Bush Says Obama Is Will Appease 'Terrorists'

If the Bush administration really stuck to its guns on not negotiating with 'terrorists', there would be no back room negotiations with Syria and Iran, but of course, such talks have been going on for years. Now Israel is negotiating Syria, Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah, but Bush says nothing.

From Justin Raimando, antiwar.com :

The unseemly spectacle of an American chief executive denouncing a Democratic presidential candidate in a foreign venue, in front of the parliament of a nation whose interests are inextricably intertwined with the issue at hand, has no precedent in our history. It's as if, say, Lyndon Baines Johnson had journeyed to South Vietnam and attacked the antiwar movement as "appeasers" before an audience of that country's rulers. In our Bizarro World universe, however, where all moral and political values have been stood on their heads, this is what passes for "patriotic" and "pro-American" activism on the part of our chief executive – upholding the interests of a foreign nation over and above your own.

After hailing the history of the fight for Israeli sovereignty minus any mention of the Nakba, and without so much as obliquely referring to the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories, the president hit at his political enemies back home:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

The White House is now saying these comments were directed at Jimmy Carter, but it seems clear that Barack Obama was who the speechwriters had in mind – after all, Carter is about as politically relevant as, say, George W. Bush will be in January. Obama's answer at the YouTube Democratic debate that, yes, he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmahdinejad, among other world leaders considered unfriendly to the U.S., makes him the obvious target of Bush's remarks.

What's interesting, however, is that the senator Bush referred to was a Republican, William E. Borah of Idaho, whose opposition to U.S. intervention in what was then often referred to as "the European war" (i.e., Word War II) was indicative of mainstream GOP opinion circa 1939. One of the great sorrows of Borah's political career was that he had voted for U.S. entry into the first World War, and he resolved never to make such a grievous error again. Borah fought against the very injustices that led directly to the reanimation of that global conflict, which we call World War II, such as the Treaty of Versailles and the imposition of draconian war debts on a prostrate Germany. Perhaps this explains his intractability. I will leave it to historians to defend Sen. Borah at greater length, but suffice to say here that "the Lion of Idaho" deserves better than this.

Aside from the historical sleight-of-hand, Bush's blast at Obama over this particular issue from this particular podium is a display of such supreme arrogance – and political calculation – that it takes one's breath away. The U.S. has every interest in negotiating with the Iranians, if only to ensure the physical safety of our troops in Iraq, not to mention all the other outstanding issues [.pdf] between the two nations that have festered, unattended, for so long. When we destroyed Iraq's Ba'athist regime, we handed regional hegemony to Iran on a silver platter, tilting the balance of power in a direction that now cannot be reversed – except by negotiation.

Yet negotiation, in Bush's parlance, is "appeasement." Of course, we have talked to the Iranians, in a series of highly publicized meetings (and probably some not so publicized) over events in Iraq. Was that appeasement? No doubt the Israel lobby considered it so. But are those the interests our president is representing?

This nonsense about "negotiating with terrorists" when it comes to Hamas ought to evoke in my readers a sense of déjà vu. After all, isn't that the same line they trotted out when it came to the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader, the late Yasser Arafat? Yet didn't two American presidents bring Arafat to the negotiating table? And aren't we now supporting President Abbas, Arafat's heir and successor?

One has to wonder why an American president would take to the hustings in a foreign land and champion that nation's interests over and above our own. What treason is this?

Well, it isn't exactly treason. It's loyalty to party, as opposed to the nation – a Republican Party that has been whittled down to its hard core of Christian fundamentalists whose first loyalty is not to their own country, but to their peculiar theology, which just happens to be based on a fierce allegiance to the government of Israel. For these are no ordinary Christian fundamentalists, say, of the snake-handling type: these are dispensationalists who believe that after the elect are Raptured up into the heavens, the church on earth (the "new dispensation") will consist of the children of Israel, whose in-gathering will have foretold Christ's second coming. In the dispensationalist theology – really, a future history of the world – the final battle, Armageddon, will take place between the Israelis and the Forces of Evil. They firmly believe that God and all His angels will stand should-to-shoulder with the IDF.

This is where Bush's political calculation comes into the picture. For the dispensationalists, there is no issue in the foreign policy realm more important than unconditional support for the state of Israel. They are more fanatically pro-Israel than the Lobby itself, more Likudnik than the Likudniks. Their importance in the rapidly shrinking GOP electoral coalition was made manifest by John McCain's active pursuit of the Rev. John Hagee, a principal exponent of the "born again" Israel-first line and founder of Christians United for Israel. This is a pastor who drapes an Israeli flag on the altar as he preaches in his 5,000-seat Cornerstone Church.

These are the foot-soldiers of the neocons, the flying monkeys who do the Lobby's dirty work – an army of religious fanatics whose idiosyncratic theological delusions are a major driving force behind American foreign policy in the Middle East. They are not, however, the only such force. Aside from the organizational muscle of the Lobby itself, mostly confined to such groups as AIPAC and the neoconservative network, there is a Democratic Party component that finds the prospect of dealing with Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah utterly horrifying. Many of these people are big contributors to the party, as Wesley Clark pointed out, and one risks a lot by crossing them. By lashing out at Obama in the way he did, Bush seeks to not only unite and energize his Republican base, but to also disrupt and split the Democrats as they struggle with a very difficult primary process.

What is striking about all this is that it gives us a very troubling perspective on how American foreign policy is made – much like sausage, in that you don't really want to know. In response to the endless problems and subtleties that our Middle East dealings confront us with, our president gives us a textbook example of political pandering couched in the crudest sort of rhetoric.

We are living in dangerous times. We have a president who formulates policy prescriptions in terms meant to please a cult of religiously motivated ideologues and foreign lobbyists, both of whom are working in tandem to undermine American interests in the Middle East. Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, we have faced an implacable enemy more than ready to take advantage of our one-sided policies when it comes to that region of the world. Yet we continue on the same course – on what is essentially a suicide mission – solely because of domestic political considerations and without regard for our actual interests.

For years, I've been saying and writing that, when it comes to the Middle East, Washington's policies are ridiculously skewed in Israel's favor, much to our own detriment. What's more, it appears that our policy-making apparatus has been hijacked by agents of a foreign power, who are determined to pursue their alien agenda no matter what the consequences for the U.S. Nothing could have underscored this point more emphatically than George W. Bush's Knesset speech – a peroration that surely indicates Bush missed his true calling and somehow wound up as the president of the wrong country

Bush Tells Arab World To Get Free

From AP :

President Bush lectured the Arab world Sunday about everything from political repression to the denial of women's rights but ran into Palestinian complaints he is favoring Israel in stalled Mideast peace talks. "Freedom and peace are within your grasp," Bush said despite scant signs of progress.

Winding up a five-day trip to the region, Bush took a strikingly tougher tone with Arab nations than he did with Israel in a speech Thursday to the Knesset. Israel received effusive praise from the president while Arab nations heard a litany of U.S. criticisms mixed with some compliments.

"Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail," Bush said in a speech to 1,500 global policymakers and business leaders at this Red Sea beach resort. That was a clear reference to host Egypt, where main secular opposition figure Ayman Nour has been jailed and President Hosni Mubarak has led an authoritarian government since 1981.

"America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down and dissidents whose voices are stifled," Bush said.

"I call on all nations in this region to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate and trust their people to chart their future," Bush said.

Scattered applause followed, with barely a ripple of reaction later to his declaration than Iran must not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Bush headed back to Washington with little to show for the trip. Saudi Arabia rebuffed his plea for help with soaring oil prices, Egypt's leader questioned his seriousness about peacemaking and there was not enough progress in the peace talks to warrant a three-way meeting of Bush with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, did not conceal his disappointment over Bush's remarks to the Israeli parliament. The speech barely mentioned Palestinian hopes.

"We do not want the Americans to negotiate on our behalf," Abbas said Sunday after talks with Mubarak. "All that we want from them is to stand by (our) legitimacy and have a minimum of neutrality." Abbas had dinner Saturday with Bush.

"In principle, the Bush speech at the Knesset angered us, and we were not happy with it," Abbas said Sunday. "This is our position and we have a lot of remarks (about the speech) and I frankly, clearly and transparently asked him that the American position should be balanced."

Abbas told Israeli parliament member Yossi Beilin on Sunday he would resign if there was no substantial progress in peace talks over the next six months, according to the lawmaker's office.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on Air Force One with Bush returning to Washington, said there were serious peace negotiations going on in private and that she expected them to intensify in the months ahead. She said Bush inserted the wording in the speech that "I believe" the Palestinians will build a democracy, as a sign of his confidence that will happen.

As for Arab criticism Bush leans too far in supporting Israel, Rice said, "The president isn't pro this or pro that. The president is pro-democracy and pro-peace."

The trip was Bush's second to the Mideast this year. His national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said Bush might return again before his term ends in January if "there is work for him to advance the peace process."

The White House made clear that Bush's goal for a peace accord before his leaves office does not mean it will be put into place by then or produce an immediate Palestinian state. "That would be a process that would take years," Hadley said.

Bush ended his visit with an address to the World Economic Forum on the Middle East, an offshoot of the annual gathering of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

After talking privately with key leaders, the president in public touched only broadly on Mideast peacemaking. He did not suggest concrete steps to resolve the generations-old differences standing in the way of an agreement.

"Palestinians must fight terror and continue to build the institutions of a free and peaceful society," Bush said. "Israel must make tough sacrifices for peace, ease the restrictions on Palestinians. Arab states, especially oil-rich nations, must seize this opportunity to invest aggressively in the Palestinian people and to move past their old resentments against Israel."

"And all nations in the region must stand together in confronting Hamas, which is attempting to undermine efforts at peace with acts of terror and violence" from the Gaza Strip, Bush said. Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist group, controls that territory; the U.S.-backed Abbas is in charge of the West Bank.

The heart of Bush's speech was a warning that Mideast nations lag behind the developing world and cannot count on their oil wealth forever.

Bush urged countries to make their economies more diverse, open to free trade, with lower taxes and protection for intellectual property rights.

He called for political changes that bring competitive, legitimate elections where leaders are held to account and appealed to nations to push back against the negative influence of "spoilers" such as Iran and Syria.

He urged an expansion of women's rights as "a matter of morality and of basic math. No nation that cuts off half its population from opportunities will be as productive or prosperous as it could be. Women are a formidable force, as I have seen in my own family and my own administration."

At the same time, Bush hailed democratic advances in countries such as Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and Jordan and said, "The light of liberty is beginning to shine."

Bush's speech recalled his promise in his second inaugural address to work in every nation for "ending tyranny in our world." One of the obvious targets of his message was Egypt, the country hosting the conference.

Egypt has often been publicly singled out by his administration, especially in its early years, as a country that needs to do more in terms of political liberalization and democracy. Egypt did hold its first presidential elections in 2005 but pulled back following strong gains by the Muslim Brotherhood in later parliamentary elections.

In addition to Nour's jailing, independent newspaper editors were sentenced to prison for criticizing the president and his government, and hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood were put behind bars. Public criticism of Mubarak's government by the Bush administration, however, has been increasingly muted in recent years as the situation in Iraq worsened and worries grew over Iran, and as the U.S. sought Egypt's help on a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal.

Bush said political changes must accompany economic ones in Egypt.

Bush The Prophet



President Bush visited Israel to pledge eternal American friendship, funding and military support, and, being in holy lands, started getting all prophetic :

"So as we mark 60 years from Israel's founding, let us try to envision the region 60 years from now...

"Israel will be celebrating its 120th anniversary as one of the world's greatest democracies... the Palestinian people will have a homeland, a democratic state that is governed by law, respects human rights and rejects terror".

...from Cairo to Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies". Iran and Syria "will be peaceful nations, where today's oppression is a distant memory".

Al Qaeda, Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas "will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision", Bush predicted.

Hopeful, but almost childishly simplistic.

Bush will leave the White House with no two state deal in place between the Israelis and Palestinians, after seven years of attempts at solidifying a lasting peace.

Now Even The Saudis Are Getting Angry With Bush

Saudi King Calls US Presence In Middle East "Illegitimate"


Happier days...

Things are not going well in the House of Saud, or in the House of Bush. The Saudi royal family are frantically trying to maintain their grip on total power as the Middle East undergoes its biggest power shake up in decades. Islamist extremists are winning the Iraq War and stirring up trouble across the region.

The failure of the US-led Iraq War is so pronounced that key members of the Saudi royal family have cancelled a major visit to the White House and the Saudi king has announced the US presence in Iraq is "illegitimate"and called it a "foreign occupation."

At the same time, key Arab leaders have met and decided that the Israel must accept the 2002 Middle East peace plan, or accept renewed violence and even war. President Bush's close ally at home, Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has been all but frozen out of the most recent Arab-led Middle East peace meetings. One European official told the Washington Post Rice was now conducting "crisis management" instead of "grand diplomacy."

The Saudis are now seeking "common ground" with Iran, and are said to be quietly talking future plans with the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah (newly energized and popular after their victory against Israel last year). At the same time, the Saudis are firming ties with Moscow.

The shifts in the Middle East have become so tectonic, the Saudis appear to be on the verge of cutting at least some ties to the US, and are expected to cut all ties if the US and Israel go to war against Iran.

Iran is now the key to the future of the Bush and Saudi royal family relationship. The Saudis laid out their cards clearly in recent days when they announced they would not allow the US to launch attacks on Iran from within their territory.

From the Washington Post :

President Bush enjoys hosting formal state dinners about as much as having a root canal. Or proposing tax increases. So his decision to schedule a mid-April White House gala for Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah signified the president's high regard for an Arab monarch who is also a Bush family friend.

Now the White House ponders what Abdullah's sudden and sparsely explained cancellation of the dinner signifies. Nothing good -- especially for Condoleezza Rice's most important Middle East initiatives -- is the clearest available answer.

Abdullah's bowing out of the April 17 event is, in fact, one more warning sign that the Bush administration's downward spiral at home is undermining its ability to achieve its policy objectives abroad. Friends as well as foes see the need, or the chance, to distance themselves from the politically besieged Bush.

Abdullah's reluctance to be seen socializing at the White House this spring reflects two related dynamics: a scampering back by the Saudis to their traditional caution in trying to balance regional forces, and their displeasure with negative U.S. reaction to their decision to return to co-opting or placating foes.

Abdullah gave a warm welcome to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Riyadh in early March, not long after the Saudis pressured Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas into accepting a political accord that entrenches Hamas in an unwieldy coalition government with Abbas's Fatah movement.

A few months ago, Bandar was championing the confrontational "realignment" approach in Saudi family councils: Iran's power would be broken, the Syrians would have to give up hegemonic designs on Lebanon, etc., etc. Now the Saudi prince visits Tehran and Moscow regularly. He helped set the stage for the Palestinians' Mecca accord, which has caused Israel to reduce what little cooperation it felt it could extend to Abbas.

Here's some excerpts from a report on the remarkable statements made by Saudi King Abdullah, during a speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh, about the US in Iraq :

"In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil war," Abdullah said.

He also said that Arab nations...would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region.

In the past, Saudi leaders including Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal have often criticised US policy in Iraq but have never described its presence there as "illegitimate."

If Arab leaders recover trust in each other and regain their credibility, "the winds of hope will blow on the nation, and then, we will not allow forces from outside the region to determine the future of the region, and only the flag of Arabism will be raised on Arab soil," Abdullah said.

Easily some of the strongest statements made by a Saudi king, or even a Saudi official, against the US in decades. That such statements have been made while a Bush family member is president of the United States makes the words only that much more remarkable.