Rick Perry: the president’s Middle-East policy is naive, arrogant, misguided and dangerous. It’s not like that distinguishes it from any of his other policies. And Marty Peretz says that Obama’s Middle East is in tatters.

Who could have guessed such a thing could happen when you put an ill-educated leftist academic with no real-world experience into the Oval Office?

[Update a few minutes later]

The Peretz piece really is a must-read:

I wish there would be a Palestinian state, not because there is actually a real Palestinian people. I’m not persuaded of that. And, of course, I don’t think that there is a Nigerian people which is why, when younger, I was an active supporter of Biafra, the would-be Ibo state, squashed by an indifferent world in behalf of the territorial integrity of, yes, Nigeria which is breaking apart before our eyes, in part because of the machinations of Muslim extremism. The world will some day have to come to grips with the fact that most governments are not really representative of their peoples. The whole notion of a country’s UN membership being a certificate of legitimacy is morally corrupt. UN membership is an admission ticket to the expensive blandishments of New York.

So I want a Palestine because I want Israelis not to have to burden themselves with an internal population that has neither the coherence of a nation nor a tradition of democratic norms. President Obama is enamored of the current Palestinian narrative, as false as it is self-pitying. This is a simple narrative and an over-simple projection into the future. It assumes that a 1949 map of the cease-fire lines—yes, of course, with appropriate but tiny land exchanges—will assure the peace. I do not think it assures anything except that Israel would be deflected from the art and science of building an ever freer society, a chore—if you’ll forgive me—it has shown some talents in doing. I do not know Obama’s head. Maybe nobody does. But his fervent and fervid clamoring for a simple Israeli route to an independent Palestine misled no people so much as the Palestinians. When he retreated from his formulae, which the PA assumed he could impose on Israel, they were already on an independence high. His somber entreaties could not bring them back to any semblance of reality.

This conundrum of a non-negotiated state for the Palestinians appeals to the ardent déclarateurs. It ignores the fact that free and responsible politics has never been a habit in the Arab world. Read me right: never. There is nothing in Palestinian history to have made the Arabs of Palestine an exception to this stubborn commonplace now being played out again in virtually every country in the region. A commitment is never a commitment. A border is never a border. A peace is never long-lasting. Turkey has now added its serious mischief to the scenario. Erdogan himself will now unravel Cairo’s peace with Jerusalem, as Erdogan has already locked the PA into phantom international politics.

And the president probably doesn’t even comprehend the implications.