The Political Inquirer

This week, President Bush made a historic and well publicized trip to the Mideast, speaking alongside Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas and visiting Israeli and Palestinian territory. Recapping on his meetings in the region, Bush said that both the Israelis and Palestinians will have to make “painful concessions” and that Israel will have to end it’s “occupation” of Arab land. The peace talks sound promising, but do they have any hope of success?

In MSNBC’s coverage of the story, they report that Bush plans to return to the Middle East at least one more time before his term expires. Is he serious? First, two visits to the troubled region are a drop in the bucket compared to decades of effort by everyone from Jimmy Carter to Bush senior to Bill Clinton. Bush has made a few other gestures during the tenure of his presidency, often in the context of meetings at the U.N., but it seems like these midnight hour meetings are just attempts to gloss up his otherwise tarnished foreign policy record.

Second, doesn’t a call for ‘an end to occupation of Arab lands’ fly in the face of his Middle East policy? It’s been marked by the invasion of Iraq, the subsequent deposition and hunting of its leaders, and the continued occupation of the country. Certainly, an occupation force has been necessary to help maintain the peace after the invasion, but why did we go to Iraq to begin with if not to invade and, ultimately, to occupy the country? If peace, diplomacy, and democracy are the solution to problems in the Middle East, then we shouldn’t be violently stripping foreign countries of their leadership.

Admittedly, most of the occupation forces will probably be removed from Iraq when the violence in the country settles down, but when will that happen? According to the famous remarks by John McCain, we could be there for another 100 years if it’s deemed necessary. I know, I know - we still have troops in Japan and other mostly peaceful countries. That doesn’t mean it’s right, though. The continued occupation of Japanese lands, especially in Okinawa, has proved a controversial and difficult issue for the Japanese people, especially in the context of the rape of a Japanese girl by U.S. military personnel. Likewise, air and noise pollution are a big concern for the locals, who have to put up with base traffic and rowdy soldiers all year round. Occupation is not always good for the countries in question, nor for the morale of their citizens. Justifying it in the name of our national security does not make it right. We should forge alliances to ensure our security instead of erecting bases everywhere we set foot.

This takes us back to the Middle East. Everyone heard about the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The news of those events was hardly encouraging for the Iraqi people. Even if the occupation is continued with the idea of peace in mind, other ‘mistakes’ and policy blunders are going to occur. This isn’t good for our image in the eyes of the world, or for the people these events affect. It could be such thoughts that have finally convinced the policy makers in Washington that peace is a good idea.

With its troops currently occupied in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States can hardly afford any more costly wars with other countries in the region, but I doubt that concern for our thinly stretched military resources, or for peace, is the motivation behind these talks. This is all about image and, in the last year of his Presidency, Bush wants to spruce his up a bit. We can only hope that, if another Republican is elected President, he follows the example of late Bush policy, instead of the belligerence of the early years. At the very least, it might spruce up the image of the Republican party a bit and decrease some of the soaring national deficit.