Pipes as Pollyanna

Submitted by Edward Alexander (United States), Jun 10, 2003 at 19:10

Even inside such a brilliant and courageous a fellow as Daniel Pipes there lurks a bit of the Pollyanna impulse, and it shows in this (mildly) hopeful assessment of the re-run of Oslo called the "roadmap."

It is already clear that Pres. Bush has not the slightest intention of insisting on cessation of Palestinian violence, much less objecting to it vocally. The very genesis of this latest "plan" dooms it (to say nothing of the large number of Israelis whose lives it will destroy). Tony Blair's backbenchers very much wanted him to bomb not Baghdad but Tel-Aviv, and so to save his job Bush promised to atone for the overthrow of S. Hussein by doing the bidding of the Arab nations. And there is worse: one has only to look at the photos of Bush amidst his Arab friends at the recent conference to see that he is the only participant who is NOT aware that he is participating in a charade.

And there is worse: Bush' eager promotion of this farce shows that the great victory in Iraq will be squandered for lack of the mental energy to keep the hacks of the State Dept. from reasserting their ascendancy over Middle East policy, a policy always based on the incorrigibly stupid notion that it is Israeli "occupation" that leads to Arab hatred rather than--as everybody really knows--Arab hatred that leads, as it has always led, to Israeli occupation.

As far as the outcome for Israel is concerned, we might have been better off adopting the anti-war policy of the fools and antisemites demonstrating all over Europe than supporting the Bush policy.

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