Earlier this month, George Mitchell held a press briefing about his efforts to achieve a “comprehensive peace” in the Middle East, noting he had made four trips to meet with Israel and over a dozen Arab countries, and saying he intended “to bring these discussions to a very early conclusion.”
Asked if EU diplomat Javier Solana was correct about the U.S. “announc[ing] its vision for peace in the Middle East before the end of July,” Mitchell responded as follows:
As I said earlier, we’re going to move as promptly as possible. And in my opening remarks, I said that we hope to conclude the discussions in which we’re now engaged very soon. To me, it’s a matter of weeks, not many months, so he may well be right. But we’re going to see how well we can proceed. . . . [S]o I’ll call him when we’re ready and he can announce that, and then you can have the results then. (Laughter.)
The noteworthy part of the response is Mitchell did not deny that an American peace plan is coming — soon.
Obama appears to be following the five-year old advice of Rob Malley (his erstwhile foreign policy adviser), who in 2004 dismissed reliance on a step-by-step process and argued for a plan defining upfront “the shape of a permanent peace” to be pushed on the parties. Malley proposed that:
[T]he process ought to be turned on its head, with the U.S. seeking to describe the endgame at the outset and with the parties agreeing on the means of getting there afterward. . . .
[The U.S. should] spell out the components of an acceptable deal, rather than press for incremental steps.
A lot has happened in the last five years, and Malley himself no longer thinks this is the right way to proceed. In the June 11, 2009 issue of the New York Review of Books, Malley and co-author Hussein Agha concluded it is not time for the U.S. to “unfurl a grand diplomatic initiative,” and they proposed instead “another way”:
[It] would not be to polish up answers to questions of borders, security, Jerusalem, or how to compensate refugees. That approach increasingly is becoming a sideshow, chiefly of interest to official negotiators. . . . When Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, calls for dropping timeworn slogans — land for peace, two-state solution — he has a political purpose. He also has a point.
. . . The US should reach out to skeptical constituencies that would make a difference but are left indifferent by current talk of a two-state agreement. One example is the settlers, an active and dynamic Israeli group yet one that the outside world typically treats as modern-day lepers. A more inclusive political process could recognize their views and concerns, consider their interests, and invite them to take part in discussions.
The current dispute over settlements is a prime example of a “sideshow.” It is a manufactured crisis, designed to impress the Arab world with Obama’s toughness on Israel, or force upfront Israeli concessions on a previously agreed issue. The Gaza experience demonstrated that dismantlement of entire settlements had no positive effect on the peace process — quite the contrary.
In his brief period in office, Obama has refused to answer whether the U.S. is bound by the April 14, 2004 letter given to induce Israel to turn over Gaza to the Palestinians, and has reneged on five years of understandings about “natural growth” of existing settlements. His response to Israeli objections has effectively been “sue me” — the understandings are not “enforceable.” It is not an approach inspiring confidence in him as a reliable or principled ally.
Netanyahu has announced five fundamental principles for any plan: (1) explicit Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish national state; (2) demilitarization of any Palestinian state to reflect Israel’s security needs; (3) explicit international guarantees of those security arrangements; (4) resettling refugees outside Israel; and (5) no further Palestinian claims after a peace agreement. These principles reflect not simply Netanyahu’s position but an Israeli national consensus; they would seem the minimum conditions of peace.
A serious U.S. plan would adopt those principles and — to use a State Department peace process standard — recognize prior U.S. agreements with Israel, particularly the one in the 2004 letter. Permitting a militarized Judenrein state unwilling to recognize a Jewish one, and insisting on indefensible borders for the latter, is a prescription for war, not peace. The U.S. should have no interest in such a state, much less proposing a plan to affect the creation of one.
And over at Politico, Republican former Congressman John Hostettler sees one key to the revitalization of the Republican party: abandon the Bush Doctrine and the neocon interventionism it represents.
“But the most important — and most controversial — thing that Republicans must do and don’t want to do is simple: Renounce the Bush Doctrine. The Iraq war is the issue most responsible for the recent electoral demise of the Republican Party. Nothing has shaken voters’ trust in the GOP like the lack of justification for the war. While I make the case in my book, “Nothing for the Nation,” that the Senate Democratic leadership in 2002 was just as culpable in authorizing the invasion of Iraq as the House Republican leadership, most Americans see the Iraq war as a Republican creation. If Republicans would renounce the Bush Doctrine by rejecting pre-emptive war and an interventionist foreign policy, they could put the issue of Iraq in the proper current context. “
“Home sales soared and prices plunged. You don’t think the two could be connected — sort of a supply and demand thing? Hmm. Maybe we should stop trying to prop up home prices and let the market operate.”– Jennifer Rubin
So you are opposed to what, exactly? The tax credit for new homebuyers? How else has the government propped up home prices? Clearly, the market is working, and the president’s actions have only helped unfreeze it.
Todd, the answer is paleo-con. That was easy! These one-sentence answer will keep the GOP in the dark for another 20 years..
Ironically, its even more basic than that. At every level of America, we are binge spending. The President wants to outdo everyone and put his spending in the trillions. Let’s call it, Carter II – the binge spender years.
Here is the pattern. Obama spends in the trillions, sends out his army to speak to citizens, and directs his anger to make policy. Is anyone just a little concerned about these developments?
“By 45%-34% Americans want to stop all bailouts to financial institutions. This may explain why the toxic asset plan is so convoluted and disguises the huge taxpayer subsidy”-Jennifer Rubin
If you were guided by conservative principle and not hack partisanship, you would be praising the administration — as many conservatives in Congress are — for crafting a plan that leverages private investments and the private market. Thanks for putting any lingering questions of your motivation to rest.
Yes, Ari, any plan with any private participation, even only 7%, is true to conservative principles, even when it leaves taxpayers on the hook for what were originally private contracts.
@4 Your buddy Paul Krugnman seems to agree with Ms. Rubin. What do you have to say about him? Or is he just another partisan hack?
“The common element to the Paulson and Geithner plans is the insistence that the bad assets on banks’ books are really worth much, much more than anyone is currently willing to pay for them. In fact, their true value is so high that if they were properly priced, banks wouldn’t be in trouble.
And so the plan is to use taxpayer funds to drive the prices of bad assets up to “fair” levels. Mr. Paulson proposed having the government buy the assets directly. Mr. Geithner instead proposes a complicated scheme in which the government lends money to private investors, who then use the money to buy the stuff. The idea, says Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, is to use “the expertise of the market” to set the value of toxic assets.
But the Geithner scheme would offer a one-way bet: if asset values go up, the investors profit, but if they go down, the investors can walk away from their debt. So this isn’t really about letting markets work. It’s just an indirect, disguised way to subsidize purchases of bad assets.”
I would just love to hear a response from Ari to Margo’ post.
O.K., maybe it’s apples and oranges, or coconuts and cranberries, but it’s hard not to wonder about the divergent opinions on two compensation situations, the UAW contracts, and the AIG “retention bonuses”. At least here at Commentary, the general feeling is that the UAW contracts, which, incidentally, were and are completely transparent, are a fatal weight dragging the American auto industry into the depths of economic Hades. That point has some merit. Yet, at the same time, the bonus contracts at AIG are, again in this venue, regarded as sensible and legal inducements to achieve a positive outcome. What gives? No normal American that I’ve ever met would consider a bonus of a million dollars believable for even a lifetime of service, much less a few weeks or even months of straightening out a financial mess of epic proportions. Probably the most difficult and high-profile job in our society is that of an astronaut and their compensation is laughably inconsequential compared to the high-fliers of the financial circus.
We like to think that we live in a meritocracy where talent and hard work are rewarded. That may or may not be true. But certainly a large number of Americans (sorry, no poll figures) feel that there is an increasing disconnect between multi-millionaires that have acquired their riches by manipulating the money of others and the ordinary folk that drag themselves to the plant or office each day trying to pay the bills. Rightly or wrongly, it is this that gives credibility to utopian thinking.
Chuck, perhaps another way to look at it is no normal American is ever in the situation where his or her bad decisions could cost the government and therefore the US taxpayer BILLIONS of dollars. Are these people capable of making the right decisions? We can’t know. Were the retention bonuses handled in a boneheaded manner by this administration? Of course. Should we have gotten ourselves in this predicament or let AIG slide into the bankruptcy courts to see what is reasonable and what is not? It is easy to see how one or two bad decisions can easily cost the taxpayer 10 times the amount of the bonuses combined. How do you prevent that — or at least minimize the risk?
Most likely but it is too late now. It does seem like a huge disconnect.
On the other hand, what is the difference between attainable skill level between a burger flipper at McDonalds and a GM assembly line worker? Probably not a whole lot. The compensation package difference is tremendous — close to an order of magnitude. Could the assembly line worker or the burger flipper ever achieve enough to be entrusted with billions of dollars of loss or gain? And what about professional athletes and movie stars? They make millions of dollars for minimal work. How is that fair? I don’t see the pitchfork and torch brigade knocking at their doors because when American’s cashed out the values of their homes they enabled the “leisure time” industries to record record profits.
tell me that our economic fundamentals still aint sound
Cuomo’s doing shakedowns of financial firms? Isn’t that what his predecessor did also?
“One blogger seems amazed that “it looks as if the idea of investing taxpayer money in the financial system still isn’t palatable to Republicans, regardless of private partners sharing in the risk.” Perhaps that is because nearly all the risk is being undertaken by the taxpayers.”
The link does not work on “One blogger.”
Did George Will steal my metaphor?
Somewhere in Contentions a week back or so I posted a (quite lame, yes) comment,
Q: What’s a toxic asset?
A: Obama in the White House!
So today he titles his column “The Toxic Assets We Elected”
Coincidence? Anyways, should I feel honored or ripped off?
He must also have seen my comment, “my bumper sticker says George F. Will for Philosopher-King”, and decided to get me back, sayeth Noid
May George Will Rule Forever!