Worst Nightmare Dept: Will Bush get credit for Middle East Peace?

[win_in_06]

Watching that press conference with the Palestinian President today. Is this going to work? Can the shrub's policy (i.e., no policy, wait for Arafat to die, let Israel do what they want)work?

I hate to say it, but I'd hate to see it.

[tk2kewl]

1. If there is peace between Israel and Palestine

it will be in spite of shrubbo not because of him

[napi21]

2. If there is a real Peace, yes he will.

If there is a real peace, he deserves some credit for whatever aid he contributed.

Now, I'll be SHOCKED if there really IS a lasting Peace in the ME too!

[progressoid]

3. Well, according to the RW, Ronny Raygun personally brought down the USSR!

History is a funny thing.

[Caution]

4. If there is real peace and it resulted from his policies

I'll give him credit, it won't absolve him of the deaths of 2000 US soldiers or 100,000 Iraqis but I give Nixon credit for what he did in China. Even the worst of these bastards can occasionally get soemthign right even if it is by mistake.

[Justitia]

5. Yeah, Bush will be the very first man to achieve peace in the middle east.

:sarcasm:

You are worrying for nothing.

[madrchsod]

6. no. there is no"middle east peace"

he will get no credit because there isn`t anything to this "peace" deal. this is just a legalization of apartheid.

[win_in_06]

7. So you don't agree with the existence of a separate Palestinian state?

[Chan790]

8. No

because this deal is so lopsided that it basically comes down to Palestine can deign to have a separate nation-state for as long as Israel acquieses and only at the whim of the Israeli government. Regardless what side of the issue you're on, it's hard to argue that it's truly a state if it can cease to exist at the will of another state. That'd be like the US telling Canada that we've decided that they can't be their own country anymore.

[win_in_06]

11. Do the rank and file Palestinians want this agreement?

[Chan790]

15. .

That seems like the million $ question but it isn't.

They've agreed perpetually to one deal after another that seems okay until they decide they've been screwed, then they withdraw. (No peace is permanant because neither side has ever viewed it as such.) It's a matter of concessions on the little issues with a refusal to touch the big ones. No deal is ever going to be a final deal until both sides deal with the big horking pile of issues at the center. An Israeli imposed solution on those will never hold, even if the Palestinians agree to it.

I asked a politics professor of mine who was big on the issue once what he thought it would take to settle this and he said, off the record, a 3rd party police force occupation imposing it through force, breaking the backs of both sides. Sounds pretty awful to me and pretty glib (as it's basically a violation of everybody's sovereignty) but I think he's probably right. The sort of peace where nobody is happy but everybody is oppressed from acting until it just becomes accepted. A long nasty. bloody peace obtained through brutality against those that break the peace. It's how the Ottoman did it.

[tatertop]

9. Sharon has absolutely no interest in a just peace

He never did and he never will.

[leesa]

10. Of course it's not going to work. You don't create peace by murdering

people and their families.

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. What peace?

You needn't worry about hating to say it or see it.

[OneTwentyoNine]

13. Fat chance of ever seeing MEP no matter who's President...n/t

[trof]

14. Unhappily, I think you're right.

Not in my lifetime anyway.
About another 15-20 years, playing the averages.