Happiness: Location, location, location

“It is time we admitted that there is more to life than money, and it is time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB, that is, general well-being.” These words came not from a hippie throwback or a leftist intellectual, but from David Cameron, leader of the Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition and of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party. Of all the things David Cameron has said in the last years, no one has met as much public approval as this one. Measuring and explaining the happiness of nations is not anymore just the subject of social science research and journalistic interest. It has entered the realm of policy. Jeremy Bentham, the 18th-century utilitarian philosopher that argued that the purpose of politics should be about bringing the most happiness to the greatest number of people, would be proud. The United States may be the only country -that I know of- with a constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness, but in Bhutan they take it seriously enough for the king to proclaim Gross National Happiness as the prism that should guide rulings and policy.

It may appear to some as epistemologically flawed, if not utterly bogus, but thousands of psychologists, sociologists, economists and political scientists are in the business of finding the happiness quotient of a given country, comparing it, and unbundling it in search of explanations and, possibly, policy prescriptions. The World Database of Happiness lists almost 8,000 names in its Directory of Happiness Investigators. Apart from a database of happiness research, there is a map of global happiness, competing surveys and indexes ranking the happiness of nations, and passionate debate over their findings.

Interestingly, most try to prove the old adage that money does not buy happiness. The World Values Survey made headlines when it established that the countries with the greatest percentage of people satisfied with their lives were Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela, and El Salvador. Although counter-intuitive, this seemed to reinforce conventional wisdom, which long ago accepted that warmer countries are poorer but happier. Scandinavian countries top almost every ranking that matters, uniquely excelling at both creating wealth and distributing it, and finding the balance between efficiency and fairness that big-government advocates long for. But one also associates those societies with alcoholism, wife battery, weather-induced depression, and suicide. Tropical countries, despite poverty and malaria, are often thought of as happy places where people dance and mate on empty stomachs. Other studies point out that the happiness quotient of industrialized countries has not varied much since World War Two, despite a dramatic rise in income. Western nations do not get happier as they get richer. This has important policy implications. If better education, health care, and prosperity do not contribute to the overall level of well-being, why should governments even bother? Why should rich, sad countries help poor, happy countries?

The truth is that most surveys indicate that Swedes, Danes, Swiss, Norwegians, Austrians and Icelanders actually top the overwhelming majority of the rankings. The United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom, despite the bad reputation of its gastronomy and climate, do quite well too. In studies that measure SWB (subjective well-being), the effect of poverty and conflict is immediately apparent. Allowing for exceptions, the map of global happiness correlates very strongly with UN data on health and wealth. Whether one looks at happiness surveys or at the United Nations' Human Development Index -which combines GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, life expectancy at birth, and rates of literacy and enrollment in higher education- you will find almost the same countries at the top of the list, and the same countries at the bottom. Romania, Moldova, and other legendary sad places in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, are only rock bottom when poorer, African countries are left out of the picture. Italy is romanticized by tourists and movies as an ideal place, with ideal weather, food, and people, but Italians, appalled by economic under-performance and third-worldly levels of government corruption and instability, are reportedly very gloomy these days. Suicide is not just something that happens to Japanese or Scandinavians for whom material well-being is not enough. It happens, in much larger numbers, to poor cotton farmers in India unable to pay back loans used to buy pesticide.

The happiness debate is not immune to the geography versus culture dilemma. And one can quibble endlessly over how to define and measure well-being or satisfaction, or how to distinguish correlation from causation, but those Scandinavians, at sub-zero temperatures and taxation above fifty percent of income, are actually very happy people after all. I suspect good governance has something to do with it. It has to be either that or the alcohol.

Superdelegates: Waiting for the Un-Democratic Convention

A modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville diagnosing the health of American democracy would probably criticize the outsize influence of special interests and powerful lobbies. He might rant against an apathetic and uninformed public, and scorn the 80 million people of voting age that decided to stay at home in the last presidential election. He would probably write about the hundreds of millions of dollars in funds raised to buy 30-second television ads, and how money has become a better indicator of electoral success than a well-reasoned argument or a good debate. The media, the military-industrial complex, the electoral college, the Florida recount, the butterfly ballot, would all be included along with the usual suspects to be blamed for the bad shape of the world's first modern liberal democracy. And yet the now famous superdelegates, which will supposedly decide the Democratic primary this summer, could become the last straw for many, and the most embarrassing chapter for most.

Superdelegates, which account for one-fifth of the Democratic Party Convention, are members of Congress, governors, former presidents and vice presidents, party insiders, and members of the Democratic National Committee, including city council members and union leaders. These are not chosen by primary voters, nor are obligated to give their vote to the candidate preferred by a majority of the people. Thus, as it is often mentioned these days, one could envision a scenario where Barack Obama ends up winning twice as many state primaries and caucuses as its opponent, obtains more delegates and more votes, and still loses the nomination because party insiders prefer Hillary Clinton. Until now, very few knew those superdelegates even existed. As a matter of fact, most people that volunteered their time, donated their money, spent hours in a caucus somewhere, or simply went to the voting booth, believed they were participating in a beautiful exercise of democracy at its finest.

The party's primaries were a largely undemocratic affair for most of its history, and were dominated by big-city bosses and party machines. After the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, in passionate contest for primaries with Eugene McCarthy, the DNC gave the nomination to Hubert Humphrey, who supported the Vietnam war and had not won a single primary. As a reaction to the public outrage -the convention itself was mobbed by protesters who were tear-gassed-, the party revised the primary process to make it more democratic and ensure that the will of the people decided the nominee. However, after the consecutive nomination of mavericks like George McGovern or Jimmy Carter, the party introduced the superdelegates to control the fervor of activists and the momentum of insurgent campaigns and non-establishment candidates. Party insiders and elected officials, or so it was argued, would be better judges of a candidate's potential electoral success. They did not, however, get off to a good start. Superdelegates propelled the nomination of Walter Mondale, who lost 49 states to Reagan in the 1984 general election. Since then, people forgot about them. Each time, a clear front-runner emerged early in the race, and superdelegates simply crowned him en masse at the convention. Over the last years, the closest thing to a brokered convention took place in a fictional election, in the last season of the American television serial drama The West Wing.

It is not at all clear that Clinton would get a majority of superdelegates, or that Obama will reach the convention with a lead in states, delegates, and votes. It should also be noted that many Obama supporters welcomed the idea of a brokered convention when they thought Clinton would lead in votes and delegates. They knew the rules of the game. But most voters didn't, and many will feel understandably disillusioned, if not enraged. Watching so many of these party insiders relish at their role as king makers and boast about receiving calls from Bill, Hillary, Chelsea, and the Obama campaign is unsettling enough. The political system of the United States allows for someone to lose the popular vote but win the electoral college and the presidency, and for thirteen state legislatures in the smallest states representing 4 percent of the population to block any amendment to the constitution, among other notoriously anti-democratic features. But you can chalk these up to the federal structure of the United States. The power of superdelegates in the Democratic party, however, has no other explanation than the desire to control and tame democracy. After getting so many people involved and excited, breaking records of political participation in each contest, the will of the majority should determine the nominee, whether this is Hillary or Barack. Otherwise, they should skip the balloons, the confetti, and all the happy talk about the power of democracy at work.

Another Veil: Europe's Misplaced Fears

Europeans -some, many, most- need to get over their fear of Muslim parties winning democratic elections. From Algeria in 1991 to Turkey in 2007, Europe's anxiety over the Muslim world has been far from helpful and far from fair.

Erdogan's AKP (Justice and Development Party) won another resounding victory in July 22nd, against the wishes of Turkey's secularists and the the military establishment. Both had loudly objected to Erdogan's nomination for the post of President of the Republic, with street demonstrations, parliamentary boycotts, and even threats of a military intervention. Erdogan's choice, Abdullah Gul, is one of the most charismatic and well-regarded politicians of the country, but has one main flaw: his wife, Hayrunissa, wears a veil, a piece of clothing banned in government buildings and schools since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Mustafa Kemal's westernization of the country in the 1920s. Forced to call early elections, AKP's share of the votes grew from an already generous 34 percent to an unprecedented 47 percent. Short of what would be the fifth military coup in Turkey's volatile democratic history, the Army won't be able to stop Gul's candidacy for President this time around.

Europe, or, more precisely, its Franco-German heart, did not cheer this development. If anything, it gave new vigor to the voices that object to Turkey's admission in the European Union at an uncertain date in the distant future. In the contest for Turkey's soul, it is easier to find Europeans sympathizing with the generals and the secularists than with Erdogan. And it may well be that, at least among policy elites and Eurocrats in Brussels, opposition to Turkey's candidacy stems from the difficulty to absorb 70 million people, many of whom are poor and farmers (how will French farmers survive, mon Dieu)-, but for ordinary Europeans Turkey is just too Muslim. Especially now that it is governed by a hijab-friendly Islamic party and Hayrunissa's veil is just the first step on a slippery slope towards another Green Revolution -this one unrelated to crops.

Here's an Islamic party that won a democratic election by a large margin in 2002, devoted its mandate to bread-and-butter issues, avoided confronting the country's secularism, won re-election by an even larger margin in 2007 after months of protests and veiled threats against it, and re-entered Gul's candidacy to the Presidency with his promises to respect the neutrality of the post and the country's laïcité, and to ask his wife to show a bit more hair. Could you ask for more? Meanwhile, the zealous guardians of Turkey's secularism, are the all-too-powerful military forces, partly responsible for Turkey's harsh limits on freedom of expression, its Armenian-genocide denials, its invasion of Cyprus and subsequent policies vis-a-vis the occupied north of the island, the four military coups interrupting democratically elected governments, and, until recently, its repression of Kurdish rights. If there's anything in Turkey for Europe to fear, it is not the Justice and Development Party.

Similar scenarios appear elsewhere. Many Westerners seem happy to support Fatah -supposedly secularist, but whose gunmen defiantly surrounded the EU office in Gaza and burned flags in the wake of the Danish cartoons' crisis- over Hamas, the winner of a free and fair democratic election in January 2005; happy to condone the repression of Islamist parties by authoritarian regimes in North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt; and terrified by the prospect of elections in Pakistan. In Pakistan, the threat posed by Islamic extremists -dramatically represented by the Red Mosque events- is enough to stall democratic reforms that would most likely benefit the "secular" party of Benazir Bhutto at a moment where the democratic-minded majority has shown how much it cares about the independence of the judiciary. Instead, it is deemed wiser to stick by President Pervez Musharraf, who took power in a military coup, has not fulfilled its promises of democratization, and whose much infamous Inter-Services Intelligence are found to be in bed with every unsavory character on that part of the planet, from the Taliban to Kashmiri jihadis to A. Q. Khan and his nukes-selling bazaar.

In 1991, Europe stood by as the Algerian military canceled the second round of elections after the FIS had won the first one. What followed was a gruesome civil war, among the worst in the century, and a clear sign to many Muslim groups that if they wanted to grab power they had to resort to less civilized means. This is a lesson that should be well learned by now.

Dangerous Propositions: Obama Toughens Up On The "Neglected" Eastern Front

Nothing distinguishes Senator Obama from the other top-tier presidential candidates in the Democratic Party more than his staunch opposition to the Iraq war since 2002. Back then, he affirmed he would have voted against the war authorization in the Senate -the vote that Senator Edwards has since repudiated but Senator Clinton hasn't-, called it "a dumb war," worried about how much would it cost and whether the country would disintegrate along sectarian lines, and abhorred circumventing the authority of the United Nations and acting unilaterally. Back then, his position was held by a minority. Today, the tables have turned, and this instance of foresight and good judgment has boosted his political capital enormously.

However, he's no dove, and he seems determined to prove it. On the war on terror, on Iran's nuclear weapons' program, and even on Iraq, his positions -laid out in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs- are closer to Clinton than to Kucinich. Following a phony debate with Senator Clinton over hypothetical diplomatic meetings with leaders of "rogue" countries, Obama promised to take the war on terror back to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the "true" front, neglected due to the Iraq diversion. He mentioned he would redeploy some of the troops being pulled out of Iraq into Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are experiencing a resurgence and seem, according to the National Intelligence Estimate, stronger than ever since Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001. In addition, faced with evidence of Taliban regrouping in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, Senator Obama said the following: "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qa'eda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

These comments were received with criticism by most pundits and presidential candidates, on both sides of the political spectrum. The exceptions are notable: Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, who again outdid Obama in hawkishness by maintaining that in such a hypothetical, nuclear weapons should not be taken off the table. Despite the pundits' criticism, it is hard to imagine that the general public in the United States would oppose such a move. For all the "invasion fatigue," few expect Americans to react negatively against limited attacks on Al-Qaeda bases, regardless of sovereignty issues or Pakistani protests. After all, did anyone object -or even care- about the United States' intervention in Somalia only a few months ago? Obama's comments appeared on the heels of revelations that military bureaucracy had averted plans to use Special Ops against Al-Qaeda leadership -al-Zawahiri included- in Pakistan in 2005, in a similar fashion to Clinton's frustrated plans to take on Osama Bin Laden in 1998.

The problem is not how would Americans react to such a decision, but how would Pakistanis and the Muslim world in general. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, more troops do not guarantee victory. The Brits doubled up their military engagement in Helmand province and since then the situation has only worsened. For all the talk of rebuilding the country, the only Americans or NATO soldiers that typical Afghans outside Kabul encounter are the ones that eradicate their year-long harvest of poppy crop or fly the planes that wipe out entire families of innocent civilians along with militants. As in the Cold War, containment, rather than rollback or appeasement, is the better policy. Taliban control of the southern provinces will likely ebb and flow, but they cannot take over Kabul like they did in 1996.

But the real issue is Pakistan. Although not treated as such, Pakistan is the key country in the so-called war on terror. It is the second most populous Muslim country and its nuclear arsenal counts with more than 100 warheads. It is a battleground where Islamic radicalism and secular democratic forces fight daily for the heart of the country. In Pakistan, as far as the United States is concerned, less is more. When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Islamists were the direct beneficiaries in the following elections, gaining twice as many votes as they previously had and catapulting them into positions of power in the North West Province and Baluchistan. As General Musharraf struggles to handle multiple challenges to his rule, from both secular and religious forces, and Pakistan toys with democracy in moments of uncertainty, it is not difficult to imagine how tough talk of US intervention would strengthen the Islamists and more radical groups over the secular forces expected to group around Benazir Bhutto. It seems like an awful price to pay for a few terrorists on the loose.

US in Mesopotamia: Should They Stay Or Should They Go?

In the fifth year of American occupation of Iraq, as more voices join the "worst-decision-ever" crowd, it is now clear that most Americans and Iraqis want US troops out of Iraq. Yet supporters of the war will not cease to pull new arguments and justifications out of their bottomless bag of stubbornness.

Conservatives do not frame the debate anymore around the benefits of victory -a democratic, stable, friendly beacon of hope in the Middle East- but around the dire consequences of defeat. The same pundits that were tragically wrong in all of their earlier predictions, affirm with unfailing confidence that they know what will happen upon premature withdrawal of US troops: a bloodbath, possibly escalating into a regional war involving Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the other usual suspects; a sanctuary for Al-Qaeda in the Sunni regions of Iraq; and a hit to US reputation added to a strategic gift for Iran, which will happily ride the wave of the Shiite crescent on the back of a Shiite government in Baghdad.

Less mentioned is the argument that, although the overwhelming majority of Iraqis would like US troops to leave, the government of Iraq -including President Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki- hope to prolong US commitment as long as they need to stabilize the country and consolidate their authority. However, just a few days ago, Maliki surprised most observers by declaring that US troops could leave whenever they wanted, because the Iraqi army was ready to take over security and pacify the country. They aren't, and Maliki knows it, but this candid statement reflects an important strategic shift: the largely Shiite government of Iraq has realized that the United States' new course is detrimental to their interests.

The much-discussed and never-met political benchmarks dictate a greater share of power and wealth for the Sunni minority of Iraq. The Administration and Congress are pushing for new provincial elections -boycotted by the Sunnis in 2005- to give the Sunnis greater representation in the north. This overlooks the fact that elections would take place in the south as well, giving Moqtada al-Sadr greater prominence, especially in Baghdad, and weakening the leading Shiite bloc in parliament, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. But most importantly, the United States is resorting to arming militias of Sunni insurgents to take on Al-Qaeda. These Sunni insurgents have been battling against the Shiite government of Iraq and do not plan to stop. Even though American troops are being killed mostly by Sunni radicals, the US has chosen to side with the Sunnis against the Shiites. A similar pattern can be seen in Lebanon -where the Administration doesn't shy away from approaching militias of Sunni fundamentalists so that they can fight against Hezbollah- and the larger Middle East, where the United States staunchly supports Saudi interests against Syria and Iran. This Faustian bargain has eerie and striking similarities with the events that precipitated the origins of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

If this is the path taken, it is likely that Nuri al-Maliki and other prominent Shiite politicians of SIIC and Dawa will join al-Sadr in his opposition to US policy. If we were to ignore the wishes of most Americans, most Iraqis, and the legitimate government of Iraq, that leaves us with the three arguments aforementioned. I cannot comment on the bloodbath argument. Will it be worse than it is now? For how long? Unlike most people, I do not have a crystal ball. A sanctuary for Al-Qaeda in Iraq is the most used but weakest argument. Foreign fighters in Iraq are few, loathed by most Sunnis, and cannot dream to topple a government supported by the largest population bloc in the country -Shiites outnumber Sunnis by three to one- and protected by Iran. Al-Qaeda is a problem, and a growing one, in the neglected front: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Finally, the reputation argument is spelled roughly as follows: if the United States gives in to terrorists, or withdraws without getting the job done and admits defeat, the consequences would range from diplomatic embarrassment to a diminished ability to wield power in world affairs. But admitting defeat and leaving has not been catastrophic for great powers. Algeria was far more important for France, and De Gaulle's decision to let it go is considered among the wisest in French statesmanship. Leaving Saigon in 1975 did not prove to be a strategic disaster for the United States: the dominoes didn't fall in Southeast Asia, and it was the USSR that lost the Cold War after getting involved in their own Afghan quagmire. Reagan pulled out the American troops from Lebanon after Hezbollah's bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, and in 2003 Bush redeployed the US military bases in Saudi Arabia -the original reason behind Bin Laden's declaration of war against the West. Nixon, Reagan, Bush... the Democrats should take lessons from the Republicans on how to be soft on communism and terrorism.

Stop calling them Salafi Jihadists

Six years after September 11th, Bin Laden roams free and Al Qaeda training camps keep sprouting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, awash with new recruits that then spread their particular brand of violence in Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, the West, and so on. Another thing that hasn't changed is our sloppy wrangling over how to label them.

First, using the term "Muslim terrorists" or "Islamic terrorists" was quickly rejected by academics for a variety of reasons: a) Islam and terrorism were deemed contradictory; b) it was unfair to add the epithet Muslim or Islamic when "Christian" was never added to terrorists of that persuasion; or c) disagreement over what's terrorism, who is a terrorist and who isn't, was enough to prolong the discussion endlessly.

Then, the term "Muslim fundamentalists," still widely used, was also objected. First, most Muslim fundamentalists reject the use of violence or the instrumentalization of Islam for political purposes. Second, the term "fundamentalism" was coined for Protestants in the US that believed in a literal reading of the Bible. When applied to the Islamic world, this term loses its meanings, because all Muslims are expected to believe that the Quran is the literal revelation of Allah to Muhammad. That doesn't imply that most of them use only the Islamic scriptures to guide their conduct, or that Wahhabi Muslims of the Hanbali school -which engage in the narrowest and most puritanical reading of the Quran- preach a return to the "fundamentals" of Islam. Instead, as it is well known, they selectively emphasize some elements and downplay others, and fuse supposedly Islamic practices with contemporary tribal mores and customs -as in the Pashtun Taliban.

Lastly, the fashionable label is that of Salafi jihadis, vaguely used to describe those Muslims who combine an ultra-conservative reading of the Scriptures with an embrace of violence in the form, often, of indiscriminate suicide attacks against civilians of all stripes, including Westerners and Muslims deemed apostates -that is, in their eyes, the overwhelming majority. Now I'm not happy with this one either, mainly because it endorses using a compliment -yes, it is a compliment- to describe an aberration. First, both salaf and jihad have positive connotations in the Muslim world. Most Wahhabi Muslims, for example, reject that label because it implies that they are simply a sect of followers of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, and prefer to be called Salafists, which evokes their effort to imitate their "pious forefathers" (salaf). Secondly, and better known, jihad is another positive word in the Muslim world, both to refer to the greater jihad -personal and apolitical struggle- and the lesser jihad -defensive war against foreign aggression. Now this doesn't seem to endorse blowing yourself up in a wedding in Amman. And worse yet, it not only sounds like a compliment to those that engage in those acts, elevating their stature to that of holy warriors, but it co-opts words that have a positive connotation within the Muslim world in general.

What then? Many Muslim commentators propose and use the word "Qutbists." Sayyid Qutb was the intellectual revolutionary that, among other things, preached violence against the West -civilians included- as legitimate jihad. Qutbism (al-Qutbiyya) is the modern revolutionary ideology that inspires bin Laden and others, and is denounced by most Muslim, Salafi scholars included, as the main culpable of the tribulations of the Muslim world today. It's what rival Muslims call them and it's a label that Jihadis hate, because it implies that they are merely followers of a human and are members of a deviant sect. It's hardly ever used in the Western media, and only a bit more frequently on scholarly articles, but we should give it some consideration. After all, if you can't call it appropriately, how can you fight it?

Tony Blair in the Middle East: Right Man for the Job?

Just hours after Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Quartet -composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations- appointed him as its representative and envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And only a few hours after that, the debate over the wisdom or foolishness of this choice raged on.

Supporters rightly indicate that Tony Blair is perhaps the most gifted politician of his generation. On the domestic front, he leaves the UK in far better shape than it was when he arrived at 10 Downing Street in 1997. Steady economic growth, improved hospitals and schools, and impeccable skills as a performer-cum-politician, explain his victory in three consecutive national elections, a feat never accomplished by a leader of the Labour Party. He has managed to successfully navigate the always turbulent waters of devolution -higher autonomy to Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland- and make of the UK a cosmopolitan country awash with immigrants without the corresponding nativist backlash.

His popularity was not just domestic. On the international front, many European politicians -from left and right- defined themselves as Blairites, and many Americans wished he could be elected president of the United States. His efforts against global warming and extreme poverty in Africa have been laudable. And despite being a neophyte on global affairs when he became PM, Blair's assertive and interventionist foreign policy -in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and Afghanistan- turned out a collection of qualified successes. Yet none of these accomplishments qualifies him better for his new job as the resolution of the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland. One can only hope that he will be able to bring the same patience, perseverance, and the ability to reconcile sworn enemies, to the Middle East. For starters, he was instrumental in normalizing relations between Lybia's Gaddafi and the West, maintains a good rapport with leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and his appointment was well received by both Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas.

However, it is more than an ugly coincidence that all of Blair's shortcomings and blunders have to do precisely with the Middle East. Most of his demise in popularity -in the UK and abroad- has to do, of course, with Iraq. He is considered by many a war criminal -waging, under false pretenses, a military misadventure that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and has yet to bring any peace or stability to the region. But more than the mistake of this decision, what annoys his growing detractors is his inability to express remorse. In every chance he gets, Blair continues to affirm, with stubborn ideological zeal, that the war was justified, that the decision he took was the right one for his country and the world, and that history will soon be on his side.

Similarly, last summer, with a majority of world opinion appalled by Israel's bombing of Lebanon, Blair refused to condemn Israeli actions as disproportionate, and stayed alone with his American and Israeli counterparts in blocking UN efforts to call for a ceasefire. Both in Iraq and Lebanon, Blair appeared as uncritically doing the United States' bidding, even against the Britons' preferences. And after the 2000 Camp David negotiations, Blair joined Clinton in singling out Arafat as the main culpable of the collapse of the peace process, a judgment that remains disputed even in the West. This is hardly going to help him in Gaza and the West Bank, where every international initiative is already regarded as pro-Israel, and where Blair, like in the rest of the Arab world, is disliked almost as much as George Bush. He has failed to convince the US President to make a stronger effort to solve the Middle East crisis. Mahmoud Abbas was quick to welcome the appointment, but in a divided Palestine, his political clout and authority carry less than half of the Palestinians. The Europeans, beginning with Javier Solana, were not very happy. And Russia stalled the appointment for a while, a possible echo of the Litvinenko case and Blair's recent anti-Putin statements.

Does any of this matter? Hardly. Blair's appointment, right or wrong, is unlikely to be of much impact. Peace in Israel and Palestine, even though nearly everyone agrees on principle to a two-state solution, seems farther than ever. Dozens of international mediators came and left, to no avail -starting with the UN mediator Folke Bernadotte, who was murdered by the Jewish terrorist group Lehi in 1948. Before Blair, the Quartet's last envoy was James Wolfensohn, another high-profile figure much praised for his leadership at the World Bank. Wolfensohn resigned after a year, criticizing Israel for its refusal to engage seriously in the peace process. And Hamas and Fatah are too busy fighting each other to worry about the plight of the Palestinians, reset the peace talks, or listen to Bush's poodle.