Risk Professional: Bush shores up Clinton vision of MidEast Peace Process

Speaking to the Israeli parliament yesterday, Bush said ""Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided. We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Bush is not known for his grasp of English and still less for his grasp of the subtleties of either the language or any foreign policy issues. But he rarely writes his own speeches - indeed, when he goes off-script he is somewhat engaging in his child-like innocence and naivety. Also, he often does not appear to understand the deeper meanings in some of the speeches written for him.

So it is likely that he failed to distinguish between appeasement and discussions.

It is highly unlikely that the senator quoted would have made a difference by his efforts but that is no reason not to try.

Appeasement is something quite different: it is holding discussions to allow some consequences whilst averting others - usually to allow an aggressor to invade one country without armed resistance.

Oh, wait. Isn't that what US Foreign Policy has permitted Israel to do as more and more Israeli settlements continue to be built and checkpoints built to exclude Palestinians from their own lands, and more and more Israeli troops roam free over Palestinian territories shooting people and demolishing infrastructure, homes and workplaces?

Bush missed the point: the US has been involved in appeasement for years. He's just forgotten who with.

Obama has a much more balanced view of the situation in the Middle East. With her eye on campaign funds since her election to the New York Senate, Hilary Clinton has been forceful in her support for Israel and her condemnation of Palestinians.

Bush denies that his comments were designed to aid Clinton at the expense of Obama - but the message was clear to some: if Israel wants continued unconditional US support, it needs Clinton.

And if recent newspaper reports in the US are to be believed, Clinton needs money. A lot of it. Now. Her usual supporters have not contributed as much as expected. Bush's comments may help.

Bush did peddle his party's line that there should be a Palestinian state: but his timeline has now gone out to "in decades to come." There was a hint that that timeline has now extended to Israel's 120th Anniversary - that's another 60 year

Bush also caused consternation outside Jewish-Isreali circles with his comments on Ariel Sharon: "My only regret is that one of Israel's greatest leaders is not here to share this moment. He is a warrior for the ages, a man of peace, a friend. The prayers of the American people are with Ariel Sharon." Few would recognise the description of Sharon as a man of peace; a warrior for the ages? Well - we leave it to our readers to look up his history.

And again failing to understand his own words, he used the term "anti-Semitism" as meaning "anti-Jewish." In fact, many Arabs are Semites, too.

But it was Bush's unceasingly one-sided interpretation of the situation that causes the most alarm. " The fight against terror and extremism is the defining challenge of our time. It is more than a clash of arms. It is a clash of visions, a great ideological struggle. On the one side are those who defend the ideals of justice and dignity with the power of reason and truth. On the other side are those who pursue a narrow vision of cruelty and control by committing murder, inciting fear, and spreading lies."

Unfortunately, his words from just two paragraphs later will not receive the same coverage - for if one makes a bald statement, qualifying it at length seems like excusing it rather than expanding on it. Bush did in fact seek to provide some balance: " This struggle is waged with the technology of the 21st century, but at its core it is an ancient battle between good and evil. The killers claim the mantle of Islam, but they are not religious men. No one who prays to the God of Abraham could strap a suicide vest to an innocent child, or blow up guiltless guests at a Passover Seder, or fly planes into office buildings filled with unsuspecting workers. In truth, the men who carry out these savage acts serve no higher goal than their own desire for power. They accept no God before themselves." But then he undid all the potentially good work: " And they reserve a special hatred for the most ardent defenders of liberty, including Americans and Israelis."

As he made his speech, Israeli soldiers killed four Palestinians. Two were targeted assassinations - illegal under international law and condemned by the UN but not by the US. Two were innocent bystanders. Rockets later fired from Gaza killed Israelis in Israel. Plus ca change...

Bush quoted a story about the creation of Isreal: Sixty years ago, on the eve of Israel's independence, the last British soldiers departing Jerusalem stopped at a building in the Jewish quarter of the Old City. An officer knocked on the door and met a senior rabbi. The officer presented him with a short iron bar -- the key to the Zion Gate -- and said it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of Jerusalem had belonged to a Jew. His hands trembling, the rabbi offered a prayer of thanksgiving to God, "Who had granted us life and permitted us to reach this day." Then he turned to the officer, and uttered the words Jews had awaited for so long: "I accept this key in the name of my people." Bush failed to set the context of those actions and in doing so denied the lessons of the St David's Hotel massacre. He really should learn history properly before he quotes it.

Bush's full speech is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/05/20080515-1.html