WASHINGTON — The ancient Greeks created the myth of Sisyphus to remind themselves, and all who would follow, that triumph and setback often stroll hand in hand. Americans have the Bushes father and son to play that role.
Shortly after Operation Desert Storm ended in quick but incomplete triumph, the George Bush who was then president peered into the future and described for reporters a shimmering vision of the world to come:
"I think because of what’s happened, we won’t have to use U.S. forces around the world. I think when we say something that is objectively correct … people are going to listen."
Working through America’s Electoral College and the Taliban, history rewarded this unusual splash of G.H.W. Bush hubris with a Sisyphean outcome. There was no global Pax Americana policed by U.S. words and good intentions.
Instead, today’s President Bush must dispatch troops abroad to pursue killers and fanatics who listen to nothing but their own rantings. And he has reluctantly stepped into the Middle East to prevent a full scale Israeli-Palestinian war.
Bush has registered visible success in these two overlapping struggles in recent days: As the final Afghan strongholds of the Taliban and al Qaeda were crumbling, Yasser Arafat and other Arab leaders finally acted to curb the suicide bombers of Hamas. Bush has pushed the rock far up an imposing mountain.
But this is the moment when the Greeks would have us remember Sisyphus, condemned by the gods to roll a boulder to a summit only to watch it roll back down of its own weight. The cycle is repeated into eternity. As retold by Albert Camus, the myth illustrated the modern human condition — with a significant twist that we all should live by in the months and years to come.
The national and personal histories of the Greater Middle East suggest that it will be extremely difficult for American power to balance for long on this crest. But the inevitable setbacks ahead need not cause despair, retreat or new neglect if Washington and its allies anticipate them.
The political agreement on a transitional Afghan government signed in Bonn will not by itself resolve the deep conflicts that divide Afghanistan’s factions and regional powers such as Pakistan, India, Iran and Russia that see their own stability at stake. The agreement will be challenged immediately and repeatedly.
Nor can permanence be imputed to Arafat’s belated actions against Hamas leaders who, with Osama bin Laden, glory in the death of any Jew and any American in range of their suicide bombers. Suddenly, as his own skin seemed to be at stake, Arafat found a way around all the excuses for inaction that he, Hosni Mubarak and the Saudi royal family had been mouthing for months.
Egypt’s decision to dispatch Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher to Israel on Thursday to meet with Prime Minisiter Ariel Sharon and Arafat is a welcome development. But it raises a serious question: What took so long? The Egyptians withdrew their ambassador from Israel last year as they tried to sit out a terror war against Israel, with which Egypt claims to be at peace.
Here is a serious answer: In the past week it finally became clear that the gray zone on terrorism, in which the Egyptians, Saudis and Arafat have tried to huddle, was rapidly disappearing, and the United States was either unwilling or unable (both, in my view) to restore equilibrium. The "moderate" Arabs were suddenly faced with the same kind of existential choice that Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf had to make early in the Afghan campaign. They too decided they had to act or watch events totally escape their control.
This lesson should not be lost as Washington contends with the crosscurrents of problems that will flow from its initial successes. The United States inevitably loses when it tries to bribe, cajole or look away from the faults of regimes it has signed up as strategic "friends" and acts on their terms instead of its own.
The rhetoric of Bush the elder suggested that Desert Storm had changed the world. It did not even change the regime in Iraq. Bush the younger may have learned from his father’s experience — and his own brief tenure — that the struggle to change nations and humans is an endless, relentless task that cannot be switched on and off.
Camus argued that Sisyphus was neither hopeless nor dejected as he rolled his rock along. He understood the necessity and dignity of the struggle itself, even as fate imposed setbacks on him. We can do no less in engaging in the world’s disorders.
Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or hoaglandj@washpost.com.
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