President Bush's visit to the Middle East was front-page news here in Amman, Jordan, but few people were taking his words seriously. As a local friend here told me today, everybody laughs at what George Bush says.

But what Bush says is no laughing matter. In Jerusalem, he said, "Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause."

Once again, he demonstrated he's not in the reality-based community. Hezbollah, arguably the most popular group in the Arab world, proved its military prowess domestically this past week, just as it proved it two years ago when Israel invaded Lebanon.

And to say Hamas will be defeated fails to recognize its tenacity against the Israeli Defense Forces and its popularity in Gaza.

Above all, lumping together Hezbollah, Hamas, and al Qaeda betrays an ignorance of the Middle East. All are Muslim, but Hezbollah is Shiite while Hamas and Al Qaeda are Sunni. All three call for strict Islamic law and extol suicide bombings, but there are differences. Al Qaeda isn't interested in local elections--it has global ambitions. Al Qaeda considers Hezbollah heretical.

And Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second-in-command, scolded Hamas for participating in elections and appealed to Hamas not to work with the "secularist traitors" of Fatah, as Washington Post reporter Robin Wright notes in her new book "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East."

Elections over the past few years have made Hezbollah and Hamas major political forces in their lands. (Hamas's electoral victory caught the Bush Administration completely off guard.) Their rise signifies a major shift from Arabism to Islamism. Does anyone in the Administration notice?

The Bush Administration's policies in the Middle East are empty. Its policy of non-engagement with governments it doesn't like, such as Syria and Iran, has led to disastrous consequences. The current brouhaha between John McCain and Barack Obama about "engagement" seems ridiculous from here.

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration meddles in Lebanon and in the Occupied Territories, and continues to occupy Iraq.

As my friend said while we were driving around Amman, that's what the U.S. government does---divide and conquer. It divided Iraq. It's dividing the Palestinians by backing an armed force under a Fatah strongman to overthrow Hamas. And now it's dividing Lebanon, a country already enmeshed in sectarian strife. It's a recipe for disaster.