Mrs. Edge
Bono's Belly Dancing Friend
Bush's credibility on line
HAROON SIDDIQUI
"The United States is now the 26th state of the Middle East."
Abdel Monem Said, director of the Al Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo. His geographic formulation includes not only the Arab nations and Israel but also Iran and Turkey.
The comment succinctly, if flippantly, captures the American occupation of Iraq and George W. Bush's sudden and rather surprising preoccupation with the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has staked his presidency on completing both assignments successfully.
Pulling the Israelis and Palestinians back from 32 months of violent confrontation and putting them on the road to peace is an extraordinary accomplishment, especially by a president who tried hard and long not to get involved.
But the feat, by itself, will not be sufficient to save his, and America's, heavily damaged credibility.
Bush will have to "ride herd," as he promised yesterday, to see the peace process through. He will also have to manage conquered Iraq better than he has and pull American troops out before armed resistance against them escalates.
The two outcomes are very much linked.
One reason much of the world opposed his war on Iraq was that there already was a war raging in the region between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which he had chosen to watch from a distance. Tony Blair and Arab allies left him no option but to promise to get engaged.
That the war on Iraq was short and successful does not obscure the fact that the invasion was "both illegitimate and illegal," as Jacques Chirac restated this week.
Or that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and about Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda. If he was misled himself by the people around him, he has yet to acknowledge it.
In fact, his administration, along with the obedient armada of pro-war commentators, has been concocting new rationales to justify the invasion:
The weapons will be found, some day. If they are not, it will only mean that they were destroyed, leaving no trace whatsoever. Or moved out of the country. Worse: Who cares what was said to justify the war? Isn't it enough that an evil dictator was destroyed?
No. American credibility matters.
The Bush administration's disregard for the truth was also demonstrated when the G-8 leaders addressed the issue of the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs.
He told the leaders behind closed doors that the U.S. had no intention of invading Iran. Yet his officials twisted the final communiqu? to claim that the leaders had approved the use of force.
"This interpretation is extraordinarily audacious," as Chirac said. Even Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a Bush supporter on Iraq, said that no one had authorized war on anyone.
What the communiqu?, in fact, spoke of, pointedly, were "measures in accordance with international law."
American unilateralism is evident even in the Middle East peace process.
The road map was drawn up in concert with the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. But no one was invited to the Bush show yesterday with Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, or the day before with five Washington-picked Arab leaders.
American presidents are known to hog the show ? Bill Clinton did so for the signing of the Oslo Accords even though he had no hand in it.
But is Bush serious about solving the conflict single-handedly? If so, is that because he thinks only America matters when it comes to Israel? Or, is it that, as he indicated to the Arab leaders, he thinks of it as his God-given mission?
As much as everyone is entitled to their own religiosity, it's a dangerous business mixing the Almighty with man-made messes. That's what the Taliban of Afghanistan, the mullahs of Pakistan, the ayatollahs of Iran and the Zionist zealots of the settlements in the occupied territories do.
I don't mean to equate the president with any of them.
But believers and non-believers alike should get nervous when a born-again Christian, who also happens to be presiding over history's biggest military apparatus, ventures forth on a holy mission.
Bush was not the only one to invoke God yesterday. Sharon called Palestinian violence inconsistent with the Islamic faith (contradicting all his supporters around here who, post-Sept. 11, have been insisting ? ironically, along with Osama bin Laden and his ilk ? that Islam and martyrdom go hand in hand).
Bush and Co. should stick to more mundane worldly matters. As they themselves said it well yesterday:
There is no military solution to the conflict; Israel has a right to exist and thrive within secure and well-defined borders free of terrorism; Palestinians have a right not to be abused with the most egregious violations of human rights and they have the right to form, by 2005, a state of their own with territorial contiguity; and that American credibility rides ever more on bringing all this about ? along with democracy in Iraq.
HAROON SIDDIQUI
"The United States is now the 26th state of the Middle East."
Abdel Monem Said, director of the Al Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies in Cairo. His geographic formulation includes not only the Arab nations and Israel but also Iran and Turkey.
The comment succinctly, if flippantly, captures the American occupation of Iraq and George W. Bush's sudden and rather surprising preoccupation with the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has staked his presidency on completing both assignments successfully.
Pulling the Israelis and Palestinians back from 32 months of violent confrontation and putting them on the road to peace is an extraordinary accomplishment, especially by a president who tried hard and long not to get involved.
But the feat, by itself, will not be sufficient to save his, and America's, heavily damaged credibility.
Bush will have to "ride herd," as he promised yesterday, to see the peace process through. He will also have to manage conquered Iraq better than he has and pull American troops out before armed resistance against them escalates.
The two outcomes are very much linked.
One reason much of the world opposed his war on Iraq was that there already was a war raging in the region between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which he had chosen to watch from a distance. Tony Blair and Arab allies left him no option but to promise to get engaged.
That the war on Iraq was short and successful does not obscure the fact that the invasion was "both illegitimate and illegal," as Jacques Chirac restated this week.
Or that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and about Saddam Hussein's links to Al Qaeda. If he was misled himself by the people around him, he has yet to acknowledge it.
In fact, his administration, along with the obedient armada of pro-war commentators, has been concocting new rationales to justify the invasion:
The weapons will be found, some day. If they are not, it will only mean that they were destroyed, leaving no trace whatsoever. Or moved out of the country. Worse: Who cares what was said to justify the war? Isn't it enough that an evil dictator was destroyed?
No. American credibility matters.
The Bush administration's disregard for the truth was also demonstrated when the G-8 leaders addressed the issue of the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs.
He told the leaders behind closed doors that the U.S. had no intention of invading Iran. Yet his officials twisted the final communiqu? to claim that the leaders had approved the use of force.
"This interpretation is extraordinarily audacious," as Chirac said. Even Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a Bush supporter on Iraq, said that no one had authorized war on anyone.
What the communiqu?, in fact, spoke of, pointedly, were "measures in accordance with international law."
American unilateralism is evident even in the Middle East peace process.
The road map was drawn up in concert with the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. But no one was invited to the Bush show yesterday with Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, or the day before with five Washington-picked Arab leaders.
American presidents are known to hog the show ? Bill Clinton did so for the signing of the Oslo Accords even though he had no hand in it.
But is Bush serious about solving the conflict single-handedly? If so, is that because he thinks only America matters when it comes to Israel? Or, is it that, as he indicated to the Arab leaders, he thinks of it as his God-given mission?
As much as everyone is entitled to their own religiosity, it's a dangerous business mixing the Almighty with man-made messes. That's what the Taliban of Afghanistan, the mullahs of Pakistan, the ayatollahs of Iran and the Zionist zealots of the settlements in the occupied territories do.
I don't mean to equate the president with any of them.
But believers and non-believers alike should get nervous when a born-again Christian, who also happens to be presiding over history's biggest military apparatus, ventures forth on a holy mission.
Bush was not the only one to invoke God yesterday. Sharon called Palestinian violence inconsistent with the Islamic faith (contradicting all his supporters around here who, post-Sept. 11, have been insisting ? ironically, along with Osama bin Laden and his ilk ? that Islam and martyrdom go hand in hand).
Bush and Co. should stick to more mundane worldly matters. As they themselves said it well yesterday:
There is no military solution to the conflict; Israel has a right to exist and thrive within secure and well-defined borders free of terrorism; Palestinians have a right not to be abused with the most egregious violations of human rights and they have the right to form, by 2005, a state of their own with territorial contiguity; and that American credibility rides ever more on bringing all this about ? along with democracy in Iraq.