A different hope (updated)

George Packer (The Assassins’ Gate) has a blog (2 entries so far) at the New Yorker site.

Military code name of the day: Operation Arrowhead Ripper.

Yesterday Condi Rice held a press conference about events in Palestine, which gave her the opportunity to use the words “responsible” and “legitimate” over and over and over, as in “the United States supports [Abbas’s] legitimate decision to form an emergency government of responsible Palestinians” and “Our view, very strongly, is that what President Abbas has done is legitimate and it is responsible and we’re going to support that action.” By legitimate, she doesn’t mean democratic or constitutional, of course. Indeed, “I think we will leave to the Palestinians issues of how they work through their own constitutional issues.” That’s one way to describe it. Of course, Abbas’s side will be “working through” those constitutional issues with weapons we provided.

Since Abbas’s coup is blatantly illegal, from whence does that legitimacy derive? Good old-fashioned organic nationalism. Said Rice, “there is one Palestinian people and there should be one Palestinian state” and that “Mahmoud Abbas is the President of all of the Palestinian people”. Ein volk, ein reich... you get the idea.

Today, at a press conference with Israeli How-The-Hell-Is-He-Still-Prime-Minister Olmert, Bush also, twice, called Abbas “the President of all the Palestinians” (now that I think of it, that also sounds like True Czar of All the Russias), adding, “He was elected; he’s the President.”

(Update: Eli of Left I on the News points out in comments that the roughly 3.5 million of exiled Palestinians didn’t have a vote in that election. Of course the point Bush was trying to make with the phrase “President of all the Palestinians,” which Olmert also used, was that he claims authority in both the West Bank and Gaza. Now, there’s a word for “both the West Bank and Gaza,” and that word is Palestine. Since Bush and Olmert would sooner kiss the corpse of Yasser Arafat on the mouth before uttering the word Palestine, they’re stuck with a phrase, “President of all the Palestinians,” which does not have a geographic referent.)

Bush also said Abbas is “a voice that is a reasonable voice amongst the extremists in your neighborhood.” And he called Illegally Appointed Prime Minister Fayyad “a good fellow”. He says that when the President of All the Palestinians and the Good Fellow are “strengthened,” they “can lead the Palestinians in a different direction, with a different hope.”

Bush also spoke about the great work he’d be doing with Olmert “to promote a alternative ideology, based upon human liberty and the human condition.” An ideology based on the human condition, that would be novel. Honestly, I have no idea what Bush means by that. He added that Olmert “said he’s willing to have discussions with the forces of moderation in the Palestinian Territory, laying the groundwork for serious discussions.” So he’ll have discussions laying the groundwork for discussions. “That’s -- that is a statement that shows that the Prime Minister is willing to move with a -- to promote an alternative vision.”


Olmert made it clear that his vision is alternative to that of “the Palestinians”: “We have been very, very attentive to the needs of the -- humanitarian needs of Gaza... Israel will not be indifferent to the human suffering in Gaza. Israel will be different from the Palestinians, themselves, because the reality is that all this suffering is caused by Palestinians against their own people.” He could have said Hamas or extremists. I don’t think it’s going to far to say that his choice to blame “the Palestinians” is a racist one, indicating that they’re all barbarians.


The reporters’ questions were all about Palestine, except one about Iran. But Bush kept talking about Iraq, because he sees the two things as exactly the same problem, you know, the one where “We face extremists and radicals who use violence and murder as a tool to achieve objectives,” and we have to spread democracy because “You can only defeat them so much militarily.” Indeed, in this bit, one can’t be entirely sure that he remembers whether he is talking about Palestine or Iraq:

Matt, what you’re seeing now in this part of the 21st century is going to be played out over time. This is an ideological struggle. We’re looking at the difference between a group of people that want to represent the Palestinians who believe in peace, that want a better way for their people, that believe in democracy -- they need help to build the institutions necessary for democracy to flourish, and they need help to build security forces so that they can end up enforcing what most of the people want, which is to live in peace -- and that’s versus a group of radicals and extremists who are willing to use violence, unspeakable violence sometimes, to achieve a political objective.