Bush The Statesman is a Fraud
by Steve
President Bush is nothing, if not consistent. All his life he has been an intellectually lazy adult, not stupid or dumb, just intellectually lazy. He disdains complexity, like peace and diplomacy, and loves simple, nonchallenging tasks like waging war and seeing the world in black and white. The Cold War and its simple arithmetic is a model of the world that the whole Bush team are yearning for again because they cannot deal with shades of grey and cannot multitask, but rather would deal with the simpleton formula of a powerful United States fighting another (allegedly) powerful opponent, this time terrorism, in a bipolar world. It is a gross simplification to equate Al Qaeda with the Soviet Union, but the Administration’s treatment of terrorism as a war waged against a foe who is really not the all-encompassing threat that the Bush Administration cynically and purposefully makes them out to be, is an apt display of the limited mindset of the cold warriors we are dealing with here. They cannot think outside of the box on this “war” against terror, and would rather let enemies proliferate into Cold War opponents, like North Korea, rather than do the hard work of preventing such catastrophes in the first place.
The president’s laziness and disdain for the hard work of diplomacy and peace is on full display today in the Washington Post, a paper that normally feeds us the “Bush the Statesman” crap that Karl sells them. Yet today, alone against all other papers, the Post points out that while Karl wants to spin a good yarn, nothing much has really changed with Bush, his view of the world, his laziness, and unwillingness to make the commitment and hands-on effort to bring peace to the Middle East. Aside from the participants backing off when they see that Bush is all-hat, no-cattle when it comes to these negotiations, the Post also gets a killer quote from someone inside the Administration on Bush’s limitations.
President Bush, who today begins his first high-profile effort at Middle East peacemaking, is convinced that Israel must accept a Palestinian state to ensure its survival, according to current and former aides who have heard him discuss the subject. But they say he has shown little interest in the details of the complex disputes in the region and remains skeptical of intervening deeply in the negotiating process.
Bush often has a viscerally negative reaction when officials try to delve deeply into issues -- such as the final borders of Israel and a Palestinian state, or the status of Jerusalem -- that are central to the conflict, according to people who have participated in discussions with the president. President Bill Clinton at the end of his term debated those questions at length with Israelis and Palestinians, but Bush dismisses them as "all those old issues," two participants in interagency debates said.
The president has baffled some of his aides with comments they thought minimized the obstacles toward the two-state solution he talks about. For instance, the president has told aides that the Israelis are wasting their money on expanding settlements in the West Bank because ultimately those projects will become housing developments for Palestinians.
Some aides suggest this is a naive view of the settlement issue, noting that experts on both sides of the issue believe unchecked expansion of the settlements would make it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. Other Bush advisers say the president's comments simply reflected his determination to create a Palestinian state.
This account of the president's views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based in part on interviews with senior officials throughout the U.S. government, most of whom spoke on condition that their names and the agency of government for which they worked not be identified, and several who disagreed with the president's policy decisions.
But some administration officials who have disagreed with aspects of the president's policy are concerned that Bush's belief that the hard questions will be figured out by the parties in the region -- without firm intervention by the United States -- ultimately will leave the peace process adrift.
"He does not have the knowledge or the patience to learn this issue enough to have an end destination in mind," said one administration official who has pushed for more decisive U.S. action.
And it appears that Bush craves the respect of the one man and country that helped bankroll what ended up as 9/11.
Aides said the one leader in the region who has earned Bush's respect is Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, who forcefully challenged the president over his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a visit to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., in April of last year.
The adviser said Abdullah spoke eloquently about what these images meant -- conveying a respect for life rather than a hatred of Israel -- and then laid it on the line for Bush: Was he going to do something about this or not?
Current and former officials said Abdullah put it this way: I will work with you if you are willing to deal with this issue. If you can't, let me know now. No matter what, I'll always say positive things about you in public. But I have to make certain calculations on my own if you aren't going to step up to the plate. Bush replied that he was working on a vision and would present it soon, the current and former officials said.
"It certainly made an impact on the president," one official said. Few leaders had ever spoken so directly to Bush. The president, the official said, concluded that Abdullah was a good person who has a vision of where he wants to lead his country. Since then, the president frequently asks aides whether Abdullah believes Bush is living up to the commitments he made at Crawford.
So how likely are we to see success in dealing with terrorism or a commitment and success in Middle East peace when our leader wants to curry favor with Dad’s friend and Bin Laden benefactor Abdullah, while disdaining the hard work of achieving peace? And how will the Israelis react when they know that Bush is not really engaged in the process and would rather play to the Saudis?
