Riding herd

Question to President Bush from the reporter's pool aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003, from the White House official transcript:

THE PRESIDENT: "I show up when they need me to call people to account, to praise, or to say, wait a minute -- you told me in Jordan that you would do this, you haven't done it, why? How come? What is it? It's to keep the thing moving, keep the processes moving. They've got the man on the ground that is going to -- he's just going to -- I used the expression, ride herd. I don't know if anybody understood the meaning. It's a little informal in diplomatic terms. I said, we're going to put a guy on the ground to ride herd on the process. See them all scratching their heads."

A reporter then asked him how "riding herd" translated into Hebrew and Arabic, and the President changed the subject. But the question deserves an answer -- in native Texan.

Mr. President, when you described your role in the Mideast diplomatic process as "riding herd," you expressed doubt as to whether the Arab leaders with whom you were speaking would understand your meaning.

Let me help you out: for all you sheiks and princes and emirs and presidents-for-life among our readers, "riding herd" is cowboy talk for keeping the cattle in line, more or less, moving in the right general direction -- that is, where the cowboys intend for them to move.

You didn't say who you intended to herd, but I think we can safely assume it was not the Arabian dictators to whom you were speaking. If I understand you correctly, sir, the emphasis is to be on sticks rather than carrots, so that all the little doggies will get along, with a little cattle-prodding, your road map to Mideast peace.

Don't get me wrong, sir: I have nothing against cows. They're kosher. And your privileged self-identification as a cowboy empowered to keep the locals in line might under other circumstances be amusing. So too your "viscerally negative reaction" to details, if a recent insider piece in the Washington Post can be believed, with "all those old issues" about Jerusalem, refugees, and that sort of stuff.

The Post reports that, at a summit last year, Bush interrupted Sharon when he began to say he was a "man of peace and security," according to an eye-witness. "I know you are a man of security," Bush said. "I want you to work harder on the peace part." Then, will colloquial language that seemed to baffle Sharon, the President added: "I said you were a man of peace. I want you to know I took immense crap for that."

The Post article concludes with a report about how a threat by Crown Prince Abdullah to reconsider his country's relations with the U.S. if President Bush did not take decisive action to create a Palestinian state. The president, an official present said, "concluded that Abdullah was a good person who has a vision of where he wants to lead his country. Since then, the president frequently asks aides whether Abdullah believes Bush is living up to the commitments he made at Crawford."

I do appreciate the president's "western" (as in spaghetti western) view of the world, reflective perhaps of the view of the Mideast as one large field of oil reserves to be made safe for, well, if not democracy then at least for some form of relatively efficient dictatorship which will keep the pipelines free and clear.

Some might find this attitude to reflect a kind of arrogance of power, a might-makes-right attitude. So too your comment that it was foolish for Israelis to invest in new communities in the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria because these would soon become housing projects for returning Palestinian refugees.

However, I am more concerned with your decision to send the CIA in once again to train the Palestinian security forces in more efficient ways to kill us. Who do you think those guns will be pointed at, and fired on? And I would also question your decision to bankroll the payment of huge bonuses for terrorists who join the central security forces. These are the same guys building bombs and recruiting suicide bombers. Suddenly they are going to starting fighting terrorists? They are the terrorists!

And face it, sir, your agreement to "buy back" rifles at twice the black market price is nothing more than a fancy money laundering scheme. It may not disturb you too much when CIA-trained sharpshooters gun down Israeli motorists, but don't tell us you didn't know. You think the Palestinians need laser-scoped sniper rifles for shooting cans on a fence? They don't hunt raccoons. They hunt Jews and the occasional stray American.

Mr. President, if you really intended to "ride herd" on Palestinian terrorists that would be one thing. But it is now becoming clear that all you expect is that the PA under Arafat (and nobody should doubt that he continues to run the show) merely trot out the same old declarations opposing terrorism and saying that they will make "100% effort" to oppose it.

Can one imagine the U.S. ruling that the Palestinians have failed to do either of these things? It never happened under your father's presidency, or Clinton's, and it won't happen here. As for the dynamic between Arafat and his deputy-of-four-decades Abu Mazen, one is tempted to characterize them as "good cow, bad cow."

So Abu Mazen is now your "prize bull," trotted out to show the world a supposedly moderate, democratically-inclined Arab. (A rare breed, it is true, especially in these parts.) No matter how much of a mess he creates, he is not to be blamed. Because for you to hold him responsible would be to admit that the Road Map is a non-starter because the Palestinians have no intention, or no ability, to stop terrorism or to make peace.

I'm sorry to say that it sure looks like the road map is to pay off the terror-abetting Arabs and the terror-appeasing Europeans by forcing Israel to withdraw from its Biblical heartland to create a Palestinian state that remains, beyond a shadow of a doubt, bent on our destruction.

Abu Mazen's Plan of Phases, which the PLO adopted in 1975, argues that the way to destroy Israel is to diminish it, gradually, piece by piece. The State of Palestine you are bent on creating represents the greatest step yet toward the destination for which the Arabs have wished since Israel was created in 1948. The Palestinian State, with suicide bombers streaming out and embittered refugees flooding in, is to be a sanctuary for the slaughterers. Israel itself is to be the slaughterhouse.

This interpretation is strengthened by reports that you have now decided to drop any conditions for the establishment of an interim Palestinian state. Previously you conditioned your support for such a state on the PA's prior elimination of Palestinian terror groups and the Arab States' commitment to stop funding such groups as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But on the eve of the Aqaba summit, you reportedly decided, on the advice of senior adviser Karl Rove and the State Department, to make your support for such a state unconditional and irreversible.

What this means, all lip service and diplomatic posturing to the contrary notwithstanding, is that the only little doggie you have to herd is Ariel Sharon and the State of Israel.

This means that your "performance-based" road map is now so much finely-worded diplomatic window-dressing to help stampede the cattle into the stockyards and keep the herd relatively calm and hopeful before it is too late. Some have asked: where's the beef? We are the beef.

And therein lies a bit of an obstacle for your administration. Sharon, sheep rancher that he is, knows a bit about herding. He has been doing it all of his life. Indeed, he has earned the nickname of bulldozer for his reputaton of getting the getting complex jobs done singlehandedly.

Mr. President, you may command an irresistible force, but Sharon embodies the immovable object. He may even move the dirt around a bit, and shift some ground when he needs to. You may think you've got him bulldozed, but most Israelis believe he will not give in on the issues critical to our security and our national identity.

Sharon has the home turf advantage and, perhaps more than anyone else on earth, he knows the territory and has helped to create and strengthen the restored Jewish presence in our Biblical heartland. He may not appear to be a classical shepherd, but that, it appears, is the role that history has assigned to him, as it has, some would say, to our people as a whole.

Sir, you may issue edicts like "The Holy Land must be shared." But if there is no one on the other side who intends to share it with us, what choice do we have but to resist partition and expulsion?

The Palestinians have made it clear that they will never abandon their struggle to implement the demand of refugees to abandoned homes in Israel. Palestinian national maps, emblems, statements of leaders, and public opinion polls all indicate that Palestinians will pursue "martyrdom operations" until all of Israel has falled under their control, one way or another.

Any Israeli concession will just become the new starting point for the next forced withdrawal. Every Israel retreat will be treated as a victory and perceived as a reward for suicide terrorism, encouraging more of it.

Mr. President, after 9/11 I thought you'd realize that Israel is on the front-line against terrorism, and that you'd appreciate our defense of democratic and free market values against those dictators who would destroy and subvert them.

You know that Israel and its people are America's most unwavering ally in the war against Islamic terrorism. We are the only democracy in this whole nasty region. We fly American and Israeli flags while the neighboring countries burn them. We are the ones in the neighborhood who wear the white hats. We are the shepherds of this narrow strip of Biblical land.

Mr. President: We will continue and support you when you are right. But we will oppose you, respectfully but unrelentingly, when you are wrong, despite the overwhelming force and influence you command. And in this case, sir, you are terribly wrong.

So you'll forgive me, sir, if I address you in Texan terms and say what is on the minds of most Israelis. That includes those who are going along with your peace plan because they see no viable alternative, and those who are sure the Palestinians will not miss this opportunity to miss another opportunity. But it must be nevertheless said, using the same idiom you shared with Prime Minister Sharon:

You may mean well, Mr. Bush, but "riding herd" on us will do for your Presidency what "read my lips" did for your daddy.

Not because, as your buddy Jim Baker once said in colorful Texan terms, the Jews won't vote for you. But because most Americans will not tolerate blatant appeasement of terrorists and a tricky sell-out of the region's only democracy.

You can try to take us for a ride, Mr. President, using your power to keep us in line for a while. And if you withdraw U.S. support when Israel finally stands up for its "red line" issues, you can cause us great economic, diplomatic, and even military harm.

But as one of a people that has been forced into cattle cars before and led to the slaughter, allow me to say this, with all due respect: you can hurt us, but you can't herd us.

Who had ever thought two months ago that George Bush would turn into a terrorist appeaser and Arab bootlicker? I thought that he was different from his Arab-loving daddy. Like father, like son.

Who really thinks that but you and 10 other people? There is no indication that Bush is an "Arab bootlicker".

"Arab-loving"? We have been killing Arabs in the ME for many months. On Bush's orders.

Bush is simply being Bush. He has done the same thing over and over in his business and public lives. He has taken a problem and set out a basic framework to solve it from his view. He then assigns people to do certain tasks by certain times. If they do not hit their marks they are going to pay. This technique has worked for him over and over and over. Watch the Sopranos, Tony does the same thing.

The Palestinians (IE: Bunch of Arabs) better pay attention this time. This is not Bill Clinton they are dealing with. Clinton was OK with using "lip service", so to speak. Bush is not.

Who had ever thought two months ago that George Bush would turn into a terrorist appeaser and Arab bootlicker? I thought that he was different from his Arab-loving daddy. Like father, like son.

That last paragraph is unadulterated bullshit.

And I don't care if the Moderator deletes my post: I'm doing your statement a favor by comparing it to a steaming pile.

George W. Bush was the man who almost singlehandedly destroyed the greatest threat to the State of Israel, Saddam's Iraq. Only Iraq had the money and the wherewithal to invest in the kind of weaponry that could threaten Israel's existence.

After all that, you call him an appeaser? Why, simply because the Bush Administration wants Israel out of the West Bank and Gaza? That has always been the American position since the 1967 war. This is nothing new. The West Bank and Gaza are demographic time bombs for Israel. Bush knows that, as does most of the Israeli body politic, which wants nothing to do with the beknighted Palestinians and their crypto-fascist political order.

Stop making excuses for an Israeli government that is mired in a settlements policy that is as outdated as it is dangerous. The only way for Israel to survive is to seperate itself from the squalid Palestinians and their infantile politics. Let the Pallies live in their squalor, resentment, and grievance.

Letting Israel keep the West Bank is like forcing the United States to annex Mexico. Not a pretty sight, if you ask me.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

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