Friday, July 25, 2003
Barbara Lerner - Last Stop on the Oslo Road?: Deciphering W.’s vision.
[...]And when, despite all this, the terror continues, month after month, or stops for a minute and then flares up again with some grotesque excuse — because the Israelis refuse to release prisoners who are covered in the blood of innocents, or to make the entire West Bank Judenrein, or to cut their capital in half again, or to allow only Arabs, not Jews and Christians, to pray on the Temple Mount, I think George W. Bush will finally say: 'It's over. You had your chance to build a peaceful new state called Palestine, and you rejected it. Now, you must go back to being Jordanians.' When? My guess is, in the autumn, but I've been wrong before, not about Dubya's intent, but about his timing. I thought he'd attack Iraq in January. He waited until March. But this time, he may have to be quicker, because some 50 million Evangelical Christians — about a quarter of the electorate — already see the Palestinians as they are, and they're impatient now.[...]
Lerner makes the case that GWB is doing a similar number on the Palestinians as he did on the UN - giving them a chance to do the right thing, or enough rope to hang themselves depending on their actions.
We can only hope she's right, and that he's not leading us down yet another slow, stultifying road to Oslo. Even if Lerner's theory isn't exactly right, we've got to hope for at least something better than that.
As an aside, I really dislike the appelation "Dubya" which mars an otherwise serious, positive piece.
I don't like the 'Dubya' appelation either. Personally, I prefer 'Shrub'. :P
More seriously, I also hope she's right, at least about him not taking the road map seriously. I don't think there's any chance of them becoming Jordanians — I don't think Jordan will have them. I do hope he has something in mind; though, and I suspect he may. He's played everyone for fools far too often for me to dare to 'misunderestimate' him again.
Heh. Shrub doesn't bother me as much. The Dubya thing just reeks of wise-guy childish ranting, which this article certainly isn't.
I'm glad I'm not the one making the decisions, if I were, I'd have to get all my advisors around me, including everyone who's an expert in every possible area we need to consider. We'd need to walk through the entire process from beginning through to every possible end so we'd be prepared for them and know what we're willing to do and what outcome we're willing to push for at each stage.
As long as it appears that GWB is doing that - that he has a goal, has thought it through and that it's basically a direction I think we should go, then no way am I going to nit-pick individual statements (such as his criticism of the security fence).
So, perfect? No. Overall good? I have to say yes. I sure would like to be a fly on the wall in the Whitehouse these days.