Although I will not be mailing this letter to the President, I hope that somebody more eloquent than me sends him something similar.
Dear President Bush,
I voted for you twice. I pumped my fist in the air when you took the oath of office when your opponent tried to steal the election. I showed a steely eyed resolve when you spoke in the first few hours after the horrors of 9/11. I cheered and pumped my fist again with pride when you grabbed that bullhorn and stood with that firefighter on 9/14. When you spoke to the nation on 9/20, I looked in your eyes and saw the potential for greatness. When you beat the tar out of reporters in 2002, I said, “I love this guy!” In 2004, I prayed to God the night before the election for your reelection, the first time I have ever done so. While many have deserted you, I have not. I have disagreed with you and gave you the benefit of the doubt solely because I trusted you. I have taken delight in giving liberals conniptions by saying that you walk on water and turn it into wine.
The bottom line, Mr. President, is that I have been one of your biggest supporters, and I have a concern. With all due respect sir, if I have a concern, as one of your staunchest defenders, then you have one as well.
I believe you are a good man. I believe your vision of democracy in the Middle East is noble, decent and right. I believe when the history books are written, you will be vindicated. Unfortunately, I worry that the constant beating you have unfairly taken is finally taking its toll. I see a man who wants to shape his legacy right now, rather than let nature take its course. I am speaking about your desire to have a peace deal in place in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians before you leave office.
Sir…and I am treading very lightly because of the enormous respect I have for you…this is lunacy. It is sheer folly. It will fail. More importantly, it should fail.
You have been very gracious towards your predecessor, sometimes too much so. Let me show less class than you by saying that your predecessor was, while not a bad man, an irrelevant one. To call him peripheral was an understatement. The reason he was popular was because he followed rather than lead. His idea of bold leadership was mumbling about school uniforms. When he was in his last year of office, after realizing that he was the “Seinfeld President,” he became determined to ram through a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. He had no chance of succeeding, and I fear you might not either.
In 1993, an activist president forced Oslo upon the Jewish people. The Palestinians never lived up to their Oslo obligations, which was expected. In fact, I cannot remember the Palestinians ever keeping any promise they ever made, except for their vows to murder innocent Jews on a daily basis. After your predecessor lost the midterm elections in 1994, he played defense for the next six years, taking no chances. Then as the hourglass was running out on his time in power, he wanted a deal immediately.
Bill Clinton was about to leave office. Ehud Barak was about to leave office. Yassir Arafat was just getting started. Arafat held all of the cards. The other two men were so desperate to have a deal so that they could preen before the cameras for photo ops and engage in self congratulatory nonsense. Mr. President, I know you are better than that.
Even people who disagree with you believe that your time in office has been relevant. Your legacy is safe. You changed the Supreme Court, installing a giant in Justice John Roberts. The economy did well despite an early recession and the 9/11 attacks. The stock market hit an all time high, as did black home ownership. If you did nothing else, it would be, as Jews say on Passover, Dayenu (sufficient).
I know it must be frustrating to see others running for your job, and you being pushed to the sidelines away from the news cycles. This is not a death sentence. President Reagan shined in his last year in office.
You have done so much good sir. Please do not advance the Mideast surrender process. Do not spend your last year in office on a losing cause.
You are a good decent man, but the Palestinians by and large are not good people. They are portrayed as victims. They are not. They are bloodthirsty killers. Sure, we keep hearing how the leadership does not reflect the people. Yes, the reflection is perfect. 80% of the Palestinian people in recent years have supported homicide bombing as a legitimate form of political expression. Golda Meir said peace could come when the Palestinians love their own children more than they hate the Israeli children.
Some people believe that the Palestinians have finally gotten to that point. They have had enough of their miserable lot in life. This is false. They say that the strategy of trying to kill Jews is “not helpful” to their cause. That is not the same as saying it is wrong.
Yes, I am willing to concede that some Palestinians love their children, and just want a better life for their families. I sadly remain unconvinced that this view is anything other than an aberration.
I want peace, but not at any price. America can have peace with Afghanistan, but not with the Taliban in power. We had to root out the evil, and now we have a nation that is a democratic ally. Israel needs free reign to do whatever is necessary to root out terror in the Middle East. Only after this is done can dialogue be considered.
Israel gave up the Sinai. In return they received a “cold” peace, not a true peace. It is better than nothing, but far from a true peace. Israel gave up the buffer zone in Lebanon, and were rewarded with more terror. Israel gave up the Gaza Strip, and were rewarded with more terror. The only time things have calmed down even slightly was when Fatah and Hamas killed each other.
When Israel does prisoner swaps, one Israeli is traded for several hundred Palestinians. Could this be because only the Israelis value human life?
Some criticize Israel for continuing to expand settlements on what Palestinians refer to as occupied territory. It is not occupied territory. It is disputed territory. Also, when Palestinians refer to the illegal occupation, they do not mean the West Bank or Gaza. They mean all of Israel.
The Palestinians have not done their part. Militants roam free, and Israelis live in fear. What we call 9/11, they experience every day.
Mr. President, you know all of this. The only reason I see you going forward with a surrender process is because of either idealism or cynicism.
If idealism is your motive, I applaud your intention. Your idealism is right in Iraq. However, it is misplaced among the Palestinians. The Iraqis want a better life. They are slowly taking positive steps. This has not happened with the Palestinians.
I believe you are too good a man to be doing this out of cynicism. I just do not see you as a man who desperately wants a deal before you leave office. That is something your predecessor did. You are better than that.
Forget the lamestream media. You do not need this deal to be regarded as a great President. A successful deal will not help you, but a failed deal will hurt you. Again, this will fail. It is not possible to force foreign entities to operate on U.S. electoral timelines.
I am not against negotiation in principle. I am against forcing people to negotiate when any party believes that they have everything to lose by negotiating and everything to gain by belligerence. Putting these two very unequal parties on an equal plain is a reward to the murderers.
I applaud you for isolating Yassir Arafat, but Mr. Abbas is no better. First of all, there is no such thing as a moderate Palestinian leader. They are as fictional as the Easter Bunny and my pet unicorn. Even if Mr. Abbas completely renounced all violence on moral grounds, rather than just stating that it is not helpful, he would be shot to death the day after any deal was reached.
The people who want the deal to fail have all the power. They need to be forcibly disarmed. When the terrorists are dead, the Israelis can meet with Palestinian leaders who are against murder for the reasons civilized human beings should be against murder, and have the power to get a deal done, and keep it in force.
Mr. President, you have done too many things right for me to want to come against you on this one. I still feel I owe you the benefit of the doubt. Yet I remain worried.
I pray that at the first sign of Palestinian intransigence, that you and Dr. Rice allow Israel to get up from the table, and as a show of force, turn the table over.
Mr. President, you have been the best friend Israel has ever had. I know you must be frustrated that after everything you have done for the Jews, that 75% of them still act like ungrateful brats. I would be frustrated as well. However, alienating the 25% of Jews that do support you could set back republican inroads into the Jewish community for another generation.
This Mideast surrender process must be killed at the very first sign of failure. An escalation of commitment will only make things worse.
Good luck Mr. President. You will need it. You are trying to succeed where everybody before you has failed. If anybody can make this succeed, you can. However, even you might be overmatched this time.
Then again, if it was anybody else but you proposing this, I would be in open revolt right now. I will sit and wait, because I trust you.
I pray for you to succeed in Iraq, but I will not pray one minute for this summit to succeed unless success is seen as a total victory for Jewish civilization and a defeat for the terrorists that have fought for a homeland to launch more terror.
Respectfully,
eric
Amen.
It doesn’t matter. Hamas doesn’t want dialogue. Israel can’t arrange a contiguous Palestine. There is no trust between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Peace is still a long ways off. Bush can’t do a thing. He’s more a lame duck there than he is here. Besides, Bush did nothing of value over there in all his seven years except erode our reputation. Perhaps America should step aside a bit and just let Israel and Palestine work this out for themselves. I just don’t know. The problem seems infinitely intractable. It’s very sad indeed.
JMJ
Our reputation of being their inflatable doll has been eroded.
Well, inflatable dolls apparently used to be pretty popular. I guess not so much anymore.
JMJ
This doll gives back.
This doll only destroys. It gives nothing of value.
JMJ
Jersey McJones bridge and tunnel boy – 3/6 comments already … when is he going to get banned?
(pause … 4/8 is coming)
Nothing of value ?
Values are a large spectrum.
If your concept of value is stoning a woman for being gang raped by insecure sexually repressed muslims, then you should be happy.
If your concept of values is to beat and lash people in public for speaking freely, then you should be happy.
If your concept of value is watching all the children , women or men at Beslam be murdered , raped and disfigured, you should be happy.
If you concept of value is watching Daniel Pearle being decapitated, you should be happy.
If you concept of values is taking pride in killing 3000 Americans in less than 1/2 an hour, you should be happy.
That doll is standing at the gate to our country, and she has been inflated with the blood of men who have given their lives so that you may beat her up and bash her at every opportunity your pessimistic, apologistic, oversensative, delusional whimpy existance can come up with.
You and your like are becoming increasingly predictive. God forbid anyone do anything with any sincere attempt without you fools automatically resorting to the cynical sarcastic bashing only because they are conservatives.
Chickens will not take a stand. Beacause this way if they are wrong, they stand to loose nothing but some hot air.
We on the other hand choose to take the bull by the horns and tackle the problem knowing damn well that if we are wrong we stand to loose a hell of a lot more than chicken little.
Nothing of value ? Your ass is still in one peice, if it has any value or not is irrelevant in the eyes of “that doll”
At best, I am apathetic concerning Annapolis. Not being an idealogue, I simply wish peace and prosperity upon our only genuine friend in the region; Israel. The so-called “Palestinians” time and time again choose to embrace terror, hate, ignorance, lies, myths and slogans when basic decency would render them the first Arab/Muslim State in the region ( that’s right, there’s never been a state…) of Palestine.
I don’t blame the President’s attempt to bring the parties together in hopes of further isolating the radical Iranian regime. I do admonish him and his team for not criticizing any and all hostile actions such as not shaking hands etc…( our wonderful Saudi friends…)
By the way, Arab/Muslim hate for us as well as the Israelis is one of the major constants still left with in a world of dizzying change. I recall a long article in the New York Times Sunday magazine at the height of Oslo on Egyptian hatred for the Jewish State ( THE HEIGHT OF OSLO!…when the Israelis had effectively left most of the disputed territories, had signed an agreement with the Jordanians and were only demanding the other side abide by their agreements.). The Egyptians interviewed were counting the days for the death of the State of Israel. ( A Nation which has strenuously abided by the less than perfect Peace Treaty made by Sadat and Begin.) Whether it be peacetime or wartime the Arab/Muslim World’s desire for peaceful conciliation is all too uncommon. Blaming Bush for Arab/Muslim antipathy towards the U.S.A. is patently absurd and wreaks of historical ignorance.
I will say that you can probably not find one high level American who doesn’t believe Sami Fayyad is a legit guy. Abbas is more Arafat sans the Kaffiyeh and fire. His dissertation in graduate school denied the Holocaust.
I’d love to disagree with Eric on this one…but, it’s difficult to believe genuine peace and conciliation will be achieved…G-d willing I’m wrong…
I voted for Shrub exactly once; thereafter I wrote in Jesus Christ for the third time. I don’t support him, I don’t believe him and I don’t respect him.
My own dissection and refutation of the lies he spewed at the Annapolis Surrender Conference is posted at http://www.anewtone.com . I include ayat & ahadith with links to source as evidence.
My public expression of disgust, sent to Shrub, Rice, my Senators & Representative is in Letters to Leaders at congress.org. (Michigan)
Bottom line: peace and Islam can not coexist at anywhere at any time. Islam is permanent war. We must get rid of it. Instead, Shrub is getting rid of Israel. He will discover the hard way that Israel is not the problem, Islam is.
Wow. That was disturbing. What does a dajjal presume we should do? Kill all the Muslims? Does dajjal recall that it was the Muslims who brought the sephardin to Europe? Does dajjal recall that while Europe was in the throws of fanatical theocracy it was the muslims who provided peace and haven to the Jewish people? Did it ever occur to dajjal that while religion is a constant theme among the Western and Middle Eastern world for the past millenia or two, it is political and economic turmoil that brings unrest among the people and that religion is simply then used as a means to an end in such times? Does dajjal know that it was the Muslims who preserved the great works of the Greeks and kept up with the progress of science and technology while Europe was mired in regressive cultural stagnation? It wasn’t until just this last century that the Jewish people and the Muslim people have come to conflict, and most of the reason for that has to do with the return of Israel, which again is directly the fault of modern European CHRISTIANS, who brought the worst Holocaust in Jewish history – worse than the Romans or anyone else.
Peace and Islam HAVE coexisted just fine and will in the future. It’s just a matter of time, and humane persistence. It would help if we truly assisted them for their best interests, as we did in the Balkans, as opposed to making things worse, as we did in Iraq. But if you think murdering them in large numbers will help your cause, then you’re no better than the terrorists whom I assume concern you, dajjal.
JMJ
Yea, they’re just a bunch of unruly children.
Jersey,
these are the same people that just now sentenced an english school teacher to 15 days in prison because her “students” named a teddy bear “Mohammed’.
Had the Muslim society in Britain not put up such a stink she would of gotten whipped 40 times and jailed for a year.
What is past is past. The Muslims we live and deal with today are for the most part not the same.
The sephardin is not all you crack it up to be. Jews were dictated to and separated by many means.
If anything it should be a lesson that your idea of governing eventually collapses as it has so many times in history and barely exists today.
Jersey,
The Sephardim were allowed to survive as dhimmis if they paid a heavy tax to be allowed to exist. In Iberia (there was no Spain yet) they were tolerated (barely, as everywhere else) because the ruling class needed them as moneylenders They allowed them to survive for exploitation, and it was no fault of theirs that the Jews developed a rich culture that survived beyond their expulsion in 1492.
As for the preservation of the great works of the Greeks, the Moslems cut Europe off from the near east by conquering Constantinople and most of the Greek civilization of Ionia (Turkey.) Without that conquest the dark ages in Europe would have been 200-300 years less backward.
You are right about one thing. The muslims haven’t come into conflict with the Jews until this century. That is because of two things. After the holocaust the Zionists have stopped lying down, and the arabs have some oil. When the Zionists started trying to return to their land (promised by G-d) they bought (you know, with money) desert land from the Ottomans. The land of milk and honey in the Bible had been changed into desert by the bedouin and their goats. The Zionists started farming and irrigating and grew oranges, and the arabs came to pick the oranges – and stayed. When WWII started, the arabs joined in on the side of Hitler and the Nazis. The Jews tried to get in on the British side, but had to beg the Brits to allow it. The nazi-fied arabs screamed and yelled, but the Jews finally got their own state (barely.) The arabs have been having the same violent tantrum ever since.
I’m afraid Dajjal is right about Islam being permanent war. If we have to get rid of Isreal or islam I know who I’d rather see gone. Guess whose name means “submission.”
Shallom
Eric,
Send your letter.