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Bush has still 3 months to do just what he wants
Bush has still 3 months to do just what he wants
We are about to enter the twilight zone, the time when the United States has not one president but two. One will be the president-elect, the other George Bush, in power for 12 more weeks in which he can do pretty much whatever he likes. From Nov. 5 to Jan. 20, he will exercise the freest, most unaccountable form of power the democratic world has to offer.
How Bush might use it is a question tha More..t gained new force at the weekend, when US forces crossed the Iraqi border into Syria to kill Abu Ghadiya, a man they said had been funneling “foreign fighters” allied to Al-Qaeda into Iraq. That American move has touched off a round of intense head-scratching around the world, as foreign ministers and analysts ask each other the time-honored diplomatic query: What did they mean by that? To which they add the post-Nov 4 question: And what does it tell us about how Bush plans to use his final days in the White House?
You can choose from two versions. Call the first the “no big deal” theory. It holds that the Sunday raid was no more than standard operational procedure in the war on terror.
Nonsense, says the other school of thought. This was a deliberate act, calculated to send a series of messages. First, to the Syrians, reminding them who’s boss in the region and strong-arming them to do more to crack down on Al-Qaeda.
Second, to the Europeans who have been moving toward a rapprochement with Damascus. Third, this was a memo to his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who had dared meet Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem at the UN just last month in a meeting that apparently she requested. Might Sunday’s raid have been the president’s attempt to reassert himself against a senior staff all but denuded of its hawks?
However we are meant to read it, the attack on Syria looks a lot like a parting shot from Bush, an end-of-the-movie reminder of what this long and bloody saga has been about. A small operation, causing eight deaths, it nevertheless captures much of the Bush ethos that has ruled the globe these past eight years. It was unilateral; it trampled on state sovereignty; and it relied on force as a first, not last, resort. As a souvenir of the Bush era, it would be hard to top.
But it may not be the final act. For we have not yet entered the twilight zone proper. That will come only when polls close next Tuesday. When the transition begins, all kinds of surprises are possible. Spool back 20 years, to the dying days of the Reagan administration. In January 1989, the president officially recognized the PLO as the representatives of the Palestinian people. It was a farewell gift to Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush. The old man took the flak so that the new president would not have to.
In December 1992, Bush himself proved rather less helpful to his replacement, saddling Bill Clinton with the deployment of US forces in Somalia, an episode whose humiliating conclusion badly hobbled Clinton thereafter. Eight years ago, it was Clinton’s turn. He sweated until his final hours in office trying to close a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who seemed then to be just inches apart. The legacy was the Clinton parameters, still regarded as marking the basic contours of any future agreement for Israel-Palestine.
So what will emerge from the twilight of George W. Bush? Most diplomats are bracing themselves. The optimists hope for a repeat of Reagan and Clinton, something that helps Middle East peace. Perhaps Israel and the Palestinians might initial a provisional document, proof that the labors of Bush and Rice since the Annapolis summit of 2007 have not been entirely fruitless. But the bad timing that has cursed the Middle East so often has struck once again. Israel is entering an interregnum of its own, following Tzipi Livni’s failure to form a coalition. It’s hard to believe an interim, caretaker administration could forge a peace deal.
That leaves other options. Bush could ape Reagan and decide to speak to Hamas. More likely would be a shift in policy that helps future peacemaking efforts: He might, for instance, declare that any changes to the 1967 borders must be equal, with Palestinians compensated inch for inch for any West Bank land conceded to Israel. Or he could look further afield in the region, contradicting himself and Sunday’s raid, by reaching out to Syria. Or, as some hawks fear, he could step up the tentative dialogue with Iran. A symbolic gesture would be to open a US visa section in Tehran. Of course, Bush may be thinking of a parting gift more in keeping with the record of the last eight years. He and Cheney might decide, what the hell, we have one last chance to whack Iran — and let the new guy clear up the mess. Not likely, but possible. For in the twilight zone, anything can happen.
We are about to enter the twilight zone, the time when the United States has not one president but two. One will be the president-elect, the other George Bush, in power for 12 more weeks in which he can do pretty much whatever he likes. From Nov. 5 to Jan. 20, he will exercise the freest, most unaccountable form of power the democratic world has to offer.
How Bush might use it is a question tha More..t gained new force at the weekend, when US forces crossed the Iraqi border into Syria to kill Abu Ghadiya, a man they said had been funneling “foreign fighters” allied to Al-Qaeda into Iraq. That American move has touched off a round of intense head-scratching around the world, as foreign ministers and analysts ask each other the time-honored diplomatic query: What did they mean by that? To which they add the post-Nov 4 question: And what does it tell us about how Bush plans to use his final days in the White House?
You can choose from two versions. Call the first the “no big deal” theory. It holds that the Sunday raid was no more than standard operational procedure in the war on terror.
Nonsense, says the other school of thought. This was a deliberate act, calculated to send a series of messages. First, to the Syrians, reminding them who’s boss in the region and strong-arming them to do more to crack down on Al-Qaeda.
Second, to the Europeans who have been moving toward a rapprochement with Damascus. Third, this was a memo to his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who had dared meet Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem at the UN just last month in a meeting that apparently she requested. Might Sunday’s raid have been the president’s attempt to reassert himself against a senior staff all but denuded of its hawks?
However we are meant to read it, the attack on Syria looks a lot like a parting shot from Bush, an end-of-the-movie reminder of what this long and bloody saga has been about. A small operation, causing eight deaths, it nevertheless captures much of the Bush ethos that has ruled the globe these past eight years. It was unilateral; it trampled on state sovereignty; and it relied on force as a first, not last, resort. As a souvenir of the Bush era, it would be hard to top.
But it may not be the final act. For we have not yet entered the twilight zone proper. That will come only when polls close next Tuesday. When the transition begins, all kinds of surprises are possible. Spool back 20 years, to the dying days of the Reagan administration. In January 1989, the president officially recognized the PLO as the representatives of the Palestinian people. It was a farewell gift to Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush. The old man took the flak so that the new president would not have to.
In December 1992, Bush himself proved rather less helpful to his replacement, saddling Bill Clinton with the deployment of US forces in Somalia, an episode whose humiliating conclusion badly hobbled Clinton thereafter. Eight years ago, it was Clinton’s turn. He sweated until his final hours in office trying to close a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, who seemed then to be just inches apart. The legacy was the Clinton parameters, still regarded as marking the basic contours of any future agreement for Israel-Palestine.
So what will emerge from the twilight of George W. Bush? Most diplomats are bracing themselves. The optimists hope for a repeat of Reagan and Clinton, something that helps Middle East peace. Perhaps Israel and the Palestinians might initial a provisional document, proof that the labors of Bush and Rice since the Annapolis summit of 2007 have not been entirely fruitless. But the bad timing that has cursed the Middle East so often has struck once again. Israel is entering an interregnum of its own, following Tzipi Livni’s failure to form a coalition. It’s hard to believe an interim, caretaker administration could forge a peace deal.
That leaves other options. Bush could ape Reagan and decide to speak to Hamas. More likely would be a shift in policy that helps future peacemaking efforts: He might, for instance, declare that any changes to the 1967 borders must be equal, with Palestinians compensated inch for inch for any West Bank land conceded to Israel. Or he could look further afield in the region, contradicting himself and Sunday’s raid, by reaching out to Syria. Or, as some hawks fear, he could step up the tentative dialogue with Iran. A symbolic gesture would be to open a US visa section in Tehran. Of course, Bush may be thinking of a parting gift more in keeping with the record of the last eight years. He and Cheney might decide, what the hell, we have one last chance to whack Iran — and let the new guy clear up the mess. Not likely, but possible. For in the twilight zone, anything can happen.
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