On the eve of Condi’s bad, dumb and wrong summit
In several previous BN posts, I have pondered how the mind of W works. He’s been far from my ideal president. In fact, he routinely frustrates the hell out of me. In fact, I may be able to count on one hand the things he’s done right. Two things redeem him in my eyes: the fact that the handful of things he did right were big things, and the fact that the alternatives, in 2000 and 2004, would have been pathetic jokes.
I guess his enthusiasm for Condi’s summit fits with the overall pattern of his sadly inconsistent ideology. For years, he’s shown a touch of that Wilsonian by-golly-I-believe-this-world-is-brimming-with-goodwill-and-can-be-made-safe-for-democracy sentiment. (Bill Sammon, in his new book says that’s due to W’s evangelical brand of spirituality.) It’s a bit surprising, given that the ultimate in ugliness directed at this country happened on his watch and, at least in the first few years, he dealt with it realistically and forthrightly. But as I say, I long ago gave up expecting consistency from the guy.
What about Condi herself, though? Has she always been this way, and it’s a case of present circumstances bringing it out fully?
Put more succinctly, what in the hell is she thinking?
Hamas won a popular election among the Palestinians. Then, the amount of power that gave them didn’t suit them, so they violently routed Fatah from Gaza.
Meanwhile, Olmert shows himself to be far and away the most fuzzy-minded and incompetent leader Israel has ever had, squandering the chance to fully quash Hizbollah in the summer 06 conflict. Abbas likewise can’t control his own Fatah security forces in the West Bank.
Israel does summon the collective clarity of mind to zap the Syrian reactor, but that incident brings to light two facts that ought to shape everyone’s thinking in the West: Syria is looking into nukes, and getting North Korean help.
Meanwhile, speaking of Syria, pro-Western members of the Lebanese government continue to get assassinated.
So what is Condi hosting tomorrow? A confab to which Syria is invited not only to attend but to insist on return of the Golan Heights, to which Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are invited, leaving Israel in the same postion at tomorrow’s negotiating table that it is in geographically across the ocean - tiny and alone amidst a huge number of countries that will not state unequivocally that they are okay with its existence.
And Condi and W are going to push said tiny, alone country to give up various things that comprise the essence of its identity. In other words, the United States is not participating in this get-together as the beacon of Western principles, but rather a party driven by some vague and dangerous notion of “peace.”
Freedom-Haters love to talk about American arrogance, how the United States rides roughshod over the “international community,” calling the shots and dictating the terms of world affairs. I disagree with the situations in which the FHers claim that to be happening, but it sure looks like that’s what we’re doing in regard to one of the best friends we’ve ever had in the middle east or the world at large.
This thing Condi’s putting on tomorrow is going to be most unpleasant and distressing to witness.
November 27th, 2007 at 3:26 am
Thank God, if not Jehovah, the leaders of 45 nations think otherwise in attending this unprecedented summit. What’s the alternative? Boom boom of biblical proportions?
November 27th, 2007 at 3:37 am
No, the alternative is exposing Fatah, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the regimes in Syria and Iran (and, dare I say it, Saudi Arabia) for what they are and how they regard Israel. The alternative I’m speaking of involves stating very forthrightly and loudly as a matter of U.S. policy our unwavering support of the current borders of the nation of Israel.
Western civilization may well not give a flying fuck if it survives. I’ll continue to live and vote as if it did, because the alternative to THAT is obliteration. But it’s not a good sign that intelligent, well-educated U.S. citizens are getting all hopeful and gushing about this “unprecedented summit.”
November 27th, 2007 at 3:47 am
I understood that this summit was designed to forestall radical reactions in favor of some reasoned negotiations. My information has it that if the talks fail, then the real fireworks begin. We need the folks at the table to align against them as well. Even Tony Blair says that: “In this big picture, resolving this dispute is of colossal importance,” Mideast envoy Tony Blair said recently. “It is a signal of reconciliation across faiths and cultures. It removes the cause that extremists use above all else to try to ensnare moderates within Islam.”
November 27th, 2007 at 11:42 am
A curious anniversary, a synchronicity of sorts?
It was on this day in 1095 that Pope Urban II, while on a speaking tour in France, called for the first Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Turks. There was no imminent threat. Muslims had occupied Jerusalem for hundreds of years. But Urban II had noticed that Europe was becoming an increasingly violent place, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought that he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone who was willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.
About 100,000 men from France, Germany, and Italy answered the call, formed into several large groups, and marched across Asia Minor to the Middle East. Nearly half of them died from exhaustion and sickness before they ever reached their destination. They began sacking cities along the way, and they fought among each other for the spoils of each battle. When they reached the trading city of Antioch, they killed almost everyone, including the Christians who lived there. By the time they got to Jerusalem, it had recently fallen into the hands of Egyptians, who were friendly with the Vatican. But the crusaders attacked anyway, killing every Muslim they could find. The Jews in the city gathered in the temple, and the crusaders set it on fire.
Pope Urban II died two weeks later, never hearing the news. But the crusading would go on for the next 200 years. In the fourth and last Crusade, in 1202, the crusaders never even made it to Jerusalem, but got sidetracked and wound up destroying Constantinople, which was at the time the last great city left over from the Roman Empire.
Cut to now, a millennia and a bit beyond…
November 27th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
You’re cryin’ the blues here, bloggie, but we’re ridin’ high, even alleged freedom haters, damn you for calling those not with you against you. Put this wherever you want to. I’ll even let you place it where the sun don’t shine, on me, if you like. Glory Hallalujah, the damage undone.
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/112507/opi_9017340.shtml
“At no other time in this country’s modern history has America’s reputation fallen to a point so low. Still, the new president should be heartened by a contradictory but indisputable fact: The popularity of the United States worldwide. Yes, the popularity.”
Joel Brinkley, yes, David’s son, is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent (for the Louisville Courier Journal in 1980 for his vivid accounts of Cambodian refugees in SEA) and for The New York Times (that allegedly freedom-hating rag) and now a professor of journalism at Stanford University. This column is distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. And he don’t like Bush either, you share a common enemy it seems: “Winning back the world may not be as difficult as it seems. In fact, the most important act will be Bush’s goodbye wave as he steps aboard Marine One for the last time.”
Although even I disagree with Brinkley’s take on global warming, and even his trenchant dislike for our sitting president who I am actually beginning to like at this late stage as your sympathies wax rightward, since he is now apparently out of diapers and shoving his uncle Dickie out of the way (would Clinton have done that with his uncle Dickie who made all his decisions for him) and trying to make his mark on the world in his own way. If these current talks in Annapolis succeed only in isolating the radical nutsos on all sides, and, especially if the surge succeeds I may be voting red vs. your H-word creature in ‘08. I think Georgie Boy has finally grown to be his own man. Unfortunately, as Ron White says, “you can’t fix stupid” though. So, really, viva le surge et pourparlers! Magnifique!
November 27th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
This whole business about “our standing in the world” or “our image in the international community” or however you want to put it is a freighterload of hooey. It matters not not one whit whether most UN members have a favorable or unfavorable image of the USA. That we’re staying on top of our survivial in this current world war and doing so in a way consistent with the laws of Almighty God is all that’s important.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:24 am
But, but, couldn’t you at least admit to the possiblity that you are wrong? Not that I wouldn’t gloat, but moreso that it might be a really great thing for planet earth and its inhabitants.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
I can’t think of anything on this subject that I could possibly be wrong about.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
OK. Have it your way then.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Nice finesse, folks
Touche’ We isolated Iran in the international community. Great work Condi and George, becoming your own man at last! Keep up the great work and don’t listen to that Dick. Nor play Rummy…
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/opinion/02oren.html?ref=opinion
Not unexpectedly, the Iranians reacted ferociously to Annapolis. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pronounced it a “failure” and the government-controlled press promised to “bring down Islamic wrath” on its participants. But such rage merely betrays the anxiety induced by Annapolis in Tehran. For the first time a coalition of Western and modern Arab leaders has coalesced and declared its commitment to resist “extremism” in the Middle East — a well-known euphemism for Iran.