After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
In recent months, President Bush has repeatedly stated that the last great ambition of his presidency is to broker a deal that would create a viable Palestinian state and bring peace to the Holy Land. “People say, ‘Do you think it’s possible, during your presidency?’ ” he told an audience in Jerusalem on January 9. “And the answer is: I’m very hopeful.”
The next day, in the West Bank capital of Ramallah, Bush acknowledged that there was a rather large obstacle standing in the way of this goal: Hamas’s complete control of Gaza, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, where it seized power in a bloody coup d’état in June 2007. Almost every day, militants fire rockets from Gaza into neighboring Israeli towns, and President Abbas is powerless to stop them. His authority is limited to the West Bank. It’s “a tough situation,” Bush admitted. “I don’t know whether you can solve it in a year or not.” What Bush neglected to mention was his own role in creating this mess.
Will we ever learn?
Thanks to Ian Warner
I’ve caught Bush on 2 announcements that capture his essence:
1. We must give the telecoms immunity, otherwise they wont help the government fight terrorism anymore, and
2. We have to show support for Columbia’s fight against terrorism by passing the trade bill before Congress.
The new book Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein has been recommended here recently on several threads about how government will grab power in times of crises. I don’t know if that was analysis–or a battle plan captured in full stride.
#1. No. “We” would include all elected officials past and present, foreign and domestic, Democrat or Republican, who would pretend to know whats best for all people in other parts of the world.
Shouldn’t there be a special Darwin Award for this F’ing moron?!? Problem is, what’s coming down the pipeline that’s any better? Sad state this country is in and getting worse by the day….The fall of the empire.
Since we depend on simple SFB(Shit For Brains) people we desire SFB policy and guidance.
WTF is over there that is so valuable? I doubt it’s more then this cowboy wanting to down down in a blaze of Glory. GIVE IT UP. Cowboys are nothing but a distant memory. Welcome to the digital age. You and Imus can sit on a damn ranch and talk with wheat sticks sticking out of your mouth or whatever. There should be an age limit to people in politics. No fresh minds = no progress
The current situation with rockets being launched out of Gaza, into Israel, serves the extremist Likud party just fine. It gives them yet another excuse to engage in the genocide of Palestinians.
#8–JPV==and your better response would be to do what?
No we will not learn because the proper solution is to nuke the whole place to glass.
JPV, the US has been siding with the Palestinians for years, paying off Arafat and now who ever is in power there now.
The rest of the Arabic world has been using Palestine to distract the internal malcontents from local national problems. The US supporting the Palestinians does nothing but help the dictators of the Arabic world retain power.
Let Israel exterminate the death cult.
Phillep–GOUSA supports both sides, all sides, for some murky motivations referred to as diplomacy?
My knees got weak flying USAF missions during the Yom Kippur War. On Monday, fly in civilian clothes and deliver mortar rounds to Jordan in a plane that has USA insignia removed. Fly back to Rhein Mein. On Tuesday, fly medical supplies into Israel.
Kinda felt like Milo Milobinder==from Catch 22–the best and most important book ever written, tomato soup and all.
To #8
1. The Likud is not an extremist party, they are a center-right party.
2. The palestinians never suffered a holocaust – they lost the extermination war they declared Jews in Israel in 1948. There was never mass murder of their civilians. In fact Hamas still declares they want to cause a second jewish holocaust – this is their stated intention. Firing rockets into Israel is their current capability, so that’s what they are doing.
3. Israel has the military capacity to cause a REAL palestinian genocide if we choose to. But we never chose this direction. Firing back at your enemy who is firing at you in the first place is not a genocide. I wonder what would happen if the US or England or China or Japan or ANY country in the world suffering daily barrages of rockets on their cities would do instead. Trust me, then you would have a genocide!
#13
Never ask what another country would do if they were being rocketed from outside their borders. You won’t get an answer from those who advocate that YOU ignore it.
Stall that sham peace stuff. Rumors abound that the end times are a-coming, with 2011 being a prominent guess, date-wise.
Bobbo,
Nixon as President. How many Diplomats left over from JFK and LBJ? (The same bunch that got us into Viet Nam, btw.)
Khartoum diplomatic assassinations 1 March 73 thru 3 March 73.
Yom Kippur War, 6 Oct 73 through 26 Oct 73 (stupid, suck up Diplomats).
I cannot find anything about the Cold River killings on this computer. Same as the Khartoum assassinations?
GOUSA definition? Nothing on Google or wiki. Is this another of those cutesy things like “AmerriKKKa”?
The Palestinians remind me of the black knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. They get their arms cut off, their legs cut off, and they still want to fight. They’re idiots. Ditto for the Lebanese. I pity Israel to have such dingbats for neighbours.
The people doing the fighting and dying are not the ones doing the talking. Note how many of the Moslems in the news /talk/ a good fight.
LOL. If it’s on the interwebs it must be true, right. John should start calling this place dvorak.org/chimpymchaliburtontinfoilhat.
Vanity Fair? And what does this left-wing political crap have to do with Dvorak? Go start a diary over on Kos.
Bush says, “They hate us for our freedom.”
No. They hate us for exactly this kind of crap.
Nice to see we’ve still got our brainwashed “patriots” who think the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Lebanon were counter strikes against terrorism.
This is the same Vanity Fair magazine that helped get US into the Iraq War in the first place. With want was probably “leaked” bogus intel, straight from Dick Cheney’s office, about WMDs.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0515,vest,62865,6.html
Now it’s taking the opposite tack on the outgoing administration (waited long enough). Perhaps it’s just a ploy to get jews to vote republican, by showing them all that Bush and Cheney have been “secretly” doing for their cause.
#16–Phillep===GOUSA I thought was fairly common for “Good Old USA” but I agree, it can’t be googled, so I should drop it in favor of actually communicating rather than having a private chuckle.
Yep–some folks think they KNOW things well enough to control those same things. Doesn’t often happen–butterfly effect. But with Bushieboy’s 100% record, I’m surprised the inner circle hasn’t appointed “Mr Opposite” to actually DO the exact opposite of what Bush and his neo-cons think is the right thing to do. And to avoid that same diplomatic trap myself, let me say, maybe Bush was right about all his initial ideas, and was only incompetent in carrying them out? Why should the war in the Gaza strip be any more effectively carried out than the War in Iraq?
How many rockets did Cuba shoot into the U.S. et al and yet we almost had a nuclear war over the issue.
I do not remember Castro or the communists sending terrorists into the US to conduct major attacks at the time.
Canada had a somewhat different approach to this situation than the U.S. yet when a group of Mohawk Indians ( now called Aboriginals) protested that their ceremonial land was going to be used to upgrade a 9 hole golf course into a 18, they were surrounded by the Canadian army with its artillery. (Oka crisis).
Its always easier to judge someone else than to be in their shoes .
Its always easier to judge someone else than to be in their shoes .
Yes. Easier and usually more objective and accurate.
Yup. The Vatican feels better putting up a statue to someone they vilified instead of helping that single mother they insisted couldn’t use birth control or later have an abortion. Money well spent in their eyes.
#27, oopps, my #27 was meant for another topic.
#21, Gregallen
Very good comment. Only it went right over the wing nuts’ heads
#25, Riv,
You missed a good part of what happened.
First the Mohawks had documentation going back 300 years and the Federal Arbitrator didn’t accept it that they owned the land and it had been sold off without their permission. The land in question held several graves. When they refused to leave the Provincial Police came in. About 1,000 of them attacked the Mohawks. The only fatality was one Provincial Police Corporal who was shot by another cop in the head with a police bullet.
Then the Army came in. They treated it like a military campaign. Slowly they moved closer and closer to the barricaded building until those inside finally surrendered. Charges were dropped against all. The army did not use their tanks which were held out of sight. BTW, I talked to several soldiers present and they all agreed, their commanders did a great job of minimizing confrontation.
The end result was to give natives who’s land had been stolen, that land back. A few years later a similar incident happened in Ontario where the Provincial Police there killed a protester. Subsequent investigation showed the land indeed belonged to the Indians claiming it and there had been political interference with the police reaction to a peaceful demonstration.
The point here is that the majority do not need to denigrate and persecute minorities, especially those who have lived on that land for generations. What could have been genocidal acts by the government against natives in Canada ended up with little bloodshed and a new awareness of native demands.