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Yet another monumental Bush error

Thread ID: 13238 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2004-04-19

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weisbrot [OP]

2004-04-19 16:14 | User Profile

*The view from Lebanon on Bush's endorsement of Sharon's plan. Some ominous shadings in this essay- it sounds like there may be some upcoming response to Bush pinning the "Kick Me" sign on his back. Bush is enraging some dangerous, crazed zealots in order to please his own equally (perhaps) dangerous zealots.

Indeed, why did he do it? Is he an idiot with a messianic bent? Or does Likud have some sort of leverage- beyond bribery- over the administration? How can there not be a bipartisan outcry over this? If it were simply a matter of Bush and Congress being bought and paid for, there would still be the inevitable leakage of information, surely.

A truly conspiratorial view of this would use Comverse and Amdocs as the starting point. But then, what hasn't been conspiratorial about any foreign policy decision made by this administration since 2001?*

[url]http://www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=1266&CategoryID=2[/url]

Yet another monumental Bush error
US President George W. Bush stood with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and decided the future of the Palestinians inside and outside Israel. He resolved a long problem that started in 1948 and was the main obstacle in every round of negotiations that took place since the Madrid conference till now. Throwing his support to Sharon, Bush played his most powerful card as the president of the United States, ‘sponsor’ of the peace process and mediator, in a way that none of his predecessors dared to play it.

The most curious aspect of the matter is that endorsement of the Sharon plans coincided with discussions in Washington and throughout the US on why the intelligence community failed to detect the plotters responsible for 9/11. Bush, of course ,has said he certainly didn’t make any mistakes, either before or following that fatal day. He has forgotten the two false assumptions he made -- or his neo-conservative mentors made for him --, namely the absence of proof that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction or that the regime had any connection with terrorism. Many observers were well-aware that these assumptions were unfounded, but the Bush team and its allies in London, Madrid, Rome and Canberra chose to press on with their dubious adventure. Now, in giving Sharon all that he asked for, the president is making another monumental error, one greater than that made by any other US Administration concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict. By throwing his support behind Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, President Bush knocked out both the principles of the Madrid Conference of 1990 and his much-vaunted ‘road map’, and he has buried UN resolutions. In his surprising statement he provided diplomatic assurances that represented a dream-victory for Sharon, who was seeking three commitments: backing for the Gaza withdrawal, American recognition that Israel would hold on to parts of the West Bank, and an American rejection of the right of millions of Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and their descendants to return to their homes in what is now Israel. He got them all by promising to trade something Israelis no longer want: the Gaza settlements and a handful of settlements in the West Bank. And he got them without having to negotiate with the Palestinians, whom he is determined to convince that they are a conquered people. This is how the picture looked just after the meeting in Washington and the press conference, which was full of friendly smiles and mutual admiration between the two leaders. Palestinian officials knew that Israel strongly opposed yielding the whole West Bank or accepting the “right of return”, and they had explored compromises in the past. But they relied on both demands as formidable negotiating levers. Bush has now moved to knock both from their hands. In other words, Palestinian leaders already knew that there would be no return for the refugees who left Palestine in 1948, but they wanted to sell this card at the highest price during a global compromise ending the conflict. The claims regarding the future of Jerusalem and ‘right of return’ were the main obstacles that prevented negotiators in Camp David in 2000 from reaching a final settlement after getting very close in agreeing on all other contentious issues. For the first time in American diplomacy in the Middle East, Bush announced that major Jewish settlements on the West Bank had achieved the status Sharon and the Israeli right had wanted recognition for: “rooted facts on the ground”, or as Bush called them, “already-existing major Israeli population centers”. The innovative, though risky, element in Sharon’s strategy was to trade his concessions in Gaza and the West Bank, not to the Palestinians as part of a negotiated agreement, but to the Americans, over outraged Palestinian opposition. Minutes after Bush spoke, there was angry reaction from Palestinian leaders, who were united in their rejection of the “White House deal”. The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmad Korei, rejected the Bush stand, calling him the first president to legitimize the settlements in the Palestinian territories. On the international level, as on the issue of invading Iraq without UN authorization, the US and Europe diverged in their positions. The European Union insisted there could be no unilateral change in Middle East borders other than those arrived at by agreement between the parties. The European position finds its roots in the historical and classical view regarding the Middle East conflict. It has also links with the exclusion of the Europeans from this decision, knowing that the Americans have always limited the contribution of the ‘Old Continent’ to providing financial support to the Palestinians but giving them no access to the table where the big decisions are made. The American-Israeli agreement is a dangerous move because it looks like a diktat, imposing peace under the sword of a superpower. It follows the same procedure used by the Americans during the diplomatic building-up against Iraq. The agreement steps over the UN role and resolutions that constituted a key issue in the peace process that started in Madrid in 1991. Why did he do it? The strategy President Bush has adopted since September 11, 2001 is completely different from all previous strategies. He has one enemy, terrorism, and everything he thinks is associated with this enemy is a target for the US. Sharon, like a number of other world leaders, adroitly convinced Bush that the difficulties he was having in the land he occupies were nothing other than an extension of the international war against Al-Qaeda. Bush has been persuaded that Hamas and other Palestinian groups active in the resistance against the Israeli occupation are linked to other international terrorist organizations. This is where the two men met. Sharon was smart enough so far in managing this issue and he attained what his predecessors only dreamed of. We cannot ignore the fact that nothing in a presidential election year can be seen outside the context of the campaign. One of Bush’s strongest support bases is that of the right-wing supporters of Israel, many of them fundamentalist Southern Protestants, a group The Economist magazine once called “the praetorian guard of the Republican Party”. It is quite likely that the concessions made to Sharon were given with an eye to pleasing this particular “lobby”. In addition, the president may be wanting to broaden his support among US Jews, who traditionally favor the Democrats. In 2000 Bush got only 19 percent of Jewish votes, according to figures of the American Jewish Committee. Washington officials, however, suggest that Bush has only endorsed what previous Administrations were moving towards under the table. No US president since the 1970s has accepted the ‘right of return’. Yasser Arafat himself, as has been pointed out many times, knew that there could be no return of the refugees, but he needed a comprehensive package in which this right would be tacitly abandoned in return for concessions of substance from the Israelis. The conflict is now much more complex than it was before. Saeb Erekat the senior Palestinian negotiator, gave a clear résumé of the possible reaction: “As far as I’m concerned, Sharon and Bush can decide to cancel Ramadan, but that doesn’t mean that Muslims will not fast”. The coming weeks will witness implementation of this agreement, and there may be surprises in store. The Palestinians and the other Arabs cannot accept this attempt to impose a fait accompli, which would be a turning point in the conflict, one that means the end of any peace process and the imposition of the Sharon “vision” of peace -- the peace of the cemetery.

dubeaux636

2004-04-25 10:59 | User Profile

[QUOTE=weisbrot]*The view from Lebanon on Bush's endorsement of Sharon's plan. Indeed, why did he do it? Is he an idiot with a messianic bent? Or *

While all the reasons postulated in the article have some merit, I think it boils down to the two things mentioned above.

Bush is simply not an intelligent man, except for a kind of shrewd, self-serving ability to bond with average people(for instance, with homely, unattractive white women like his wife and Karen Hughes, and with a well-groomed but obviously insecure and in-over-her head Condi Rice). He does not read; he knows no history; he is possibly the most ignorant President since LBJ. And LBJ, a man of little learning(the equivalent of an associate degree in education), was not merely shrewd: no one ever doubted his intelligence.

Bush's intellectual weaknesses make him especially malleable in the hands of skilled, intelligent, and powerful advisors, some of whom are more devoted to the interests of Israel than of the United States.

But the most important reason is, I think, that he really has a "messianic bent." He IS a true believer, one of those fundamentalist Christians who believes we are living in the "End Times," that the Rapture is coming any day now.

And that is why I'm holding my nose and voting for Kerry. Kerry is execrable, but he does not scare me the way Bush does. Bush is Greg Stillson come to life.*

*Stillson is the crazed politician whom the protagonist in Stephen King's, THE DEAD ZONE, discovers(through his "second sight") will start a nuclear war in the future when he is President.

Peter Phillips

2004-04-25 18:25 | User Profile

[QUOTE=weisbrot]Bush is enraging some dangerous, crazed zealots in order to please his * own equally (perhaps) dangerous zealots.*[/QUOTE] Weisbrot,

I sometimes wonder which of the two are more fanatical and dangerous - Bin Laden and his suicidal warriors or the Zionists. Ive come to the conlcusion that its the latter. You wont have the former without the latter.