Another Bush Fantasy Shattered

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, May 19, 2008

The notion that President Bush could serve as an honest broker between Israelis and Arabs has always been something of a fantasy.

Now it appears to be a fantasy the lame-duck Bush White House is no longer willing to put much effort into sustaining.

The Israeli portion of Bush's latest trip to the Middle East was a nearly nonstop love fest, with Bush enthusiastically celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Jewish state, delivering a speech that imbued Israel with the same absolute moral authority that he claims for himself, and bathing in adulation that literally brought tears to his eyes. In all the excitement, Bush nearly forgot to even mention his lip-service devotion to a Palestinian state.

But in Egypt, when it came time to address an Arab audience, Bush was hectoring and remote. He not only chastised Arab leaders for failing to live up to his moral standards, but he held up occupied Iraq as one sign that "the light of liberty is beginning to shine" in the Middle East, and he urged Arab countries to wean themselves off oil revenues.

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