President Bush�s recent speech before the Knesset,
ostensibly to celebrate Israel�s 60th birthday, was not only a display of
political cynicism at its worst -- using a diplomatic occasion to perpetrate an
unseemly attack on Barack Obama -- but a microcosm for the disregard with which
the president holds the rest of the world. And vice versa.
Events in the Middle East over the last few weeks are all
the proof you need. Here�s what the president said: "Jews
and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders
who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st
century.
�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.�
Although officially President Bush
denied that he was talking about Obama -- and the Democrat�s stated willingness
to talk with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- John Yang at NBC News
reported, �Privately, White House officials said the shoe fits the Democratic
frontrunner.�
American historian Brian P. Murphy
told the Boston Globe, �I can't
imagine there's a precedent for a sitting president to go before the
legislative body of a foreign government and launch a political attack on a
major-party nominee running to succeed him.�
It was a shabby performance in an
improper, overseas forum. He didn�t care. Of course the reference to
appeasement was an attempt to smear by making a comparison between Senator
Obama and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain�s capitulation to Hitler
at Munich in 1938. Last summer, Bush read the book Troublesome Young Men, an account of how Winston Churchill and
fellow Conservatives fought back against Chamberlain�s submission to the Nazis.
But ironically, as the book�s author, Lynne Olson, pointed
out in a Washington Post op-ed last
summer, it�s the appeaser and Bush who have more in
common than the president may care to know. �Chamberlain came to office with
almost no understanding of foreign affairs or experience in dealing with
international leaders,� she wrote. � . . . He surrounded himself with
like-minded advisers and refused to heed anyone who told him otherwise.�
President Bush�s own continuing
heedlessness was again highlighted just a couple of days after the Knesset
speech when he delivered a chastising lecture on democracy to Arab nations at
the World Economic Forum in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. �Obtuse� is how a Boston Globe editorial described it.
�Bush seemed oblivious to the loss of respect for the United States that his
Mideast misadventures have caused in the region.�
Newsweek�s Christopher
Dickey echoed the Globe�s dismay:
"Looking at Iraq, the peace process, Lebanon, the growing strength of
Iran, the continued deterioration of Somalia, the potential disintegration of
Sudan, not to mention the vast decline in the value of the dollar and the
faltering global economy, the participants at the forum knew only too well they
were halfway to hell on roads paved with George W. Bush's good
intentions."
So, as Bush thoughtlessly careens
into the last months of his presidency, a good portion of the rest of the world
has decided it can spin on quite well without him. Even Israel.
Almost as if everyone waited until President Bush had left
the region and the coast was clear, there was immediately a surprise
announcement of Turkey brokering indirect talks between Israel and Syria over
the Golan Heights. And now Qatar has brokered a political power-sharing deal
between the Lebanese government and the Hezbollah Shiite militia that may keep
the country from exploding in another war. The United States has opposed both
efforts.
Such defiance isn�t just because George Bush is a lame duck.
So bereft is his administration�s Middle East policy of initiative or
consistent purpose that the United States has lost what little credibility it
had left.
It�s becoming clearer as Egyptian newspaper editor and human
rights activist Hisham Qassem says, � . . . America is neither loved nor
feared.� Instead, we�re the lumbering, addled giant, aimlessly kicking desert
sand, irritating the world instead of leading it.
Michael
Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers
Journal, which airs Fridasy night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog.