Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Good news on Bush's watch?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Good news on Bush's watch?

    Rosa Brooks:

    Good news on Bush's watch?

    How should we react to recent signs of hope from Iraq, Pakistan and the Israel-Palestinian talks?
    November 29, 2007

    Peace in our time?

    All of a sudden, we're getting foreign affairs news that seems, well, good. The Israelis and Palestinians are restarting the long-stalled peace process. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has stepped down as army chief of staff and promises henceforth to serve only as a civilian leader. And violence in Iraq appears genuinely to be down.

    After years of unremittingly bad news, no one seems quite sure what to do with good news. Should we cheer? Take back all those mean things we've said about George W. Bush? Or check to see if we still have our wallets, because it's probably some sort of trick?

    Not surprisingly, GOP stalwarts are doing the first and demanding that the rest of us do the second. Meanwhile, some Democrats seem convinced of the need for the third approach and are standing on their heads to argue that what seems like good news is just sneakily repackaged bad news. (Sectarian violence is down in Iraq? Yeah, sure, but only because the ethnic-cleansing process has been more or less completed, on our watch!)

    As usual, the reality is more complicated. For the puzzled, here's a guide.

    Start with Tuesday's Annapolis talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. By day's end, the two men had agreed to restart the peace process, beginning Dec. 12.

    To be sure, it was a day for photo-ops rather than substance. But sometimes photo-ops matter. After seven years of suicide bombings, targeted assassinations, bulldozers and walls, the picture of Olmert and Abbas shaking hands, flanked by the president of the United States, still packs a symbolic punch. Despite everything, key regional players still come to the table when Washington signals a willingness to get serious. Peace talks aren't the same thing as peace, but they're not chopped liver either.

    Of course, the Bush administration might have gotten serious a little earlier, and the obstacles remain daunting. Neither Olmert nor Abbas has much support at home, and bitterness runs deep on both sides. Hamas quickly denounced the Annapolis agreement, and conflict between Hamas and Fatah could scuttle any progress. Administration klutziness (particularly "axis of evil"-style rhetoric) could also still alienate critical players. So stay tuned.

    Next, Pakistan. Last week, Bush insisted that Musharraf "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy." Not an easy position to maintain when you're talking about a guy who seized power in a military coup and now clings to power via emergency powers and the imprisonment of thousands of dissidents. Bush must have been relieved when Musharraf finally bowed to pressure and stepped down as army chief of staff on Wednesday.

    But Musharraf has given no indication that he's willing to hold genuinely free elections or end the crackdown on dissidents, and no one in the fragmented opposition yet offers an attractive alternative. In particular, former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif should not be seen as democratic saviors -- or reliable U.S. allies.

    Musharraf has sometimes kept his fingers crossed behind his back while promising to combat Islamic extremism and end nuclear proliferation, but Bhutto and Sharif are expert finger-crossers too. Don't plan to take Pakistan off the list of scary situations any time soon.

    Finally, Iraq. Civilian deaths really do seem to be down, and that's unequivocally good. How much of the decline in violence is because of the U.S. military "surge" and how much is because of sectarian segregation is an open question; almost certainly, it's a bit of both.

    But does this mean the surge has "worked," or that those who favor relatively rapid U.S. withdrawal need to reconsider their views? Not really.

    The point of our military successes was to increase security enough to allow the Iraqi political process to move forward -- but that hasn't happened and almost certainly won't. Ironically, some of the very factors that have enhanced local-level stability -- such as sectarian segregation and the empowerment of local tribal and religious leaders -- may undermine the likelihood of national-level political progress, at least as originally envisioned by the Bush administration.

    We lack the resources to maintain current troop levels, and our ongoing presence in Iraq continues to feed regional extremism and distract us from other pressing security issues. We still need to make firm plans to redeploy most of our troops. If possible, we should use the nature and timing of that redeployment as a last lever to encourage Iraq's fractious parties to reach some reasonable agreement on how to govern after we're gone. But if that's not possible, we need to leave anyway.

    The bottom line? Good news is good news, but the Republicans shouldn't gloat, and Democrats shouldn't be churlish. There's going to be more than enough bad news to go around.

    [email protected]

    Good news on Bush's watch? - Los Angeles Times
    Good news, what ho?

    Note: No gloating and no being churlish!

    Face each other.

    Wipe your gloves.

    Box on!



    "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

    I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

    HAKUNA MATATA
Working...
X