Deconstructing The Peace-At-Any-Price Crowd...

Deconstructing The Peace-At-Any-Price Crowd...
by The Iconoclast

April 3, 2002

President George W. Bush (R-TX) (AP) Rise and shine everyone at Camp Clarity, the online Web boot camp for kids of all ages suffering from muddled thinking on the Middle East. Time to grab your computer mouse and surf over to a superb opinion piece on the Bush/Middle East crisis which puts things into a realistic perspective -- a definite rarity within the hysterical media fifth column these days.

So, boys and girls, let's immediately check out the wise words of William Saletan in an insightful Slate article on the Middle East . And yes, lazy ones, we even have an excerpt for you below:

The Middle East is going to hell. Palestinians are blowing up Israelis. Israelis are shooting Palestinians. What is the United States doing about it? Belatedly sending U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell back to the region to create an impression of involvement, but otherwise not much. But don't worry, says Powell (shown, left). Eventually, the Israelis will pull out of the West Bank, "and Tenet and Mitchell will be waiting for them."
If you don't know what Tenet and Mitchell are, you need a lesson in the three languages of the peace process: Hebrew, Arabic, and bureaucratic bullshit. Officially, Mitchell refers to an April 2001 list of recommendations for conducting peace talks, and Tenet refers to a June 2001 list of security measures each side must take to halt violence so that talks can proceed. Unofficially, Mitchell and Tenet, like Zinni, Oslo, and Madrid, are buzzwords designed to create an impression of progress where none exists.
The theory put forward by Powell, President Bush, the U.N. Security Council , and other peace process exponents is that Zinni will lead to Tenet, which will lead to Mitchell, which will lead to Oslo, which will lead to peace. But the history of the invention of these steps suggests the opposite. Mitchell was created because Oslo failed. Tenet was created because Mitchell failed. Zinni was created because Tenet failed. The peace process is growing ever more complicated not because each stage leads to the next but because it doesn't....

Campers, as William Saletan so rightfully points out in the above excerpt from his Slate article, the sure path to a failed peace process (and not surprisingly, the path pioneered by the Clinton administration) is the lofty discourse of bureaucratic b.s. now favored by the likes of Colin Powell and his Israel-loathing state department advisers. It comprises all kinds of earnest pledges of good intentions by the conflicting parties -- along with targeted steps and stages, with important-sounding names, in the alleged "process" that leads to peace -- all of which mean absolutely nothing in reality. In other words, it's just high-falutin' talk, empty promises, bureaucratic blather -- lofty abstractions meant to deceive and distract and win Nobel Peace Prizes all the while leaving one or both of the conflicting parties free to do whatever they like in practise.

That's right kids, as part of this "process", peace-loving Yasser Arafat signs all kinds of earnest-sounding peace "agreements" and goes on international TV and makes an empty pledge, in broken English, to "renounce terrorism", all the while stepping up state-sponsored anti-Jewish hate propaganda in Arabic, importing arms and explosives non-stop from Iran, and exhorting (in Arabic) the Palestinian people to become suicidal "martyrs" in the terrorist war on the Israeli "occupiers". That's what "peace" in the Middle East is all about these days for Colin Powell and company.

Aha, now you're getting the picture. The supposed steps to peace are nothing but abstract slogans and meaningless pieces of paper that distract and deceive -- the favorite currency and discourse of the idealistic peace-at-any-price crowd who brought us the United Nations and its really cool International Human Rights Commission, which ironically is run by representatives of the most repressive dictatorships in the world.

For these idealistic but deluded souls in search of the two "p's" -- peace and progress -- it really doesn't matter what happens in reality. What counts is the appearance of progress or peace. What matters most is what leaders and nations say, rather than what they actually do.

And there's a reason for this peculiar orientation, kiddies. If the "correct" things are said, and no due diligence is exercised to see whether the promises which are made are actually implemented in practise, then these righteous idealists can continue to feel good about themselves and proudly pat themselves on the back for being a part of whatever momentous march to idealistic utopia is the flavor of the month at the moment (e.g., demonstrating solidarity today for the respected Palestinian peace activist, nation builder and martyr, Yasser Arafat, or acting as long-distance cheerleaders for the murderous Stalinist march to scientific utopia in the Soviet Union in the 1930's and '40's).

That's right. For these feel-good idealists, what it really comes down to is feeling morally superior, self-righteous and smug at any price. As a result, if any global demagogue or tin-pot Third World dictator can sweet-talk these gullible souls into believing that "economic justice", "progress" or "international peace" is just around the corner, then they are more than willing to suspend all disbelief and buy into the whole fictional fantasy of whatever is the latest utopian-nirvana-on-the-immediate-horizon.

But one point can't be emphasized too much, campers. These are people who manipulate words for a living -- often in their jobs as professors, journalists, mediators or government bureaucrats -- and they have become too enamored with the power of words. And so what counts for these "progressives" always is not real-world results but wordfests of wishful-thinking -- feel-good fantasies-in-words constructed through a blend of dreamy abstractions, inspiring slogans and a excess of Orwellian double-talk. For them, it's not what you do what counts, but what you say.

NBC 'Today Show' Anchor Katie Couric Well, I see you're getting restless. I suppose it's time for you to watch those cerebral giants, Katie Couric (right) and Matt Lauer, distort the issues of the day on the Today Show again. But before we conclude our little sesssion on leftist-liberal foolishness, let's talk about the moral of today's lesson on the Middle East peace process..

It's a simple one, really. In the end, the faddish 'causes' of the peace-at-any-price crowd are no different than the fabled Middle East "peace process". Time after time, they promise everything. And time after time, they deliver absolutely nothing. ***

Photo of President George W. Bush (R-TX) courtesy of the Associated Press
Photo of Secretary of State Colin Powell courtesy of the Associated Press
Photo of Katie Couric courtesy of NBC News