George Bush is holding a Middle East Peace Summit at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland this week with only thirteen months left in his Administration. Why anyone might consider this a break through in the peace process for that part of the world is beyond my comprehension.
George Bush's administration has avoided diplomacy at all most every turn believing (making an assumption here) that it wasn't sexy in the way armed conflict is. Throughout history armed conflict has achieved very little of course there are exceptions World War II being one of them. It begs the question: Doesn't being the leader of a country whose economic and military prowess has exceed that of any other known power in history make a case for diplomacy? Why then would one resort to armed conflict and the avoidance of diplomacy as a matter of stated policy?
By rushing headlong into battle and avoiding diplomacy what has George Bush achieved? A Middle East which is more unstable today than when his predecessor left office. Iraq is a complete failure, Lebanon is politically unstable, Syria which could play a role in bringing stability to the region has been ignored as has the Palestinian Authority.
Iran is another case of incompetence at its highest levels. Starting with The Axis of Evil portion of Bush's January 2002 State of the Union Address. How does one except to engage a country any country in a meaningful dialog if one uses inflammatory language at every turn believing that will bring pressure to bear. Just the opposite has happened with the Iranian government taking an increasingly hard line stance on the one issue which concerns the Bush administration the most: Iran's nuclear program.
What has diplomatic avoidance achieved for President Bush and his administration one foreign policy failure after another. As for the Middle East peace summit its already a failure as President Bush has stated that
"U.S. cannot impose vision on Mideast, Bush says" President Bush on Wednesday told CNN he would personally "facilitate" peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, saying the formation of a democratic Palestinian state was the best way to bring peace to the region.
Facilitating peace in Bush's mind means working the phones and leaving the real work to someone else like the next president.
Leadership has many facets to it from the mundane to moments when history is made yet how many times has positive history been made at the end of a sword or gun.
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Mishima! There was an interesting editorial in the WSJ
entitled "The Annapolis Fiasco" on November 20th, indicating that the conference has gone through several downgrades in expectations.
When initially proposed, it was to be a landmark conference that "would revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and lead to a final settlement by Janaury 2009."
But skepticism in the middle east abounded, and the Egyptians, Saudis, Palestinians and even Israelis seem to agree with Palestinian President Abbas reportedly saying that he would rather resign than attend a conference that achieves nothing.
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the Annapolis conference "dangerous."
According the editorial, what was originally planned as a three-day conference is now described by the State Department as a one day "meeting."
Why does the old song "Patty Cake Patty Cake..
Bakers Man keep running thru my head? What in the world can Bush be thinking....? He surely needs a reality check..does he think this will help the GOP?