Posted on 11/27/2007 10:49:28 AM PST by ventanax5
Like the menacing crows in Alfred Hitchcock's classic "The Birds," participants are gathering at Annapolis for the first Middle East megaconference in 16 years. After much coyness, it seems that everyone is coming: the princes of corruption, assorted jihadists and nincompoops, Syrian murderers, hapless Israelis, superfluous Egyptians, and a coterie of Europeans and hangers-on — all gathered by Secretary of State Rice, whose record of nonexistent accomplishments in almost eight years as national security advisor and head of the State Department shines brightly.
Mr. Bush the son, and his secretary of state Ms. Rice are going into this one as anemic supplicants pleading with a collection of keystone cops for anything that can be dubbed success. A far more attainable success may have been wrung from an Iraq conference seeking to build on what finally seems to be some progress there. Instead, Ms. Rice picked a sure loser — ending the 50-year conflict of Arabs and Jews in one afternoon photo opportunity.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
Good one!
Some owls? Maybe. Some weasles? You bet. Some ducks? Plenty...
That is President Bush to you.
Please call today and let them know what you think about the President's efforts regarding the Annapolis conference.
ML/NJ
I hope Bush points out to the owls the scroll in Memorial Hall containing the names of my classmates and roomies killed in the Marine Barracks bombing. I still get pissed whenever I see it.
ABSOLUTELY right! I have a neighbor who served in Beirut back then, he is completely screwed up by what he went through, very shell shocked, walks the neighborhood almost every day and although he is quite interesting to talk to, the damage that was done to him really breaks your heart.
Remember the veterans, alive and dead!
A: Emissaries, functionaries, luminaries, janissaries, and dromedaries.
Q: Describe a Middle East peace conference.
Youssef Ibrahim was born in Egypt but is apparently an American citizen now. I googled his name but couldn’t find anything definite about his religion—a couple of people referred to him as a Muslim but they may have just been assuming that...there are Egyptian Christians. His terminology (Palestinian Arabs) is not the politically-correct term. He was opposed to Bush’s policy towards Iraq in 2002, and has called for the Palestinians to give up and admit they lost their struggle with Israel.
Noah Pollak
“Annapolis is really about the Bush administration, not the peace process. It has been Condi’s pet project; she has shuttled to Israel and the Palestinian territories on a monthly basis for almost a year; she has been permitted by President Bush to prioritize a quixotic diplomatic endeavor over and above other crises that by any sensible measure are of far greater concern for the United States—Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Syria and Hizballah, and Pakistan, to name a few. If Condi’s pursuit of the peace process is due to a belief that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible and will unlock the forces of moderation and conviviality in the Middle East, then, well, she is simply a fool. If it is because she wishes to add this most elusive accomplishment to her legacy, then she is a narcissist. There is a more legitimate question about the extent to which American leadership in the peace process will earn us favorable treatment from European and Arab states in dealing with Iran, but I am skeptical of that line of thinking—a matter for another post.
There is an overall sense that with Annapolis, the administration is conceding the range of false premises on both the region and the conflict, premises that in earlier years the administration itself rejected—the myth of the conflict’s centrality to the Middle East; the myth of linkage, in which peripheral Arab grievances are tethered to Palestinian grievances (hence the invitation to Syria); the push to “engage” with the region’s worst offenders, so long as they are part of the grievance-with-Israel coalition; and overall the assent to the idea that the Arab states are interested in supporting a resolution to the conflict that does not involve Israel’s destruction, or at least its grave enfeeblement. The administration prostrated itself to the Saudis to win their attendance, and the Saudis repaid the favor, in the days before the conference, by releasing 1,500 al Qaeda prisoners and publicly putting the entire onus for resolving the conflict on Israel, and on rigidly Saudi terms. Bush, Rice, and their people have either genuinely bought into all of this rubbish, or they don’t mind appearing as if they have done so, thinking that such a public abnegation will put them in the good graces of Europe and the Arab world.
Either way, I think it’s been a far worse day for America than it has been for Israel.”
It’s too warm for Al. He needs to stay home and rest.
From God’s lips to their ears- Isaiah 34.
They are “unclean” birds.
Sure was huh. Good call.
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