John Roughan: A new home for Israel - East Texas

Five years is a long time in the life of your average war. The two world wars of last century were well on the way to resolution after that long.

In a few days it will be five years since that morning in Manhattan when the world reeled, five years since the President of the United States declared war on terror. Time to ask, how's it going?

The President will say it is going just fine, the enemy is on the run and has not managed any more hits on the US homeland, but he will warn that the war is far from finished, the "evil" remains, the threat ever-present, the need for vigilance eternal.

One of the glorious things about war for the politician in charge is that any enemy action will work to his advantage. Thus when Britain puts its airports on high alert and announces it has foiled a plot to blow up maybe 10 US bound planes at the same time, you don't, if you are George W. Bush, suffer the slightest embarrassment.

Quite the contrary, you put your own airports on an even higher alert and you crank up the rhetoric of fear again, reminding your country and the world that you have made absolutely no progress whatsoever.

Don't ask me why this works but it does. Keep the electorate scared and keep talking tough and you cannot lose. Even your opponents are afraid to be thought unpatriotic if they dare point out that you are getting nowhere.

And the press - what has happened to the American press? - takes its cue from an introverted, uncritical consensus.

Veteran broadcaster Mike Wallace did an interview with the President of Iran the other day. Iran, one of the old axis of evil, could be the next front of the war on terror. A deadline for that country to comply with US-inspired United Nations resolutions against its nuclear programme expired on Thursday.

Wallace, normally the most professional and perceptive of interviewers, disgraced himself. He had not the slightest interest in the Iranian point of view, or the subject in dispute; he spent his time trying to needle an interesting, patient and plainly intelligent man with questions as silly as whether he personally liked Bush.

When the ever-cheerful Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tried to explain Iran's nuclear power needs, Wallace chided him to keep his answers brief. Ahmadinejad offered to make the whole interview brief if he wanted. No, no, said Wallace, this was very important.

Then he wanted to know whether Ahmadinejad acknowledged the Holocaust and supported the existence of Israel.

The Iranian's eyes twinkled. Yes, he did; he believed a Jewish homeland should have been carved out of the United States. Now, there's a thought.

It is going to take something drastic to solve this running sore in the Middle East. Israel is the size of Northland; the US would hardly miss the territory. Israel is the greatest drain on US aid funds. The US is its main financial supporter and usually its only diplomatic supporter. Many a UN resolution critical of Israel is opposed by just two votes, Israel's and the United States.

America may not be the biblical promised land, but tell that to the folks who made the desert bloom in Utah. Israel could be given a nice spot in the Bible belt, East Texas maybe, and that aid could be used to relocate non-Jewish residents a bit more peaceably than the Palestinians were evicted.

Meanwhile, there was a report from Israel this week that if Iran defies the UN on its enriched uranium power plant, Israel might take matters into its own hands.

Iran insists it has no wish or intention to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel already has them. Shimon Peres, deputy Prime Minister, said this week: "They want to wipe out Israel. Now when it comes to destruction, Iran too can be destroyed."

When one of Israel's neighbours utters this sort of threat, the White House goes a-flutter. When Israel carries out such a threat with a pre-emptive raid in the region, the international community hardly stirs.

It is helpful in any war to look at the conflict from the other side occasionally.

When the twin towers came down and chest-beaters were quick to blame American sponsorship of Israel, I could see no moral equivalence. When the US rounded up a posse and went into Afghanistan it was only justice.

But when it turned like a crazed elephant and charged into Iraq everything was wrong. The motive was egotistical, the timing cold-blooded, the pretexts contrived, the tactics shortsighted, the strategy fanciful and the consequences utterly predictable.

The White House lost its war on terror right there. If Israel was always a lightning rod for Arab nationalism and Islamic militancy, Iraq became doubly so.

As a demonstration of American disregard for the dignity and self- determination of people they'd barely taken the trouble to know, Iraq was stark.

As an inspiration and recruiting ground for Sunni militants everywhere it must have seemed a Godsend.

Now Shiites too have been handed an inspiring victory by the survival of Hizbollah in Lebanon. Every home Israel bombed in Lebanon will probably produce a new recruit.

In the West we still barely understand the conflict. There seems to be a tectonic struggle going on in Islamic societies for the type of states they will form and just about everything America and Israel have done for the past five years has assisted the side we would not want to succeed.

If I was a cynic I'd think it was deliberate, but I'm not, I think it is just dumb.