The 19th-century British prime minister Lord Palmerston supposedly said that the Schleswig-Holstein international controversy of his time was so complicated that only three people had ever understood it: Prince Albert, who died; a professor, who went mad; and Lord Palmerston himself, who had forgotten all about it.
The modern Middle East is even more complicated than the Schleswig-Holstein controversy, and while the U.S. has no shortage of mad professors, the number of Americans who understand the background of the Israel-Palestinian dispute or the limited choices among which an American president can realistically choose is vanishingly small. As a result, America’s Middle East policy debates are almost always bitter and seldom smart.