Quite the contrary. He was at the beginning of it.
And at the end he was still committed to continuing negotiations. And when Sharon was elected, Sharon made it clear that --
He tore it all up.
-- that it was no longer operative.
Oslo was dead.
To return to the question of Bush and the political constraints imposed by Congress' virtually monolithic and uncritical support of Israel, there's a long history in the U.S. of the executive branch butting heads with Capitol Hill and sometimes being able to get their way over the generally pro-Israeli Congress. And Bush would seem to have enough political capital to do that, invoking the strategic needs in the region. A lot of Congress' impassioned rhetoric about Israel is a lot of hot air, they're answering to lobbyists and to important constituencies, but when the chips are down, they will accept an American policy that is more evenhanded than their rhetoric would seem to imply. Don't you think that Bush would have enough political capital to push for a genuine Mideast peace settlement if he wanted to?
Well, who knows what he wants. But no, he doesn't really. And I think the proof of it was a few years ago when Arafat was supposed to come and speak at the United Nations, and the Senate passed a sense of the Senate resolution that he not be allowed in the United States. Well, the United Nations is not supposed to be in the United States, though it physically is. It's a separate entity. And they forbade it. And it was by a two-thirds vote. Well, you don't have to be a great parliamentarian to know that two-thirds is all that's needed to override a presidential veto. So Arafat didn't come. That's what Bush is up against. And his handlers, as much as they might want to kick Sharon's ass, they can't do it to the Congress. And I don't see how they would get around it if two-thirds of the Senate -- and it's a reasonably good Senate, from my point of view -- are adamant on this because they've either been paid or intimidated or whatever, on this issue.
So no, I don't see that he has any leeway at all there.
Well, what about the argument that even the most fervent pro-Sharon, pro-Likud Zionists are now beginning to despair of his policies? I shouldn't say the most ardent, because that would take us to Netanyahu and those who support "transfer" for Palestinians --
That would take us to metaphysics.
Right. But let's say you're a mainstream blank-check backer of Israel -- at this point you're beginning to realize, as much of the Israeli press does, that Sharon, like many generals, is a brilliant tactician but a terrible strategist; that he has no endgame at all; that he has no vision beyond repeated military assaults, which as everyone knowledgeable about the region predicts will only breed more terrorist attacks, and that there is no ultimate military solution that's palatable to the world. Because it's probably not possible to absolutely wall off the two people from each other. So even the hawkish element in Israel must be realizing that their policies have reached a dead end. Don't you think that opens up some new possibilities? Or do you remain a pessimist?
Well, yes, I am. See, the longer this thing goes on -- it's a very small place, Israel. And the hatred between the two sides is now beyond anything that has been seen in the world for quite some time. Before, our enemies were thousands of miles away, if you're an American, and you don't really get to see them. But these people are on top of each other. Something must be done soon -- either following the Saudi plan, or perhaps just cutting off all aid to the Middle East from the United States -- that would shake things up. It might speed up a solution, or an armistice anyway, while people try and put it back together again.
But the longer it goes on, the more members of families that have lost people will be seething and waiting to get revenge. That's how human beings respond to this sort of thing. And it can't go on another day. And unfortunately, we have no government in the U.S. We have no foreign policy. We have oil policy. We have a lot of realpolitik stuff going on, which has to do with our national wealth and private wealth as well.
Aside from that, there is no policy. The junta, the oil junta in charge of us, regards all the world as its enemy. And its largest enemy are the American people, and they know it. A majority of the American people voted against Bush. We not only have a minority -- in my mind an illegitimate -- president, but one who does not represent the people at large and does not like the people at large.
You, I know, have had your ears flapping over the years as have I at Republican rhetoric when they think they're not being overheard. Their loathing of the people. I remember Barry Goldwater saying to Mr. F. Clinton White, in my presence and Norman Mailer's, this was in '64 at the GOP convention in San Francisco's Cow Palace, "Well," he says to White, "you know, you can't say that. Because the whiny American people will get upset." I love that image. I took that away with me: "the whiny American people."
Well, the American people may not have much feeling for the actual power brokers around him, but in the case of George W. Bush, while he may be a figurehead, he does seem to be widely regarded as a hapless Everyman who really does have the common touch.
You are plainly a misanthropist.
Well, it's remarkable how many journalists who have covered him, including ones that don't like him politically, report that he actually does seem to have a kind of frat-boy geniality and ability to connect with ordinary Americans, that his problem isn't the elitism or the Machiavellian detachment of the oil cabal. His problem would be that he's not actually the guy in charge.
No, he's not. Cheney is running the place, from an undisclosed cave somewhere. To the extent the United States is being run at all. Corporate America is in charge, and these people are sort of decorations.
To return again to the Middle East, your position then is that they've opted for a traditional "Fortress Israel" position in which we prop up the Saudis, who we deem will probably have to deal with us in any case. We shove Riyadh's fundamentalist problems under the rug as best we can, and we allow Israel to be our regional Sparta, taking care of our business in the area. And we're prepared to take the P.R. hit and the demonstrations and the anger of the Arab street, because the Bush guys don't believe that ultimately it will ever come to anything. Do you think that about sums up their strategic thinking on the Mideast?
Well, we've inherited a situation, and they, the government, the administration has inherited it. In a sense, cynical Europeans have always taken it for granted -- in '48 and '49 when we were setting up Israel, with the most wonderful humanitarian gestures on earth, the West was also securing its oil by having a friend and a military force in the long run in that region, just to make sure that no revolution in Saudi Arabia, say, would deny us oil. That's what Europeans feel.
I always thought that that was perhaps too cynical. But I suspect that it's beginning to seem more correct to me as time goes by. Israel is our Sparta, set in the way of the "Muslim horde" -- I put that in quotation marks, because we have so demonized the Islamic world that we can't think straight about them. Nor do we seem to realize how non-monolithic they are. Had they been monolithic, there would be no Israel, and there would be no oil for the United States either. They would switch off the plug, pull the plug.
But they are not monolithic, and they can't get together, and that has been the salvation of Israel, and the salvation of our oil supply.
It does seem, though, looking at it strategically, that it's a double-edged sword for the United States to |
