NP Bushspeak

[jbor]

"It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for
Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. And the current situation
offers no prospect that life will improve. Israeli citizens will continue to
be victimized by terrorists, and so Israel will continue to defend herself.

In the situation the Palestinian people will grow more and more miserable.
My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security. My
vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security."

I don't see the arrogance at all. I think Bush's speech was contrived to be
very carefully-balanced in order to show no bias towards either one side or
the other. His support of the Israeli cause is far less complete than that
of previous U.S. Administrations. He has always endorsed the creation of a
Palestinian state, and still does. When he talks about the Palestinians
having "new leaders" he's referring to the fact that Arafat has basically
admitted and showed that he is unable to control Hamas and the extremist
groups responsible for the continuing suicide bombings. These groups and
their terrorist tactics are very much of a kind with Al Qaeda and Sept. 11.
There's no point trying to mediate between Sharon and Arafat when Arafat has
no authority over Palestinian actions.

I agree that in most respects there's very little difference between
state-sponsored terrorism (i.e. in this case, Israel's actions) and the
atrocities committed by groups such as Al Qaeda and Hamas. But the main
difference, and the one which Bush's speech addresses, is that when a nation
is united under a government then it and all its citizens are bound by the
international treaties and agreements which have been signed by that govt.
When that's the case extremist groups like Hamas and Al Qaeda, and
individuals like bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh, for example, are criminals
within that nation, and are subject to prosecution according to internal
laws. The message is, again, that Arafat needs to get his act together and
put his house in order.

best



on 27/6/02 3:44 AM, Otto at ottosell at yahoo.de wrote:

> The Secret Word for tonight is Settlement
> 
> "And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new
> security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America
> will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain
> aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a
> final settlement in the Middle East."
> http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/06/24/bush.mideast.speech/index.html
> 
> This is precisely the way it will *not* work because it's supposed to be
> exactly the other way round to be succesful. There will only be a "final
> settlement" when the last settlement has been closed and the last Israeli
> settler has left Palestinian soil.
> 
> On one side this speech is very arrogant because it's not in the power of
> the US-president to demand that another people may choose another
> president/leader. If it were so Mr. Sharon would have to got too for the
> same reasons as Mr. Arafat. Not to speak about the way Mr. Bush came into
> power.
> 
> On the other hand the speech has some very promising parts addressing both
> sides of the conflict, though the overall impression is still that
> conservative America unconditionally prefers the Israeli side:
> 
> Suicide Bombing, by the Editors
> "Of course Palestinians went and slaughtered Israelis."
> http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020701&s=editorial070102
> 
> Well, the truth of course is always the other way round. If you look at who
> killed how many of each side during the Al Aksa Intifada it's clear that Mr.
> Sharon and not Mr. Arafat is the main killer, that Israel's state terrorism
> is most responsible for the violence in the actual conflict. While we have
> seen the IDF at Jenin we still miss the clear and unmistakably evidences
> that Arafat is behind the suicide bombings. The simple death toll, the fact
> that Israel resists several UN-declarations for decades now by keeping
> foreign land under occupation and threatening its neighbors with weapons of
> mass destruction, this is not seen by the TNR-editors.
> 
> There are interesting points in the articles from the Jewish World Review
> Kurt-Werner has just posted.
> Dennis Prager asks: "Why does the Left support the "Palestinians"?" and
> points to the fact that Israel indeed is the only real democracy in the
> Middle East. So why is the Left in favour of those undemocratic pre-modern
> rulers like Arafat? The answers Prager gives are very silly when you read
> sentences like "Those of us not on the left believe that the purpose of a
> college education is to discover what is true and what is good" or "At this
> time in history nothing so illustrates the left's nihilism as does its
> support of the Palestinians against Israel" - his final statement revealing
> his political "home".
> 
> In fact the Left doesn't like the rulers but the people, and it expects no
> change to a more civilian and democratic society in times of war when people
> prefer strong leaders, even if democratic rights are left aside for a while.
> Why should the Palestinians have another opinion on this as, I suppose, 80%
> of the Americans have. It's like all those Cubans still supporting Castro
> (and we can only shake our head)- but they take a look at Argentina and
> weep. Or why did the Israelis choose Sharon? They remembered Sabra and
> Shatila and expected that similar would happen to Palestinian cities if the
> terror coming from those cities doesn't stop.
> 
> I have always been critical of the leftist criticism on the War on Terror
> because it's a different thing. We must not allow neither Osama bin Laden
> nor Ariel Sharon to justify their actions with the other problem. The War on
> Terror has primarily nothing to do with the Middle East and the Middle East
> conflict has nothing to do with the American retaliation for September 11.
> But bin Laden has justified his terror with the Israeli occupation and
> Sharon has tried to "sell" his policy as part of this War on Terror and both
> is wrong.
> 
> Otto
> 
> 
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