From The Founder's Desk
columnist: Walt Thiessen

Topic: Foreign Policy
Bush's Annapolis Fairy Tale

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The meeting of 40 nations at President Bush's invitation in Annapolis, Maryland to discuss a possible Palestinian state seems like something out of a Grimm's fairy tale.

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by Walt Thiessen
(Libertarian)
Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The idea that by gathering the leaders of 40 countries at Annapolis, Maryland, home of the U.S. Naval Academy, President Bush can somehow overcome seven years of alienating the world and working his will in relative isolation to other countries to create a Palestinian state simply defies belief. Yet that is exactly what he is trying to do. It's the political equivalent of trying to pull a hat out of a rabbit. Any third-rate magician can pull a rabbit out of a hat, but doing the reverse is what sets the great magicians apart. It's a fabulous trick if you can do it.

President Bush thinks he is a great magician. What Bush is attempting to do is to create a new nation at the point of a gun, held (figuratively speaking) to the delegates' heads by the American military. In a sense, it does continue a tradition established by Israel, who have expanded much of their territory at the point of a gun. One would think that a rational person would look at the results of that approach over the past 60 years and conclude that it has too many drawbacks to be considered a viable method for attaining peace.

Apparently, President Bush is not such a peson. He has deliberately decided to hold the meetings at the home of our naval forces. What a clear signal this sends to the rest of the participants: agree, or else! Yet it is equally clear that this approach is likely to fail utterly and completely.

While 40 nations will be represented at the talks, the leading players will be Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Associated Press reported today:

"Saudi Arabia said it agreed to attend after receiving assurances that the Bush administration would remain energetic after the talks begin. But asked if he would shake hands with Olmert, the kingdom's foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, gave a curt no.

"'We are here for the serious business of making peace,' he said. 'It is not a sporting contest where you shake hands and let the best man win.'"

Well, this certainly raises a question. If Saudi Arabia's delegate, one of America's supposedly "staunchest" allies in the Middle East, refuses to shake hands with the leader of Israel before the talks even begin, how can anyone expect anything positive to come out of this conference? Israeli Prime Minister Olmert doesn't seem worried. The article quoted him as saying:

"This time, it's different because we are going to have a lot of participation in what I hope will launch a serious process negotiation between us and the Palestinians."

The AP article also reported:

"Leaders of the Islamic militant group Hamas labeled Abbas a traitor even for coming to the meeting, and vowed to reject any decisions to come out of the conference.

"In Jerusalem, more than 20,000 Israelis gathered at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, to protest the conference. Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu labeled the summit 'a continuation of one-sided concessions.'

"In Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech that the conference 'has already failed' and that the U.S. was only trying to preserve its reputation."

In short, this conference is nothing less than a test of the Bush/Israeli policy of military diplomacy. Threaten everyone under the sun for years on end with the ultimate goal of getting them to wilt at the bargaining table. Only a neo-con or a libertarian hawk could possibly believe that such an approach will bear the fruits of peace.

This whole charade reminds me of a Grimm's fairy tale. In particular, I'm thinking of the story of the Wolf and the Seven Little Kids. This is not as famous as some of the other Grimm stories, but it's an appropriate cautionary tale. In brief, it tells of a wolf who decides to eat seven young goats (kids). He goes through some elaborate deceptions in order to get them to let him in the door of their house, in part by threatening local townspeople into helping him. He eventually succeeds in getting into the house and eats six of the seven kids. When their mother comes home and learns from her seventh and youngest kid what happened, she grieves for a bit, and then they go out into a field, where they find the wolf fast asleep. To her surprise, the mother sees signs that her kids are struggling inside the wolf's belly. So she uses scissors to cut open the wolf's belly, and all six of her kids emerge intact. She replaces their bulk with heavy stones. Then she sews the belly shut with needle and thread.

When the wolf (who apparently has a so high a pain threshold that he didn't even realize that surgery was being done on him while he slept) awakens, he feels hungry and weighed down by the stones. He gets up and goes to a well to drink, but he falls in and drowns. The story ends saying:

"When the seven kids saw that, they came running to the spot and cried aloud, 'The wolf is dead! The wolf is dead!' and danced for joy round about the well with their mother."

Woe comes to those who take the side of the wolf. Will woe come to President Wolf, and will it then be visited on his townspeople, the residents of America? Time will tell. I hope America successfully avoids the kids' mother's revenge, but I'm not optimistic about it.

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2007 Walt Thiessen, all rights reserved.
Published: Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Last modified: Thursday, November 29, 2007

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