April, 2002:

Great op-ed in the WSJ by John McCain, courtesy of Kyle Still.

It is the unenlightened rule of Arab dictators, not the plight of the Palestinians, that condemns the Arab world to the civilizational crisis in which it finds itself. Which Middle Eastern nation grants its Arab citizens the most political freedom? Israel. Which countries’ leaders have the blood of innocents on their hands but hear nothing about it from the Arab League? Iraq, Syria, and Sudan, for starters. Which country has the most egregious record of occupying another today? Syria, in Lebanon. In which countries do Palestinian refugees suffer without rights and the most basic freedoms? Other than Israel, only Jordan has treated these people with any dignity. Which nation in the region has matched its payments to the families of Palestinian murderers with money for health care, education, and other development in the territories? Not one.

How Arab leaders can abide their own hypocrisy is one question. Why they expect us to do so is a better one.

Arab leaders recoil in mock indignation from any suggestion that they have a responsibility to discourage Palestinian treachery. Instead, they demand that the United States pressure the government of Israel into forsaking its obligation to defend its citizens from terrorism that Arab governments celebrate and support.

I’m also distressed that some of our European allies are dismissing Israel’s legitimate security concerns. In some quarters, Jews are once again threatened with attacks on their institutions. We are witnessing once again the torching of European synagogues. All world leaders must condemn, in the strongest terms, such despicable behavior.

It would be awfully nice to hear some of these self-evident truths be spoken aloud by our Commander in Chief. I recognize the need for realpolitik, but at some point you need to check your compass and make sure you’re still heading in the right general direction.

I’ve become convinced that Bush’s hopeless muddling of the Middle East situation is the best argument for a McCain-as-Democrat Presidential run in 2004. I have no idea if McCain sees it this way, but there’s a lot of room to criticize Bush here, and I believe he’d draw a fair amount of Republican support (among voters, anyway) for doing so. McCain’s military credentials would deflect any suggestion that he’s somehow unfit (or worse, unpatriotic) to criticize the president on this issue. (John Kerry would presumably have this protection as well, but West Wing fantasies aside, I don’t see any Northeastern liberals in the White House in the near future.) Of course, the general diminutiveness of the Democratic class right now makes blue-skying about McCain that much more seductive.

It surprises me that Bush has stumbled here. I grant that the Middle East is a tar baby of gigantic proportions. I grant that no one’s hands are clean. I grant that we’re forced to do business with some unsavory characters, and that it’s neither wise nor desireable to risk the kind of Islam vs. the West war that Osama bin Laden was hoping to spark in the first place. But really, if there was one person you thought you could count on to see things in stark black-and-white, good-versus-evil terms, it was GW Bush. Somewhere along the line he forgot what he said in the days following September 11, and it shows.

What I want these days is simple enough. I want our President to remind the world, every day if necessary, what being a good guy in this fight is all about. I want him to remind us all that peace doesn’t simply mean one side promising not to kill the other. I want him to stand firm for liberty and freedom. I didn’t vote for him, and I have little faith in him, but even I think he’s more than capable of this. Was I wrong?

The crazy thing is that if Bush had stood up more forcefully for Israel against the Saudi bloodsuckers and European anti-Semites, he’d have then had the moral authority to whack Ariel Sharon on the head with a cluestick and tell him that he wasn’t making this any better or easier. Sometimes when everyone in a conflict is mad at the mediator, it means the mediator is doing a good job. Bush has clearly demonstrated that this is not always the case.

Patrick crystallizes something that I’ve been thinking about for awhile now, about the relative level of understanding of the world and how it works among Americans and Europeans. I came of age in the 80s. If you were a college student in the 80s and you were politically aware but not already a Young Republican, you probably didn’t think much of Ronald Reagan. He was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, he had a fairly simplistic view of the world, he said stupid thing about ketchup and trees, and he was surrounded by scary people like James Watt and Ed Meese. It was easy to base a political philosophy on denigrating Reagan.

The problem was that in this environment you would often find yourself around folks who believed this sort of thing a lot more fervently than you did. They didn’t merely dislike Reagan and distrust his worldview, they took it to the next level and condemned American society and politics, both for ever electing Reagan in the first place and for being the kind of place that would ever elect a Reagan. If you hung around these people long enough, you spent a fair amount of time feeling vaguely guilty about being born American, and if you didn’t go along with their wholesale condemnations and diatribes, you were somehow as backward and unsophisticated as Ronald Reagan and his supporters.

Not too surprisingly, these folks tended to be Europhiles. Many of them talked about moving to Europe or at least spending a lot of time there. If only America could be as enlightened as Europe, then maybe they’d find a reason to stay. I sometimes wonder what became of people like this. Did they become Jerry Rubin, or did they remain Abbie Hoffman?

I think recent events have shown pretty clearly that though we may have another simplistic boob who surrounds himself with scary people in the White House, we have no reason to feel inferior to Europe. I think Americans understand Europe better than Europeans think we do, and I think we understand Europe better than some of them understand us. In any event, I agree with Patrick. I’ve got enough things to feel guilty about.

From today’sChron:

Representatives of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah reportedly asked that female air traffic controllers be barred from their duties during his flights in Texas.

A Federal Aviation Administration employee, speaking to The Dallas Morning News on condition of anonymity, said the request was granted on portions of the prince’s flights between Houston and Waco.

Abdullah was in Texas this week and met with President Bush at his Crawford ranch on Thursday.

The prince then flew in Houston and took a train to College Station to tour former President George Bush’s presidential library on Friday.

I’m sure we’ll hear an explanation from the Bush camp that Prince Abdullah meant no disrespect to women and that we liberals are just being overly sensitive about the whole thing any time now. Good thing our president has moral clarity.

Via Patrick at Electrolite comes this story of the last survivor of Gallipoli, the terrible 1915 World War I battle fought by Australian and Turkish soldiers in Suvla Bay. Take a listen to the Eric Bogle song that commemorates it, The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, read the lyrics, and remember.

President Bush has finally found a foreign dignitary who will feel comfortable in hot, dusty, middle-of-nowhere Crawford as he sets to host Saudi prince Abdullah. According to this story in the Chron, which gets a two Claude rating for its headline, the Saudis plan to tell Dubya that his support of Israel hurts their feelings. I think this is the wrong President to be looking for a group hug, guys. Just FYI.

Meanwhile, Colin Powell displays his skill for diplomatic understatement:

Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was absent from the Houston session but will attend the Crawford talks, said Wednesday he plans to discuss recent Saudi sponsorship of a $100 million telethon to aid relatives of Palestinian “martyrs.”

“There are some troubling aspects as to how that telethon money would be distributed,” Powell said, referring to reports that money raised by the Saudis was being funneled to Hamas, a Palestinian group that has claimed responsibility for attacks on Israel.

Yes, raising money to promote a group that wants to kill us is a tad bit disquieting, isn’t it. I’m sure Powell furrowed his brow while giving that statement.

There’s also a link to Chairman Arafat’s latest condemnation of terrorism. I feel reassured now, don’t you?

Saudi Aramco is having a job fair here in Houston, for those who might like to travel to Saudi Arabia and “become a part of the Saudi Aramco experience”. The line forms to the left.