| Author | Message | | sharkman | | Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2002 6:25 am Post subject: george w's bloody folly |
| -------- Original Message --------
Subject: George W's bloody folly
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 10:51:16 +1000
George W's bloody folly
Bush's fantasy Middle East plan is bound to fail. It will strengthen those
who want war, not peace
Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday June 26, 2002
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/>The Guardian
That was a fantastic speech. Quite literally, fantastic. George Bush's
address on the Middle East, delivered outside the White House on Monday
evening, consisted, from beginning to end, of fantasy.
It bore so little relation to reality that diplomats around the world spent
yesterday shaking their heads in disbelief, before sinking into gloom and
despair. Our own Foreign Office tried gamely to spot the odd nugget of
sense in the Bush text - but, they admitted, it was an uphill struggle.
Israelis committed to a political resolution of the conflict were
heartbroken. Even Shimon Peres, foreign minister in Ariel Sharon's
coalition, reportedly called the speech "a fatal mistake", warning: "A
bloodbath can be expected."
The core of the president's message was that the Palestinians must embark
on a sweeping process of internal reform before they can even think about
getting back to the negotiating table. They must transform themselves into
a democratic market economy, free of corruption and with a separate
judiciary and legislature if they are to be considered eligible for
statehood - which, when it comes, will be merely provisional.
Shall we count the ways in which this is completely absurd? George Bush is
demanding that Palestine become Sweden before it can become Palestine: it
must be stable, prosperous and boast constitutional arrangements which
still elude Britain - our judiciary and legislature are not separate - let
alone the Arab world before it can become even a state-in-waiting.
This would be laughable if Palestine were in tranquil Scandinavia. Even
there it would count as putting the cart before the horse, asking a nation
to create the institutions of a highly developed country before it becomes
a state. But this, remember, is being demanded of the Palestinians -
statebuilders with every possible obstacle in their way.
Like the fact that they are under military occupation. As the New York
Times noted yesterday: "How the Palestinians can be expected to carry out
elections or reform themselves while in a total lockdown by the Israeli
military remains something of a mystery." Palestinian ministers complain
they cannot visit a village 10 minutes away; they can pass laws but not
implement them. They are Potemkin ministers, existing on paper only. Yet
now they are to build the Switzerland of the Levant, where the streets are
clean and government functions like clockwork. This is George in Wonderland
stuff.
Monday's speech even had a touch of black comedy. The president said the
new Palestine should be taught good governance, nominating the Arab states
for the role. Imagine it: democracy lessons from Saudi Arabia, a
masterclass in liberty from Kuwait.
But that is not the president's greatest fantasy. Yasser Arafat must go, he
says, though without naming him. It may be refreshing to hear a US
president come clean in his conviction that he has the right to pick other
nations' leaders, but this demand exposes fully the vacuousness of Bush's
thinking.
For who does he imagine might replace Arafat? Does he not realise that
Palestinians are angry with their leader not because he has been
insufficiently pro-American but because they see him as too moderate, too
willing to do Israel's bidding. The Palestinian street is not clamouring
for a man who will crack down harder on Islamist militants or sing a
western song about free trade and local elections.
So if elections go ahead, here's what will happen. Either Palestinians will
deliberately defy Washington and re-elect Arafat or they will choose
someone more hardline. Any leader who has the Israeli or US stamp of
approval will immediately be discredited as a puppet and promptly rejected.
Also, for all his flaws, Arafat has an asset none of his rivals can match.
He is still, thanks to his long history, Mr Palestine: his signature on a
compromise deal is the only one that could persuade his people to accept
it. By rushing his exit now, Bush is depriving any future peace agreement
of the only Palestinian who could deliver it.
S o the president's speech shows a man unconnected to Middle Eastern
reality. But it is worse than unhinged; it is dangerous. First, Bush has
given a green light to Sharon to continue his policy of military force
coupled with a refusal to freeze settlement building on the West Bank.
Monday's wording implied that Sharon is only obliged to pull back from
Palestinian cities or freeze settlements once the Palestinians have worked
their way through the US wishlist. So long as violence goes on, or Arafat
remains in place, the Israeli PM can do what he likes.
Given that the president refused to specify what the final settlement might
look like - delaying that and other questions to later talks - he has
supplied Sharon with an incentive to get busy now, building settlements,
putting up fences and carving new borders. If Bush had declared that the
eventual Palestinian state would be on the other side of Israel's 1967
borders, there would be no point in Israel trying to redraw the map. But
now Sharon has every motive to create his notorious "facts on the ground".
There is danger on the Palestinian side too. The only people celebrating
yesterday were the Islamist extremists of Hamas and Jihad, chiding moderate
Palestinians for ever believing that politics, rather than violence, might
bring results. Bush has not dangled any serious carrot before the
Palestinians: no promises on Jerusalem or refugees or final borders. Even
Colin Powell's planned international conference seems to have vanished. All
Palestinians will get if they comply with Washington's demands is a
provisional state on 42% of the West Bank. Maybe. Few will consider that a
prize worth the sacrifice of their own leader and a national transformation.
So this new plan of Bush's is a flight of errant, irresponsible fancy that
can only fail, bringing more bloodshed and ruin to the peoples of the
Middle East who are desperate for something better.
But it will reverberate far beyond. It will damage the international
standing of the US president and America along with it. Muslim and Arab
nations will be antagonised by this plan of inaction, while chancelleries
from London to Moscow will realise they are dealing with a leader who pays
no lip-service to them - or to basic reality.
This is a foreign policy failure for George Bush. If he were a Democrat,
both the Washington press corps and Congress would already be racking it up
alongside the unextinguished threat from al-Qaida and the continued freedom
from captivity of Osama bin Laden. Those failures, and now the guarantee of
further slaughter in the Middle East, should be prompting hard questions
about Bush and his war on terror. America needs to snap out of its
post-9/11 torpor of consensus and realise there is a leadership problem in
the US - and his name is George Bush.
<mailto:j.freedland@guardian.co.uk>j.freedland@guardian.co.<mailto:j.freedland@guardian.co.uk>uk | |  | | sharkman | | Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2002 6:35 am Post subject: president w's bloody folly... |
| June 25, 2002
Editor
Letters
Mukwonago Chief
mukpubs@add-inc.com
President Bush called upon the Palestinian people "to elect new leaders,
leaders not compromised by terror" and then told the Israeli public that
"the Palestinian Authority has rejected your offered hand and trafficked
with terrorists."
It would appear that President Bush is ignorant of the fact that the State
of Israel exists today because of the terrorists that inflicted death and
destruction upon the British authorities in Palestine as well as the
Palestinian people.
Has our president not heard of the Stern Gang which assassinated Swedish
United Nations mediator Folke Bernadotte-the same Stern Gang which was a de
facto ally of Hitler in World War II and actually tried to formalize that
relationship through diplomacy? ("Stern Gang, ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA)
<http//www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=71445>[Accessed June 25, 2002].
Has Deir Yassin ever entered the presidential conscousness? On April 9,
1948 over 100 Palestinian men, women and children were massacred by
Menachem Begin's Irgun and Yitzhak Shamir's Stern gang which had the
desired effect of terrorizing over 700,000 Palestinians into leaving their
homes.
The truth of the matter is that Israel is the leading terrorist state in
the Middle East. General Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 resulted in
the deaths of over 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and the
atrocities committed in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and
Shattilla near Beirut with some 2,000 Palestinians being massacred by
Christian Falangists with logistical support from General Sharon.
It would appear that there is one bright spot in the President's speech for
which Palestinians should hold him absolutely accountable:
"...the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will be ended through a
settlement negotiated between the parties, based on U.N. Resolutions 242
and 338, with Israeli withdrawal to secure and recognized borders."
One must wonder why the media discussions of President Bush's speech
ignored this part of it completely?
Barbara Fink
barbarafink@hotmail.com | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
