If the past week has not finally proven to our country that we need to vote for an involved, interested, and competent administration in 2008, then the collapse of the United States has to be declared imminent. If we can't learn that electing those who govern by fear, intimidation and manipulation like the Bush administration, is bad for us and for the world, we're doomed.
Now that India has decided that Mumbai Massacre was, at least in part, organized by the Pakistani ISI, the intelligence agency of the country, is it OK for India to blow up the Karachi International Airport? Bush's approval of Israel's bombing of the Beirut airport, after a much less deadly provocation, has to mean he would support India's bombing of Pakistan. Pakistan could only have been emboldened by Bush's decision to sell Musharaff the newest F-16's, a reversal of a policy that had been in effect since 1989.
Whether he would approve of either country using nukes is an open question.
A reporter for the Times of London returned to Baghdad this week after a break. He wrote that "two nights on the telephone, listening to my lost and frightened Iraqi staff facing death at any moment, persuaded me that Baghdad is now verging on total collapse.
And although Bush applauded Lebanon's Cedar Revolution, he is now reduced to pleading with Israel not to bring down the elected government in Beirut, even as he defends their right to bomb the city.
Yesterday, the National Security Councile spokesman advised that "Bush hasn't spoken to any Middle Eastern Leaders in the past couple of weeks." Even though it's a little over two weeks ago that an Israeli soldier was taken hostage and set off the crisis in the Gaza.
Back in November, the Bush adminstration was briefly interested in Israel's relations with its neighbors. Realizing that their lack of interest had meant little or no progress of any sort in Gaza, which in turn would make a Hamas victory more likely in January, Condi got briefly involved. She did an all nighter with delegates from both Gaza and Israel, and an agreement was reached to open a border crossing. This would allow Gaza to export products, and help grow their economy, as the WaPo noted. It was too little, too late to prevent the elction of Hamas, but it did once again prove that if we want change in the Middle East, we have to be involved.
It's tragic when you read the account in the conservative Jerusalem Post: "Suddenly, after five years of sticking to a strict hands-ff policy, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is delving into the minutest" of issues..."This is what US diplomacy in the Middle East used to look like.... Even more dramatic - it is remiiscent of the Clinton era"
Bush's foreign policy has been a disaster on all fronts. There are some right wing bloggers who cling to the hope that something good will come out of this Chaos Bush has created. So far the only thing to come out of it are overflowing morques. They are trying to see a silver lining in the cloud - and maybe we'll find one - but that does not mean that the cloud does not block out all sunlight. There aren't enough pieces of silver on the planet to buy back the lives lost and destroyed by George W. Bush.