Dear President Bush:
Posted on 08/04/2002 1:13:39 AM PDT by Jordi
A damaging rift has opened up between London and Washington over demands by Tony Blair that the Bush administration revive Middle East peace talks before any attack on Iraq.
The Telegraph has learned that the Prime Minister is privately urging President Bush to call Arab-Israeli peace talks before any military action against Iraq, but the White House is resisting.
"The Washington argument is: You can deal with Iraq in a separate box. That is not the London position," said a senior Whitehall figure.
"It doesn't mean you cannot do anything until there is a settlement in the Middle East, but you have to make progress.
"We want the Americans to say they are going to fix it in the Middle East. They are capable of doing it, even with [Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon, but they are not doing so."
Mr Bush is reluctant to deal with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, having called for him to be removed from office. US public opinion was outraged last week by the terrorist bombing at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in which Americans were killed.
Downing Street believes, however, that the talks are vital to placating moderate Arab opinion in the build-up of military and diplomatic pressure on Saddam Hussein.
The diplomatic dispute will fuel objections by Labour MPs to early military action. It could also raise Iraqi hopes of creating fresh splits between the US and its allies after the mixed reaction that followed Saddam's offer last week of talks on the readmission of UN arms inspectors. That was met with scepticism by London and the US but welcomed by France and Russia.
Mr Blair's anxieties over the Middle East may have led to the remarks by King Abdullah of Jordan last week that the Prime Minister had "tremendous concerns" about the idea of attacking Iraq.
Sir David Manning, the Prime Minister's foreign policy adviser, is engaged in intense diplomatic talks with the White House, while Mr Blair and Mr Bush are on holiday.
Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, is expected to meet Palestinian representatives this week and Mike O'Brien, the British foreign minister, will fly to Libya for talks with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
And who said it was our job to fix it??
Why don't these idiots get of their fat butts and try to fix it???
Blair is being an idiot. All the progress you can expect was made under Clinton and Barak, but Arafat thumbed his nose at it and walked away. He then went to Saddam for financing, advise and support. Both Arafat and Saddam should die, preferably on the same day, preferably today. That is how you can start to make some progress.
Why, when we get done it's going to be perfect!
Didn't you know that?
Yeah, we'll "fix" it alright, "bombs way"!!
Sadly, history repeats itself here...and I am reminded why it is America, not Great Britain who rules the waves.
Neville Chamberlin, Prime Minister of England, did exactly the same thing..."placated" England's enemy (Hitler) in the hopes of attaining peace.
Tony Blair should be studying Winston Churchill, not Neville Chamberlin.
Dear President Bush:
"It doesn't mean you cannot do anything until there is a settlement in the Middle East, but you have to make progress.
Backasswards. Going after Iraq IS the best and fastest way to make progress wrt Palestine. Don't forget that Madrid and Oslo (ignoring, of course, their ultimate failure!) came after the Gulf War. That was no coincidence.
The only other option is to wait on the very slowly (scandalously slowly) building international revulsion with the barbaric death cult of the Palestinian "combatants". The Palestinians will, of course, be the very last to pick up on this. Their blood is up.
You can either wait, while hundreds more corpses accumulate, for them to cool down or wear themselves out, or you can change conditions in the region (i.e. take down their hero Saddam). The later virtually garauntees, at the very least, a major reassessment of strategy by the Pallies. At the very best the establishment of a democratic, or democratizing, government in Iraq (and Iran will soon follow on its own accord with mass uprising against the Mullahtocracy) will lead the Pallies to focus on the possibilities for improving their own governance, and thereby distract them from their obsession with the Jews.
I suspect that Bush's implicitly tying advancement of the Palestinian cause to improved governance of the Palestinian people is a "strategery" that is deeply tied to other plans for the region.
Bullpucky. American and British (they'll be with us in the end) troops will go through Iraq like a hot knife through butter. If they go for decapitating strikes the fighting will be over in days (like two or three days). The Israelis and/or Kuwatis, not American soldiers, will be the ones at biggest risk, if Saddam gets some missles off. And civilians who will suffer attacks from terrorists he has supplied with chemical and biological weapons. These are the big problems. The strictly military side is NOT the problem.
If you think any significant numbers of Iraqi troops are going to stand up and die for Saddam, I question your grasp of reality.
If you were a negotiator, you would have walked away from it too.
I'm a pretty strong supporter of Israel, but I can certainly put myself in the shoes of a Palestinian negotiator, and give an honest and objective prediction of what I might do.
In short, yes I would have rejected the Barak offer at Camp David (in July, wasn't it?) in 2000. The territorial scheme proposed was too heavily "cantonized" (broken up by Israeli corridors of control).
However the last chance, non-negotiable, take-it-or-leave-it deal the Clinton admin put before both parties in December, just before Clinton left office, was an entirely different matter. It was crafted, in the light of subsequent negotiations, and in careful consideration of the core priorities of each side, and what each would be able to accept. IT DID AWAY with the "catonization" of the Palestinian territory.
I WOULD have CERTAINLY accepted that offer. Israel did. Arafat has even tried, later, to claim that he accepted it. I fact he did at first say he accepted it, but then proceeded to reject one specific provision after another. This, of course, was a rejection, as the whole deal was predicated on the fact that it must be accepted by both sides in toto.
BTW, Dennis Ross, who was in the room during all this, and a key figure in the event, has been very adamant in insisting that Arafat's negotiators did want him to take the deal.
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