For a gauge of Israeli punditry opinion, check out today's piece by Ma'ariv analyst Ben Caspit, who skewers President Bush and dismisses any talk of progress in peace talks...
Ma’ariv (p. 2) by Ben Caspit -- “The leader of the free world,” this is the title of the man who will alight from Air Force One this morning at Ben-Gurion Airport. My sympathies to the free world. With such a leader, one misses the Cold War of Stalin and Khrushchev.
What remains for the free world is to count down the time that remains until the end of the “leader’s” term. It is going to be a long and wearying year. At the end of which, we can hope, it will still be possible to mend something.
It is a long time since the United States has had such a failing president, who caused so much damage to so many interests and values in such a short time. Think about the state in which he received America and how he is returning it. The power that dominated the world is now begging for favors.
For the first time in generations, the US faces real threats to its global hegemony. US citizens hide their identity in many places around the world. The economy is faltering, the hegemony is weakening, the international standing is at an unprecedented low.
The Taliban in Afghanistan are raising their head, Iraq is decimated, nuclear Pakistan is on its way to chaos, Saudi Arabia is wavering, Egypt is restive, Russia is returning to the Cold War, China is gaining markets and power, and over the weekend several Iranian boats frightened three warships of the mighty US Navy and returned home safely.
All this is without saying a word about Osama bin Laden, who has survived George Bush’s eight years without suffering a scratch, and is still primed for action. And without having mentioned Hugo Chavez, from small Venezuela, who treats George Bush like a retarded child and enjoys every moment. […]
The damage that Bush has caused to the world and to the US is dwarfed by what he has done to the Middle East. The democratization that he is continuing to try to instill in the Arab states is setting the entire region on fire and destabilizing the flimsy foundations upon which the fragile regional order rests. Bush is directly responsible for the chaos in Iraq, the rise of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah’s buildup of strength and the trembling ground under the feet of all the rest.
With his own hands, Bush turned Iran into the dominant regional power. If he has time, before he goes, he will still try to topple the regime in Syria, and further destabilize the regime in Cairo with his democracy chatter, in order to verify that extremist Islam will indeed take over the Middle East.
The most severe thing about him is that until now, he has not managed to understand the magnitude of the stupidity of his moves. There is no one to tell him that despite the limousines, Air Force One, the Secret Service, the boots, the trappings of power, the CIA, the FBI and the other rituals and ceremonies surrounding the American president, despite all this—the president has no clothes. Only he, for some reason, continues to believe that sometime, perhaps after his death (as he said in an interview to Yedioth Ahronoth this past weekend), the world will recognize his genius.
There's more in the full article.
See. I am not the only one who has come to the realization that Bush is just plain stupid, dangerously so.
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