Bush’s Visit To The Middle East

Filed under: Arab Societies, Media, International, Palestine — Eman at 3:59 pm on Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Bush’s visit to the Middle East is perfectly showing the world where Bush stands concerning each and every Arab country, and is proving -yet again- how unfair and unjust his statements, decisions, and most importantly his actions have been and continue to be regarding the region.
But still, one way or the other, Bush is made hero by his fans, and whatever he does is to them, wise, courageous, and right. Some even BELIEVE that Bush’s actually “leaving a formidable legacy behind him“!!! come again?! a formidable what?

Now I know anything I’d say contradicting this would make me look like an angry Arab who’s never happy with whatever comes from the west, but it’s not like that at all. It has to be made clear that positive change, just regulations, and laws to spread tolerance and  co-existence are all welcomed by Arabs,that yes, not the biased interference that serves anyone but the victim!

[Source: RTE, Via: EI]

Let’s take his visit to “Israel” for example. An excellent article written by Sam Bahour summarizes how Bush’s visit dealt with the Palestinian side in total ignorance, while supporting the Israeli side.

“As a matter of fact, the reality that Israel has successfully placed 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, over 50 percent of them children, in the dark and under the most draconian siege in recent history did not even make it to the margins of either leader’s speeches.” Bahour writes.

Much more important issues were on Bush’s agenda. The need to realize and work on a “vision” for the future was in the forefront of Bush’s mind. “The parties” should now sit down and “negotiate a vision” — the parties being Israel, the fourth strongest military might in the world and a forty-year-long occupier, and the Palestinians, a stateless people who have been dispossessed by Israel for sixty years and under brutal military occupation by their colonizers for over four decades.

Olmert was nearly jumping for joy as he praised Bush for increasing the comprehensive US aid package to Israel to a whopping $30 billion.”

I came across another wonderful article written by Mohammed Ali, describing the terrible situation in Gaza.He says: “What drives me and other Gazans crazy is that the international community can see all of the human rights violations being committed in Gaza and yet they choose not to take any action and instead remain silent. In the past I remember hearing the international community condemn such Israeli violations, but now, nothing.
One must conclude they are in favor of the Gaza siege because they support Israel’s declaration that Gaza is an “enemy entity” since Hamas took over the Strip, ignoring that there are civilians living in Gaza that cannot be blamed for anything other than residing in Gaza”.

And to show how USELESS Bush’s visit to the region is proving itself to be, the Gaza Strip remains with no running water, no enough food to feed its people, and is still suffering regular long lasting power cuts . As for peace, it’s not there either. Just this morning the Israeli army raided Gaza.

And what goes for Paletsine goes for the rest of the Middle East. To Bush, Arabs are the ones causing terror, instability, threats to the west and themselves. It’s not important that his “war on terror” brought only more terror and division among Arabs, leaving their countries suffering more pollution and destruction than ever; it’s not important that his plans to “implement democracy” in the region brought only more power to Israel and weakened other Arab countries while stripping them from their basic rights of expressing themselves lest they’ll be condemned of, again, terror; what really matters to Bush at the moment are two things: the high oil prices, and the “Iranian Issue”, yes those seem to be Bush’s main concerns.

Let’s wait and see what would Bush’s visit result in!

3 Comments »

Comment by Janissary

January 16, 2008 @ 2:50 am

But he is leaving a formidable legacy behind,
Eman, in the sense that Ebola’s a formidable plague. And he has another year in office during which to create all sorts of mischief. (Yeah, thinking of Iran here–plus the domestic economy’s in shambles.) Few but the very wealthy, or the extremely dim-witted, his natural constituencies, can stand him:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2006/02/02/CU2006020201345.html

Yet there he is, clearing brush and talking trash. Even assuming we elect a human being and a new Congress next November, it will take decades to repair the havoc and destruction. I think he probably plans to leave as his legacy a very big war and a ruined economy; if so, he’ll exit laughing.

Anger. Me, I deal with my anger toward him by regarding him as the virus-in-chief. Hard to be angry at a virus. Otherwise, I’d have had a stroke by now. If I were you, though, I couldn’t help but be angry.

Sending our pink-haired daughter back to college in New York next week. Here in the South, people just stare at her hair, struck dumb, like deer in the headlights at the sight of her–a whole bovine family of them the other day when we walked into a restaurant. :)

Some Israeli educators toured Our Special School today, mostly interested in the autistic and medically-fragile kids on the other side of the courtyard. My class passed them in a hallway, overheard them speaking in Hebrew and asked me why Russians were visiting the place. [virtual sigh]

Cognac.

Cheers

Comment by Vigilante

January 16, 2008 @ 4:20 pm

Chris Hedges, The End of the Road for George W. Bush:

“. . . as Bush basks in the glow of his own fantasy, the suffering in Gaza, one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, along with the savage occupation of Iraq, continues to fuel widespread anger and rage.

. . . he has, with Israeli encouragement, isolated governments, even friendly governments, in the Middle East that raised feeble protests. But his day is past. There is open revolt. Opinion polls show that two-thirds of Palestinians, and three-fourths of Israelis, do not believe Bush can affect events in the Palestinian territories.

. . . The agenda of the Bush White House is exposed as irrelevant, myopic and counterproductive. Most Arab countries are in open defiance of Washington and are actively reaching out to Iran.

. . . It is the end of the road for George Bush. The world takes less and less notice of him. He strutted and swaggered across the stage. He bellowed and raged. He plundered and murdered. And now he wants to be anointed as a peacemaker. His presidency, like his life, has been a tragic waste. But he at least he has a life. There are tens of thousands of mute graves in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq that stand as stark testaments to his true legacy.”

Says it all, doesn’t it?

Comment by Eman

January 17, 2008 @ 6:14 pm

Janissary, many thanks for your comment. As usual, never fail to add humor to any situation and put a smile on my face.
Best of luck to your pink-haired daughter :)

Vigilante, I really appreciate your comment, yes, it says it all!

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>