Israel Matzav

Rice proving that 'America's word' is meaningless

Noah Pollak has a scathing critique of Secretary of State Rice's 'peacemaking efforts' at Contentions this morning. Essentially, by abandoning all of its prior requirements for moving ahead with the 'peace process' in favor of a mad dash to an 'agreement' that will ostensibly establish President Bush's foreign policy 'legacy,' the administration is undermining America's credibility for years to come by showing that 'America's word' cannot be trusted. See, for example, the unceremonious dumping of Phase I and Phase II of the 'road map' (with or without Ariel Sharon's fourteen reservations) in favor of going directly to 'final status' negotiations.

Pollak also has very prescient comments about Egypt's duplicity in the current 'process' that bear reading and internalizing by US policymakers.

Here's Pollak's bottom line:

What Rice has in fact gone a long way toward accomplishing is a demonstration of the fact that none of the U.S.’s previous diplomatic commitments will be considered of the slightest relevance when it comes to the latest round of peacemaking. Most farcical of all is that the current round of “engagement,” intended in part to restore American credibility in the Middle East by showing the world that the U.S. is willing to heavily invest itself in the conflict, is swiftly establishing the opposite—the same thing that was established in all the previous peacemaking efforts. But at least the Bush administration can come away from all of this knowing that this particular failure was not a unique one.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:22 AM