Mideast Anxiety Deflates Bush Jaunt
Separate trips by Bush, Cheney and Rice to the Middle East were meant to demonstrate the administration's diplomatic prowess but backfired when the Americans met with Arab leaders who were panicked, distraught and vocal.
Separate trips by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East were meant to demonstrate the administration’s diplomatic prowess but backfired when the Americans met with Arab leaders who were panicked, distraught and vocal.
Your support matters…Los Angeles Times:
… Instead of flaunting stronger ties and steadfast American influence, the president’s journey found friends both old and new near a state of panic. Mideast leaders expressed soaring concern over upheavals across the region that the United States helped ignite through its invasion of Iraq and push for democracy — and fear that the Bush administration may make things worse.
President Bush’s summit in Jordan with the Iraqi prime minister proved an awkward encounter that deepened doubts about the relationship. Vice President Cheney’s stop in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, yielded a blunt warning from the kingdom’s leaders. And Secretary of State Rice’s swing through the West Bank and Israel, intended to build Arab support by showing a new U.S. push for peace, found little to work with.
In all, visits designed to show the American team in charge ended instead in diplomatic embarrassment and disappointment, with U.S. leaders rebuked and lectured by Arab counterparts. The trips demonstrated that U.S. allies in the region were struggling to understand what to make of the difficult relationship, and to figure whether, with a new Democratic majority taking over Congress, Bush even had control over his nation’s Mideast policy.
Arabs are “trying to figure out what the Americans are going to do, and trying develop their own plans,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), one of his party’s point men on Iraq. “They’re trying to figure out their Plan B.”
Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
The president is systematically dismantling the rule of law, yet neither Barack Obama nor Colin Powell can be bothered to speak out.
Politics
One of the world's most respected South American diplomats talks about U.S. involvement in his country's democratic crisis.
If what the U.S. government and media are saying about Iran seems vaguely familiar, it's because we've heard it all before.
The U.S. national security adviser is not just uninterested in selling a denuclearization pact to the public. He's working to undermine it.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has asked for authorization to investigate U.S. practices in Afghanistan.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.