The Grown-Ups Never Showed Up
By Joe Conason
TruthDig
To the Washington establishment, George W. Bush’s arrival in the White House marked the “return of the grown-ups” to the running of American foreign policy. While that judgment upon President Bill Clinton was unfair, the implied endorsement of the first Bush administration was based on real achievement in the management of the Gulf War and the 1991 Madrid peace conference. But the second Bush White House has never come under adult supervision.
The president has rejected advice from the wise old heads who counseled his father and who repeatedly pleaded with this president for seriousness and maturity in dealing with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel and Palestine. Instead, as the Annapolis meeting suggests, his approach to those issues has been both ideological and inconsistent, with a vacillating quality that seems unlikely to encourage progress.
The president’s opening address to the diplomats gathered in Maryland did not exceed the low expectations surrounding the event. A hopeful and forceful speech was well beyond his grasp, perhaps because so many of those who grudgingly showed up to hear him harbored deep doubts about his sincerity. His tone was defensive as he sought to justify his administration’s late attempt to renew the moribund peace process.
With his usual flourish for the obvious, he noted that establishing peace between Israel and a new Palestinian state “will not be easy—if it were easy, it would have happened a long time ago,” and that eventual success will require “hard effort.”
(Continued here.)
TruthDig
To the Washington establishment, George W. Bush’s arrival in the White House marked the “return of the grown-ups” to the running of American foreign policy. While that judgment upon President Bill Clinton was unfair, the implied endorsement of the first Bush administration was based on real achievement in the management of the Gulf War and the 1991 Madrid peace conference. But the second Bush White House has never come under adult supervision.
The president has rejected advice from the wise old heads who counseled his father and who repeatedly pleaded with this president for seriousness and maturity in dealing with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel and Palestine. Instead, as the Annapolis meeting suggests, his approach to those issues has been both ideological and inconsistent, with a vacillating quality that seems unlikely to encourage progress.
The president’s opening address to the diplomats gathered in Maryland did not exceed the low expectations surrounding the event. A hopeful and forceful speech was well beyond his grasp, perhaps because so many of those who grudgingly showed up to hear him harbored deep doubts about his sincerity. His tone was defensive as he sought to justify his administration’s late attempt to renew the moribund peace process.
With his usual flourish for the obvious, he noted that establishing peace between Israel and a new Palestinian state “will not be easy—if it were easy, it would have happened a long time ago,” and that eventual success will require “hard effort.”
(Continued here.)
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