In dealing with Muslim extremists, how different is Obama from Bush?

The Guardian (via Diana West) reports:

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency’s ostracising of the group.

Sorry to break into this fantasy, but how definitive a break would that be? How did Hamas become a player in the Mideast that U.S. leaders now feel they need to deal with? How did Hamas win a majority of seats in the Palestinian “parliament,” and then use that power base as a launching pad to wrest control of Gaza from Fatah? Through Bush’s demand that Israel allow Hamas to be included in Palestinian elections. Of course, as soon as Hamas won those elections, Bush and Rice said they were shocked, shocked at such an outcome and cut off funding to the Palis for a while; Bush and Rice were shocked at the non-liberal outcome of the Muslim democracy they demanded, but that didn’t make them question their liberal belief in the desirability of Muslim democracy. Also, how did Gaza become a militarized Hamas state? Through the Israeli pull-out from Gaza, which Bush and Rice supported and encouraged. And in the years since these events, Rice has made statements indicating an interest in dealing with Hamas.

So there is no principle dividing Bush’s position on Hamas from Obama’s. Bush pushed open the procedural door to Hamas power, and now Obama is preparing to recognize the resulting substantive reality. That’s all.

In all of American history, has there ever been a president who reversed himself so completely, so shamefully, and so unnecessarily on a matter of such consequence—and who has faced so little criticism as a result of it? In June 2002, Bush announced, to the great applause of those who support Israel’s right to exist, that henceforth the U.S. would do nothing to help the Palestinians acquire a state until they had dismantled their ideology and infrastructure of terror. And then, within a couple of years of that statement, with none of the terror ideology dismantled, with the destruction of Israel still a stated goal in the PLO charter as well as in the Hamas charter, the same Bush began pushing for a Palestinian state and describing the achievement of such a state as a fixed goal of U.S. policy. Meanwhile, the same people who had greeted Bush’s June 2002 position as a new order of the ages uttered not a peep of protest against his stunning abandonment of it.

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By the way, have you ever noticed that the people whose constant refrain is that America should have nothing to do with the Mideast and that it should stop interfering in the Israel-Palestinian issue, never criticize Bush for pushing Israel toward surrender to the Palestinians?

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An inside the Beltway conservative writes:

June 2004 (not 2002) I believe.

LA replies:

Nope. Bush delivered the speech on June 24, 2002. All the neocons/cons were ecstatic. Then a year later Bush, by convening a meeting at Sharm el Sheikh where he aggressively pushed for “peace,” Bush cast aside what he had said about not including the Palis in any peace process until they had dismantled terror. And the neocons didn’t say a word. Pope Norman said he “trusted” Bush, even though Bush had abandoned the very principle that Podhoretz had greeted like the coming of the messiah a year earlier. Not until the Annapolis meeting in fall 2007 and Rice’s admission that the administration, in order to make progress toward “peace,” had dropped the demand that the Palestinians dismantle terror, did some neocons start, way too late, to criticize Bush’s Israel policy. Not Pope Norman. He stayed with the messiah.

The conservative/neoconservative movement destroyed itself intellectually through its support for Bush.

Here are key excerpts:

President George W. Bush
The Rose Garden
Washington, DC
June 24, 2002

… I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practising democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence. And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbours, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East….

Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure. This will require an externally supervised effort to rebuild and reform the Palestinian security services. The security system must have clear lines of authority and accountability and a unified chain of command….

I’ve said in the past that nations are either with us or against us in the war on terror. To be counted on the side of peace, nations must act. Every leader actually committed to peace will end incitement to violence in official media, and publicly denounce homicide bombings. Every nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel—including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hizbullah. Every nation actually committed to peace must block the shipment of Iranian supplies to these groups, and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq. And Syria must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organisations.

Leaders who want to be included in the peace process must show by their deeds an undivided support for peace. And as we move toward a peaceful solution, Arab states will be expected to build closer ties of diplomacy and commerce with Israel, leading to full normalisation of relations between Israel and the entire Arab world.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 09, 2009 11:55 AM | Send