The Saudis say ‘no’ to Bush

President Bush returned to Washington this week from his final tour of the Middle East, with little to show for his efforts. In Saudi Arabia, Bush urged Saudi King Abdullah to dramatically increase oil production, in order to lower gas prices in the U.S. But the Saudi oil ministry rebuffed him, saying it had decided a week earlier on a modest increase of 300,000 barrels a day—too little to lower gas prices. “We are doing everything we can to help the international economy by producing as much as is needed,” said Prince Saud al-Faisal.

In Egypt, Bush scolded Arab leaders for resisting democratic reform and urged support for his efforts to isolate Iran. “Too often in the Middle East,” Bush said, “politics has consisted of one leader in power and the other in jail.” He had planned to meet with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, but Siniora canceled to work out a deal with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group that dominates Lebanese politics. Under the deal, Hezbollah has veto power over any government decision.

It’s humiliating for Bush to grovel for oil, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial, “even as the administration is defending its decision to sell the House of Saud billions of dollars in advanced weapons.” Besides, the falling dollar, not supply constraints, is driving up oil prices. Bush should address his complaints to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

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What’s baffling, said Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, is that Bush would rather “beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people” to break their oil addiction. Bush could harness the U.S. economy, “the most powerful innovation engine in the world,” to develop alternatives to oil. Instead, he wants to send more oil dollars to Saudi Arabia’s despots.

Bush’s incoherent Mideast policy has turned Lebanon into a tinder­box, said Trudy Rubin in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Hezbollah, whose “thugs” recently took over much of Beirut, rose to power as Iran’s clout grew in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s downfall. With Iran’s influence increasing by the day, thanks to Bush, Siniora had little choice but to give the terrorist group more say in Lebanon’s rule.