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January 29, 2008
Bush's lameduck status can be seen in his 2008 and final State of Union speech. Bush is part of the backdrop of American politics now, eclipsed by the primaries in South Carolina and Florida. If most of the speech was taken up with the economy, then Bush is struggling for airtime even in the foreign policy field.
He has little new to say It's the same tired simplistic narrative about the enemy ( evil men who despise freedom, despise America) still being dangerous, more work remains, the surge is working, Al-Qaeda is on the run in Iraq, and this enemy will be defeated. Freedom advances in the Middle East, but the Iranian regime is there to oppose it.
Alan Moir
So what did Bush says about peace and freedom in the Gaza Strip, given that the US is seen as supporting and paying for Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories?
The narrative from Bush is this:
In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny. That is why the terrorists are fighting to deny this choice to people in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories. And that is why, for the security of America and the peace of the world, we are spreading the hope of freedom.
Didn't the Palestinians determine their destiny by voting for Hamas in democratic elections? For Bush all that matter is that Hamas, along with Hezbollah in Lebanon, is an arm of Iran. So they are terrorists who oppose the march of freedom in the Middle East.
Bush's simplistic narrative about the Middle East--the noble "war on terrorism"-- has turned out to include keeping a million and a half people locked up indefinitely in an open air prison and denying them their freedom. The Washington Post editorial is an eyeopener: it talks in terms of a "humanitarian crisis" in scare quotes, scolded Gazans for "blowing up international borders," and concluded by demanding that they stop making trouble and wait for the "peace process" to go forward.
So the Palestinians have to go back to jail and suffer under a brutal occupation for another few decades. There is more critical thinking happening inside Israel.
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Gary,
this is a good article in the Washington Post. They---Hussein Agha and Robert Malley---argue that so long as each of the three players (Israel, Hamas, Fatah) in what they call the "Middle East triangle" regards a gain by either of the other two as their loss, no progress is possible. But if each of the three players can be made to understand that a gain for one is a gain for them all, then a deal could be possible.