in testing specialists to coach them for the next round.

This attitude stems, in part, from the simple fact that we, as a nation, have come so far so fast. Next year will be the 400th anniversary of the settling of Jamestown. That is only 20% of the length of time that has passed since everyone had to exchange their B.C. clocks for ones that worked on the A.D. standard – not a really long time.

But look how far we’ve come and how much we’ve accomplished in that time. We’ve conquered a continent (right or wrong is not the question here; it’s a fact); in just 50 years, we’ve built an interstate highway system; we’ve virtually eradicated an encyclopedia’s worth of diseases; we’ve brought about the extinction of too many species to count; and in less than 20 years, we’ve elected two guys named George Bush to be President.

It is only natural that with all the achievements we’ve accomplished in such a short time we should expect to be able to solve the Middle East “problem” in a few short years. And we would be wrong.

Let’s face it. The adversarial factions in the Middle East have histories that count more than three times the number of years of our nation’s history. And the simple fact is that you don’t change that sort of history overnight. There’s just too much inertia.

The other thing you don’t do is change it with a military solution, unless, of course, you plan to just conquer the region and make it our 51st state. Before we do that, though, one might ask Caesar, Alexander, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Hitler how that approach worked out for them.

We claim to be fighting Al Qaeda because of their declaration of war on us and because they have “WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRUCTION!” Who’s kidding who here? Yes, 9/11 was a horrific tragedy and, yes, the plethora of destructive acts carried out by terrorist fundamentalists is abhorrent. But didn’t your Kindergarten teacher try to explain to you that fighting never solves a problem? And whatever happened to “turn the other cheek?” (Hey, no one ever said it was supposed to be easy.) Our continued belief that we can solve the problem by responding to violence with violence is simply wrong.

So, what should we do instead? Well, first we need to do two things – (1) understand why we are so hated by the terrorist fundamentalists and (2) be willing to admit that, at least on occasion, they might have a legitimate point. Only by doing this can we even begin to conceive of reasonable alternatives to violence to solve the problem. Yes, we might have to take a couple of rabbit punches while we get our act together, but isn’t that better than forestalling any chance at peace by propagating the violence?

Next, we need to look at methods to mitigate the hatred. I would submit that it is a whole lot harder for someone to hate me if I extend the hand of friendship and make a true attempt to help him solve his problems. If the U.S. simply took the amount of money we are spending to fight the war in Iraq and funneled it into trying to improve living conditions in the region, even with all the attendant governmental incompetencies and run-of-the-mill graft that would surely eat into our funds, building roads, generating jobs and funding education would do far more towards tempering the flaming hatred that now consumes the region than will all the guns and ammunition we are supplying. An added benefit would be the significantly lowered loss of American lives.

GW has had six years and his approach has not worked. It is time for the U.S. Congress to stand up and be counted by effecting a change in the administration’s policies that bring this nation back to a sense of reason and rational actions.