1115.org

Once upon a time, the Bush administration paid some attention to the mess in the Middle East. Or maybe that should be “a Bush administration”? It was, after all, back when Colin Powell was Secretary of State, and Condi Rice was screwing up national security, not international diplomacy. And back in those days, the Bush administration believed that peace could be achieved in the Middle East simply by repeating the words “road map” enough times. Especially if they were repeated not just by us, but by the Palestinians and Israelis too.

Then there were a series of disasters that the Middle East peace process never recovered from. Osama bin Laden unleashed the insanity that will always be associated with his name. Condi was promoted above her level of incompetence, in reward for ignoring warnings about al Qaeda. The entire Bush administration ran around like a headless chicken for years, focused exclusively first on Osama and then on Saddam/Iraq, while dropping the ball on everything else.

And so the Middle East peace process went into cryogenic sleep.

Now there are only 14 months left in Condi’s tenure. And this lady’s ambitions in life don’t end with screwing up royally as Secretary of State. So, as I argued a few months ago, naturally Condi feels this acute pressure to achieve something she can point to later as her legacy.

We may as well be clear about the objective I’m alleging. It’s not to actually achieve anything substantive, but only to achieve the appearance of achievement. Only to do something that can be mass-marketed later as a worthwhile accomplishment. When she is asked down the road “What did you achieve when you were Madame Secretary?”, she wants to be able to point to something that the viewers of Fox News will be able to buy into.

Only such an urge for counterfeit accomplishment could explain the slapdash impromptu 50-nation Middle East peace conference that may apparently be held as early as a week from now.

A few days after Thanksgiving, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plan to open a meeting in Annapolis to launch the first round of substantive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks during Bush’s presidency.

But no conference date has been set. No invitations have been issued. And no one really agrees on what the participants will actually talk about once they arrive at the Naval Academy for the meeting, which is intended to relaunch Bush’s stillborn “road map” plan to create a Palestinian state.

The anticipation surrounding the meeting has heightened the stakes for other countries seeking invites. If Turkey comes, Greece wants a seat. So does Brazil, which has more Arabs than the Palestinian territories. Norway hosted an earlier round of peacemaking in Oslo, so it wants a role. Japan wants to do more than write checks for Palestinians.

“No one seems to know what is happening,” one senior Arab envoy said last week, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid appearing out of the loop. “I am completely lost.”
[…]
The conference is intended to be brief, lasting a day or so. The substance of a final statement may well be bland — there is no agreement on a text yet.
[…]
Every day last week, reporters pestered the State Department’s spokesman, Sean McCormack, for an update on the invitations. Each time, he demurred. “Once the invitations are issued, I would expect that most, if not all, of the invitees will reply, ‘Yes, we’re coming,’ ” he said Friday. “I think they’ll be able to get here.”

Hey, I know one thing that’ll be happening: a lot of people who receive paychecks from Uncle Sam are not going to have a very happy Thanksgiving, as they slave away to give some shape or form to Condi’s conference.

So now we’re going to have the spectacle of 50 nations gravely pretending they are achieving progress towards peace in the Middle East. When all they will be doing is pretending to achieve.

But the conference should certainly present Condi with an opportunity to shine and dazzle. She is the reigning world champion, isn’t she, when it comes to pretending to achieve?

I know I’m sometimes hard on Condi. But it’s nothing personal. And just to show I wish her well, here’s a suggestion for how Condi can make this the epochal Middle East peace conference she’s looking for. How she can turn this floundering 50-nation circus into something to rival Nixon’s trip to China. What she needs, of course, is to impart a bold new direction to the Middle East peace process. Something that will be pointed to later (and not just by her) as the brilliant insight that made peace possible. And here it is: she should invite India and China to her Middle East peace conference. And not just as observers, but as key players.

The reasoning is simple. Peace in the Middle East will take a good long time to come. By that time, both India and China will have a very large footprint in international affairs. They will play an integral part in bringing about peace. Condi may as well take the credit for bringing them into the process.