George Bush doesn't get bragging rights for the Arab League decision to attend the Annapolis Middle East peace meeting this week. In fact, it might be said that the Arab states are coming not because of the work done by the Administration to prepare for the meeting, but out of their concern with how little had been done to ensure its success.
After 7 years of neglect, Washington decided to engage the Middle East peace process. But in the many months that have passed since President Bush announced his intention to convene an Israeli-Palestinian meeting, and despite Secretary Rice's frequent visits to the region, too little preparatory work has been done. Even at this late date, there are no clear goals,and not even a defined agenda. And, as we have seen in the past, ill-prepared summits often end in failure.
Facing such an outcome, Arab leaders faced few good options. To have stayed away from Annapolis would have left Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas without support and vulnerable to attack. It would also have ensured failure and handed a victory to extremists, with grave consequences for the Palestinians and the entire region.
Coming to Annapolis, on the other hand, gives Palestinians the political support they need and provides Arabs some leverage to press the Bush Administration to do in the meeting's aftermath the work they failed to do in preparation for this summit.
I've long observed that the trademarks of this Administration's approach to foreign policy has been: to neglect a problem when they might have taken action to help solve it; to let ideology trump reality when they finally do get involved; and to "spin" when they fail.
Already at the third step, Secretary Rice is boasting that Annapolis is a success because the Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to negotiate with each other. But that is precisely what should have happened, under her leadership, in the lead-up to Annapolis!
Unless the U.S. now changes its approach and makes a determined effort to press the Israelis to be more forthcoming with the Palestinians, while providing both the Israelis and Palestinians the support they will need to make tough choices for peace -- post-Annapolis will differ little from pre-Annapolis.
That is why the Arabs, despite their misgivings about the Administration's performance and intentions, have decided that was best for them to participate -- to provide their personal support to the Palestinian leadership, to provide economic support to the Palestinian people, to provide political support to the process, itself, and to press the Bush Administration to act.
Then, they say it all relates to the Palestinian issue. What a bunch of crap.
I do not support the meddling of Israel and its' supporters in our internal and foreign policy matters, and would like to kick the butts of the neocon Zionists surrounding Bush, who put what they view as the best interests of Israel ahead of the best interests of the United States. We would never, ever have done the disastrous things that Bush/Cheney have done, without the influence of all these cowardly, war-mongering cretins. Look at their influence, Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby, Norquist, Poderantz, Kristol, Addington, Perle, and a hundred others, who have helped Bush practically destroy the country.
Israel wants perpetual wars in the Middle East so they can dominate economically and militarily over the people of Arabia. Also, Israel continues to violently absorb more land from the West Bank and will work tirelessly towards it's campaign to absorb all of Palestine and Lebanon into it's borders inorder to return to 2000 years ago when it was Judae and Samaria. These Zionists are religious nut jobs.
The United States Zionists want to bring on the Second coming which will require a nuclear war and so they dont want peace. The money hungry Cheney's of America want Israel to keep the Arabs and Muslims under the rule of the gun so that oil can keep on flowing.
Until the Arabs unite against the US and Israel, this horse and pony show will go on until either the fanatical Jewish Zionists get everything they want or the Fanatical End of timers do.
Following the conference all the media outlets will be squealing about how big hearted and GENEROUS Olmert was and those terrorist Arabs just will not allow peace to happen. The Jews will be exhalted and the Arabs demonized -- ta dah!
GWB didn't "get lucky" on North Korea........It was Bill Richardson, an accomplished "DIPLOMAT",
who achieved success there.
Yet he is polling very low in his Presidential race....WHY IS THAT?
A cynic might be excused for wondering if it's all just smoke and mirrors as usual. Absent some absurdist happenstance in Annapolis, such as space aliens landing with their own sure-fire peace solution, what grounds for optimism exist, the cynic might ask.
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict upbeat photo-ops and zero progress.
What I find to be interesting is that both Hamas and Ahmadinejad have asked that Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. all refuse to attend. It seems like there may be something happening beneath the surface if these requests did not get one taker. Or maybe there are just a bunch of bored big shots over in that part of the world who want look at a few Christmas lights, and get in a little shopping.
This is essentially endorsing the Bush view of the middle east.
Another word for "extremists" in that sentence is "those elected in free and fair elections".
Writing off Hamas as extremists ignores their popular support as well as opposition to the corrupt and ineffectual organization Abbas works within.
If we ignore that support from the Arab monarchs and military rulers is in large part based on their opposition to democracy and the threat to their power, and only secondarily concerned about the Palestinians, we shouldn't expect much from this conference.
It shouldn't be up to the US, Israel and the Arab states to decide who get's to speak for the Palestinians, and as long as we believe it is our right, a just solution can't be reached.
It is the act of sidelining Hamas that weakens their moderates while strengthening the extremists.
We can't preach about elections only to back the losers when the wrong people win. It is pure hypocrisy and cuts the legs out from under the definitions of words like negotiations, diplomacy and peace.