Bush Peace Efforts

Yesterday President Bush broke his seven year fast from attempting to enhance world peace by providing the keynote for the first effort at Middle-East peace since he took office.

He is to be commended for attempting this even if he is too late. Had he begun the effort seven years ago, though, he might have a chance of achieving something before leaving office. As it is, he has saddled himself with a timetable that makes his chances for success slim at best – not to mention that it is going to be hard for participants to offer concessions to the president who installed pre-emptive warfare as a national strategy and who has often confronted the world belligerently but never welcomed contrary views with open arms.

Probably the wisest thing he has done in this effort is to pass the central roles to the Department of State since, unlike Presidents Carter and Clinton before him, he lacks the ability to handle such delicate negotiations himself. That’s not entirely a condemnation of the man. After all, one of the marks of a good leader is the ability to recognize his shortcomings and assign tasks in those areas to competent aides. This exercise will stringently test the quality of Mr. Bush’s ability to choose competent aides more than his own diplomatic abilities, and the intensity of these negotiations will certainly test their competence to the max.

No matter what your political leanings are, though, you have to be rooting for a positive solution to the Israeli/Palestinian problem. If Rice and Bush surprise us all by pulling it off, they will definitely deserve a standing O.


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle