…from The Economist comes a reminder of a notable date of an altogether higher order. Is your stylus poised?
It’s April 29, 2009 – plus or minus a few days. That is when the English language is expected to acquire its millionth word.
And not nearly enough of them are dirty words.
Barack Obama‘s chances of making a fresh start in US relations with the Muslim world, and the Middle East in particular, appear to diminish with each new wave of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza. That seems hardly fair, given the president-elect does not take office until January 20. But foreign wars don’t wait for Washington inaugurations.
Obama has remained wholly silent during the Gaza crisis. His aides say he is following established protocol that the US has only one president at a time. Hillary Clinton, his designated secretary of state, and Joe Biden, the vice-president-elect and foreign policy expert, have also been uncharacteristically taciturn on the subject.
But evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences that cannot understand why, given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment at Obama’s detachment – and that his failure to distance himself from George Bush’s strongly pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief that he either shares Bush’s bias or simply does not care.
continue reading here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/04/obama-gaza-israel
The timing here does look unfortunate. Of course, because of the Obama team’s silence, we aren’t sure just what positions they are going to take on this whole mess.
But one could certainly surmise that Israel’s schedule to launch this attack was at least partly determined by the known response from the Bush administration and a less predictable response from an Obama administration. Once the operation was already underway, Obama’s hands are effectively tied and his options much more limited.
This is, it seems to me, a similar situation to the dynamics preceding the onset of the Iraq war. Those who wished to get into that war understood clearly that if they could just manage to get it started, then the die would be cast and the US would be an occupying force with enormous problems as regards disengagement.
update: the matter of timing is commented on by others:
Many Middle East experts say Israel timed its move against Hamas, which began with airstrikes on Dec. 27, 24 days before Mr. Bush leaves office, with the expectation of such backing in Washington. Israeli officials could not be certain that President-elect Barack Obama, despite past statements of sympathy for Israel’s right of self-defense, would match the Bush administration’s unconditional endorsement.
“Obviously Bush, even by comparison with past U.S. presidents, has been very, very pro-Israel,” said Sami G. Hajjar, a longtime scholar of Middle East politics and a visiting professor at the National Defense University. “Despite Obama’s statements, and his advisers who are quite pro-Israel, the Israelis really didn’t know how he’d react. His first instinct is for diplomacy, not military action.”
Mr. Hajjar said that in addition to relying on the backing of Mr. Bush, Israeli officials may not have wanted to begin their relationship with the new president by forcing him to respond to their military action. On Dec. 19, just one month before Mr. Obama’s inauguration, Hamas declared an end to an Egyptian-mediated truce with Israel that had taken effect in June, and rocket attacks from Gaza have been increasing since then.
full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/washington/05diplo.html?hp
WE like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella. So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He’s the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.
The last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Bush’s presidency found that 79 percent of Americans will not miss him after he leaves the White House. He is being forgotten already, even if he’s not yet gone. You start to pity him until you remember how vast the wreckage is. It stretches from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street and even into the heavens, which have been a safe haven for toxins under his passive stewardship. The discrepancy between the grandeur of the failure and the stature of the man is a puzzlement. We are still trying to compute it.
The one indisputable talent of his White House was its ability to create and sell propaganda both to the public and the press…
continue reading here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04rich.html?_r=1&hp
During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that “for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”
He’d be talking about Scooter and himself along with, one supposes, the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed. And, I guess, those naked men stacked in pyramids and covered with menstral blood who might be locked up forever on the chance they are bad persons.
And, as regards the WSJ, there’s this:
The Wall Street Journal reported that Alberto Gonzales “was pilloried by Congress in a manner not usually directed toward cabinet officials,” falsely suggesting that only members of Congress have publicly criticized Gonzales over his actions as attorney general. The Journal also quoted Gonzales asking, “What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” The Journal did not note that a report by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General on the firings of nine U.S. attorneys concluded that Gonzales’ congressional testimony on the subject was “not true” and recommended that a special counsel be appointed to investigate whether any crimes were committed with regard to testimony on the scandal.
continue reading here: http://mediamatters.org/items/200901020002?f=h_top
