lordy

[sisyphusshrugged]

It is good to be willing to change your mind. It is, I suppose, not necessary to admit that you're changing your mind. Possibly it's not the best move politically to wait to change your mind until it looks as if you've had your hand forced by the publicity from unrelated events. It maybe would have been better for our international relationships if we didn't make it clear that the word of the President of the United States is only good if his polls hold steady, not that in this case they didn't already know that. Still, it is good to be willing to change your mind.

It would be even better not to defy the UN and enrage the arab world and Europe by putting the power and influence of the United States behind an initiative that the Prime Minister's own party resoundingly did not want to begin with.

Responding to Arab and European complaints, President Bush on Thursday urged Israel to withdraw from territory captured in the 1967 Mideast war and to turn the land over to the Palestinians for a state.

"What we must do now is take advantage of an opportunity to begin the process of the development of a Palestinian state," Bush said after meeting at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Bush also promised not to "prejudice the outcome" of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians when and if they take place.

The talks, which the United States, the Europeans, Arabs and Israel all say they seek under a so-called "road map" for peacemaking, are in abeyance. Neither Bush nor Abdullah gave any indication of a new approach to get them restarted.

At a joint news conference with the king, Bush did not repeat the assurances he gave Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last month that he supports Israel's retention of some settlements on the West Bank as part of an overall agreement with the Palestinians.

Bush said all such issues must be negotiated against the backdrop of U.N. Security Council resolutions of 1967 and 1973 that called on Israel to withdraw from captured land.

"The United States will not prejudice the outcome of those negotiations," Bush said.

For those of you following at home, if we were to attempt to prejudice the outcome of negotiations, it would look sort of like this:

President Bush took a huge diplomatic gamble two weeks ago when he forcefully embraced Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and handed Israel key concessions on a final peace deal.

The backlash in Arab and European countries was especially intense, but administration officials argued that Sharon's plan carried the seeds of a breakthrough in the stalled peace process.

Now, the Likud Party's overwhelming rejection of that plan has left the administration's credibility in the Middle East in tatters. The tilt toward Israel will not soon be forgotten by the Arab world, but it will be much harder to claim that Bush's support of Sharon has made a difference.

Moreover, the Likud vote comes when the U.S. image is greatly damaged by accounts of psychological and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some U.S. soldiers.

"The real objective of giving Sharon the blank check he left with was to shore up his political support at home," a State Department official said on the condition of anonymity. "We paid a very high price and did not get a return."

Samuel Lewis, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said the vote Sunday "is an embarrassment diplomatically" for the Bush administration, and "now they have the worst of both worlds."

He faulted the administration for giving in to many of Sharon's key demands, including saying that in a final peace deal that some Israel settlements in the West Bank would be retained and that Palestinians would have to give up their right to return to lands they lost during Israel's war of independence.

Instead, he said, Bush should have given just general support to the plan.

The administration's next step is unclear. U.S. officials, fuming that Sharon did not wage a strong lobbying campaign once he had Bush's support, still have some hope that Sharon will be able to push his plan through because polls show that most Israelis support it.

If that part wasn't spin and "most Israelis" really do support the plan Our Fearless Leader just threw overboard tied to a lawnmower, this should be a really interesting news cycle.

Anyway, suffice it to say that when the Washington Post news service is sending out an article called "Bush's credibility on the rocks" to the hinterlands, he's pretty much lost his base on this one.

Mr. Powell told you wrong, Mr. Bush. Foreign policy is a little more complicated than that. You don't get to own everything you break, even if you end up paying for it.

Not everything is for sale, and we can't afford a lot of the stuff that is any more.

Maybe you need to leave diplomacy to the professionals (no, not your guys. The ones who were chosen because they have experience and they know what they're doing).

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

am I the only one thinking this?

The reason Sharon decides to abandon the 'road map' which promise to solve everything by 2005 is that Sharon thinks Bush won't survive election. So he thinks he better tries to make a deal while Bush is still in the office. He pulls the plug on 'road map' and propose new 'unilateral withdrawal'plan. (Gotta save whatever you can before the ship is shinkin' ya know)

..of course everything blows up now..