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Digging in the Sand Pit: America's New Longest War

While it may be hard to believe, our deep political involvement in the Middle East is of fairly recent origin. Prior to World War II, it was practically limited to a few oil wells and a small missionary presence scattered here and there. During the war, planning air routes for the immediate future and long-range needs engaged some policymakers in the Pentagon, while the biggest political question became the issue of a Jewish homeland. For FDR at the end of the war, and for all his successors down to today, how to reconcile the Arab world to the presence of Israel became a permanent dilemma. As the Cold War developed after the Truman Doctrine, the United States began sending arms and military advisers to practically all the countries; and Eisenhower intervened in a major way twice: first, in 1953, to put the Shah of Iran back on his peacock throne, and again in 1957 to force the British and French, with their new ally Israel, to pull back from Egypt. It can be argued that, with the exodus of the old colonial powers from the scene, the United States essentially took over guardianship of the West’s interest in keeping the oil flowing out by building up local constabularies to manage affairs within the various sheikdoms and monarchies. Largely, however, this was a task accomplished from afar, even if it was not always done. There was one small troop landing in Lebanon in 1958; but the American soldiers, welcomed ashore by ice-cream vendors, left soon afterwards. All that has changed in the last three decades. Today we are engaged in two wars at the same time, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan—and, potentially,