In Mideast, time is not on America's side

It has become a cliche to say that Americans are always in a hurry, but, as in many stereotypes, there is a basis of truth. Financial people tell me that the emphasis American business puts on performance in the next quarter is a hindrance to proper long-term planning.

A federal judge recently complained that in the practice of law, time has become so much of the essence, as lawyers say, that careful thinking and considered judgment are losing ground.

My doctor told me that although time itself is a good diagnostician, fewer and fewer patients are willing to let time go by in order to find out what ails them, never mind trusting in time's healing powers. As a result, thousands of operations are rushed into unnecessarily simply because patients are too impatient.

A landscape gardener recently told me that in her business people increasingly had no time even to let the grass grow. Instant lawns and instant gardens were increasingly in demand, with 30-foot trees installed rather than the traditional saplings.

Certainly journalism is suffering from the demand for instant news. One expects it from CNN or the Associated Press, which traditionally deal in breaking stories, but newspaper correspondents, who once had a bit of time to reflect before they wrote, are now being asked to feed their websites at all hours of the day. According to ABC's Ted Koppel, the demands of instant journalism mean reporters "rarely have time to go out and do any reporting. They are almost chained to that satellite relay point."

One really sees the destructive side of American impatience in its foreign policy. It would be amusing if it were not so tragic to watch how American administrations deal with the Israelis and Palestinians. Administration after administration in the United States enters the Middle East game -- but with an eye to the next American election. American initiatives run on a four-year cycle, while Middle Easterners run on 40-year or even 400-year cycles.

Bill Clinton came as close as any president to bringing peace to the region, but a fatal flaw in his approach was that all agreements had to be made in the few weeks before he left office.

There was a time when President Bush sent retired general Anthony Zinni to the Middle East saying he would stay there until Israelis and Palestinians got their act together. But the more radical Palestinians believe that, although it may take 200 years, the Israelis will one day fold their tents just as did the Christian Crusaders and leave the Levant.

As for Israelis, they are not playing a short-term game either. The whole history of the Jewish people for the last couple of thousand years has been prevailing over adversity. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ariel Sharon all knew that if they simply played for time, General Zinni would soon be out of their hair and they could get back to the serious business of hammering each other. And, lo, Zinni soon departed, and nobody in America even remembered that Bush had said he would stay.

The same syndrome may be playing itself out in Iraq and Afghanistan. I fear it is no coincidence that the Bush administration wants sovereignty handed over to the Iraqis and elections held in Afghanistan by early summer in order to demonstrate progress before the election campaign begins in earnest. But many United Nations officials, nongovernmental organizations, and Afghans are advising Americans that Afghanistan may not be ready for elections in June. And there are deep worries about Iraq being ready to manage sovereignty by July.

There is no doubt that our apocryphal Talib in Afghanistan and his counterpart now planting bombs in Iraq both believe they can wait the ever-impatient Americans out and prevail once we have turned the table and changed the subject. Deciding how long to remain and when to hand power over in Iraq is a difficult judgment call. I only wish it weren't so closely wedded to our own presidential elections.

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.