“I am a failure, and you have made me one,” Bill Clinton told Yasser Arafat in January 2001, after the Palestinian leader rejected the best peace offer Palestinians are ever likely to receive from an Israeli government.
Ever since, the Middle East has flummoxed and vexed American presidents. A misbegotten war in Iraq came to dominate George W. Bush’s presidency. Elected in large part because of his early opposition to Mr. Bush’s war, Barack Obama had to send troops back to Iraq to combat the rise of the Islamic State. Joe Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan damaged his popularity, and his handling of the Gaza conflict ignited a civil war among Democrats that has yet to subside.