John Bolton, who likes to fashion himself an expert on Middle East affairs, illustrated quite the opposite during his tenure as US Ambassador to the United Nations. Despite having the rest of the world laughing at us, and despite being wrong on every thing he ever said with regard to the Middle East (bomb, bomb, bomb Iran), he still get his opinions printed.
Here is his rather (paid for?) odd description of the Gaza conflict:
War in the Gaza Strip demonstrates yet again that the current
governance paradigm for the Palestinian people has failed. Terrorists
financed and supplied by Iran control Gaza; the Palestinian Authority
is broken, probably irretrievably; and economic development is stalled
in Gaza and the West Bank. Palestinians are suffering the consequences
of regional power struggles played out through them as surrogates.
Yes, Hamas is a terrorist group. And yes, we all have problems with their rise to power in legitimate government. But did they just suddenly appear and claim seats in government or was there a cause?
What the above Bolton garbage demonstrates is that the Bush administration continues to attempt a re-write of history and to save a legacy that has already long been damned as the worst foreign policy set of blunders ever.
Let's recall why Hamas came to power as part of the legitimate government. You might remember that Bush's foreign policy was to recreate American democracy in the Middle East. Despite the reality and history of the region, Bush and his experts were going to bring democracy to a region that did not ask for it and did not want it. We, in America see democracy as the obvious choice of governance.
But our way of life is vastly different.
No matter, Bush and the cabal abandoned the Palestine people to the corrupt PLO leaders and cut funding. Hamas, on the other hand, spent its time winning supporters by actually feeding the poor, helping the Palestinians, and doing what no terrorist organization should be given the power to do: convince a nation to elect them and in large numbers. Still, the Bush administration did not really bother to care or notice as Hamas was building its support. Why would Bush care, none of his corporate backers had contracts there. And you can likely imagine their surprise at what came next, because "no one could have imagined" happened, despite what the Bush administration claims. Hamas swept into legitimate governance, while Condi, Bush and the rest of the gang looked confused.
So, leaving another ground zero as part of his legacy, how did Bush respond when his administration's abandonment of the Palestine people resulting in the democratic election of Hamas to government? Did he decide to rethink his foolish and dangerous policies?
No.
Did he decide to perhaps counter Hamas with a humanitarian approach that might wing supports in Palestine to the Western position?
Nope.
Bush did what he has always done. He buried his head in the sand and declared that he will cut humanitarian support to the Palestinian people as punishment for their expression of democracy during their elections. How dare they choose something we don't like? The reality is, Palestinians did not have much of a choice, since the only people offering them any help happened to be terrorists. America was far too busy with an illegal war in Iraq - yet another place where democracy has done wonders.
Moreover, Bush moved to try to overthrow Hamas, while all the time publicly continuing to proclaim a vision of democracy in the Middle East. So much for US credibility.
Mr. Bolton was a champion of this idiocy at every step of the way and he emerges now to proclaim that the Palestian governance paradigm has failed.
Which paradigm would that be Mr. Bolton? The one called democracy that you and the Bush administration did so much lip service to, but no actual overtures toward? Or perhaps the reason that Hamas came to power in the first place was your crazed version of reality in which you abandon a suffering people and call it democracy? Or perhaps the failure comes from the US position on forcing its will through coups and other empire-building/corporate-driven policies by any means necessary? The people of Palestine are suffering because you, Mr. Bolton, and others like you have long demanded that our country show off its military muscle and curb its humanitarian activities. First with Iraq, then Iran, and so forth.
Bolton then goes on to play propagandist for several more paragraphs with total amnesia of his own role in all of this. But he then asks the following question:
Given this landscape, we should ask why we still advocate the
"two-state solution," with Israel and "Palestine" living side by side
in peace, as the mantra goes. We are obviously not progressing, and are
probably going backward. We continue poring over the Middle East "road
map" because that is all we have, faute de mieux, as they say in Foggy
Bottom.
Sorry? I misunderstood him I think. Who is generalized "we" advocating a two-state solution? If I recall correctly, the "we" is non other than Bolton and Bush who continue to push the same policies, but are now publicly blackmailing the Palestinian people into doing our bidding. The above comment by him reads to me as a threat. It is as though he is saying "because of this" we will have to do "something" to you for the election that brought Hamas into office. Does anyone else read it that way?
More importantly, do we have the right to advocate anything relating to governance in a country that is not our own? Albert Einstein defined insanity as: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
We have done this game in nearly every country in Central America (Contras ring a bell?), in South America (Pinochet ring a bell?), and in the Middle East (Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, etc.).
Yet the same people who have always advocated for this insanity continue to advocate for more. Mr. Bolton has no business expressing his opinion until he admits tot his own role in the current Middle East crisis. Anyone giving him space to write his propaganda, should at the very least either write a factual analysis of it and run both at the same time, or at least allow a reality-based human to issue a response.
But to simply run his rhetoric because the Bush administration gave him more credibility than he is worth, is total idiocy. Fox News gives him a platform. Let him continue there, along with the rest of the discredited, dishonest, and even criminal cast of the Bush years.
