Despite the feeble protestations of Condaleeza Rice today the Bush administration owns lock, stock and barrel, the bloody mess that is now the Middle East.

Yes, our invasion and occupation of Iraq and our subsequent impotence in dealing with the problems we’ve created there, including turning Iraq into a hotbed of terrorist recruitment, training and activity, have contributed mightily to the resurgence of activity by Hezbollah and the Palestinians but it has also emboldened the Israelis to take a “the hell with the rest of the world” attitude in their overreaction to provocation. But there is another part of the responsibility of the bushites that needs to be acknowledged that predates the invasion of Iraq and even comes well before their favorite excuse date for everything, 9/11 (but still within their tenure).

Remember that shortly after being installed in the White House the bush administration made significant changes in our involvement in the region. They pulled out of the Israeli/Palestinian problem entirely and basically turned their backs on the whole issue, apparently feeling that since they couldn’t have a glowing success they weren’t going to do the hard work of just keeping the parties at bay. This is when the current meltdown started, not with the invasion/occupation of Iraq, and we ought to remember that because it really does show an amazing continuity of incompetence in this administration since day 1.

Iraq makes the Middle East problem profoundly worse but we’d turned our backs on the region in a substantial way long before we invaded Iraq.