Dear Leader today, on his perceived role at the upcoming Annapolis Peace Conference:
. . . Bush described his role in the peace process this way: "I work the phones, I listen, I encourage, I have meetings. I do a lot of things."
Hmmm. Not exactly grabbing the bull by the horns, now, are we?
And apparently, he's also informed the principals that his participation in the proceedings will be, uh, slightly less than pro-active:
During the talks, Bush told Olmert and Abbas that their negotiations could change the course of history and that their courage would define the success of future negotiations. Bush told the leaders he was ready to intervene if they needed help: "I'm only a phone call away."
"We can cheer you on but we're not going to try and negotiate it for you," Bush told them. "You are going to have to do that."
The President's advisers, who would seem to have more authority than he has here, seem okay with this hands-off approach as well:
"And to the extent the parties think it's useful for him to have a role, he's prepared to play it, because he thinks this is a real priority, and an opportunity we don't want to miss," said the adviser, Stephen Hadley.
Now, compare and contrast to another Chief Executive who also hosted a Mideast peace talk in his time:
[The President] is driving himself mercilessly, spending most of his time either debating the Egyptians or the Israelis, or drafting and revising texts that are being submitted to him. He has single-handedly written the proposed document for the Sinai formula.
Honestly. With phrases such as "I'm only a phone call away" masquerading as a sign of leadership, does anyone believe that this President gives a rat's ass about forging any sort of peace accord between Israel and Palestine? He is now nearly seven years into his job, and he still acts as if someone else is running his shop and he's simply the hired help. Or, more charitably, the CEO of a mega-corporation who has delegated the job of negotiating peace treaties in the same manner one would delegate the job of negotiating some union contact to one of your VPs. Either way, it's not exactly a sterling example of "growing into" his job, and if you need any additional reason why a man with an MBA should never, ever, ever be allowed the privilege of serving as President of the United States, 43 has provided it in gross and reckless abundance.
Then again, one imagines this is to be expected to a great extent---not merely because Bush has largely acted like a passive spectator during his own presidency but because the "terms" of this conference have already been more-or-less dictated to the negotiators ahead of time. To wit:
"One of the powers of having a [Palestinian] state defined is that it'll serve as a catalyst to marginalize extremists who have no vision, at least they don't have a positive vision," [Bush] said. "What you're watching is the development of a state which becomes something that people like Abbas and reasonable moderate people can say `Support us and this is what you'll end up having, support the other bunch and you'll have war.'"
Errr, not to put too fine a point on it, but the last time the Palestinians had a chance to choose their leaders in a democratic election, they booted Abu Abbas out of office, no?
And who wasn't invited to Annapolis? . . . Yeah, you guessed it.
Seems to me the message is pretty unambiguous here. To the Palestinians: Give us the leaders we want, or we'll kick your ass. To the Israelis: If the Arabs don't behave, kick their ass for us.
Compare and contrast, again, to the method employed by another Chief Executive in past peace discussions:
The president was really very, very actively engaged, and he played the critical role, the essential role. He was genuinely the mediator. And secondly, he established his credibility by being fair and balanced; not by being an advocate of one side against the other, but of really trying to find a formula that would accommodate in some fashion the conflicting interests of the two parties.
But of course, Jimmy Carter was a grown-up, a former Naval officer, a student of nuclear physics and a well-read and learned man who had achieved measures of career distinction before he ever got involved in politics. For all his flaws, he was, in short, everything that GW Bush is not and has never been, and methinks we are meekly biding our time until 2009 until anything resembling a genuine discussion of conflict resolution in the Middle East gets underway in Washington. What we will witness at Annapolis in the coming weeks will be nothing more than the diplomatic equivalent of "Mission Accomplished."
---Vitelius