WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: White House Down In Middle East. “The news that George Mitchell is resigning as US special envoy closes a chapter in the greatest international failure of the Obama administration to date. The President’s foreign policy team has some real successes under its belt — the reset with Russia, a marked reduction in global levels of anti-Americanism, steady progress in Iraq, and of course the spectacular Abbottabad raid to name a few — but there is no way to disguise the harsh truth: the White House flopped big time on the Israel-Palestine process.”