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The same basic physics applies in politics. Sometime during Dick Cheney's Middle East trip, the U.S. began to budge. The Arab governments felt us move. And we've been getting rolled ever since. A few months ago it seemed that Arafat was essentially finished. He had lied to Bush about the Karine A, and was doing nothing to stop suicide bombings. So it seemed that the administration's unwillingness to meet with him in the circumstances was unbudgable. Then, during Cheney's trip, the White House changed its tune. It suddenly seemed to be panting over a meeting with Arafat. As the New York Times put it, "White House officials are waiting anxiously for a signal from General Anthony C. Zinni, the Middle East envoy, that would allow the Cheney-Arafat talks to go ahead." But at least some minimal conditions attached to a meeting, including a public declaration from Arafat in Arabic denouncing terrorism and a directive to the Palestinian Authority to enforce a ceasefire. This was setting the bar pretty low — it didn't insist, say, on seven days of quiet the way Sharon had been doing — but it was arguably (barely) consistent with the administration's prior posture: it still was asking for a ceasefire, if only a notional one. But the administration had clearly started to move. Rolling... Flash forward, prior to Powell's trip. Colin Powell indicates that he may or may not meet with Yasser Arafat, depending on conditions. This deliberate vagueness was meant to pressure Arafat into doing something or other, though what exactly was never spelled out. This was a clear departure from the standard set by Cheney and just amounted to the hope that Arafat might possibly maybe do something that would make it possible for Powell to meet him. Rolling... Then yesterday Powell simply gave in and said that he would meet with Arafat no matter what. Rolled. The administration seems to have rolled right by even the Mitchell plan. As the Times reported today: "Secretary Powell's comments amounted to his bluntest acknowledgment that the Mitchell plan's provision, and the Bush administration's insistence, that a cease-fire serve as the gateway to substantive discussions had not worked." The Bush administration may comfort itself by thinking that in recent weeks it has only made tactical concessions. In fact, however, it has established an important principle: that a few street protests and howls from Arab governments can serve to stifle American power, to make its leaders reverse themselves and generally seem confused and weak. This means that the Arab governments have a positive incentive to stay dissatisfied with anything the administration does. Their very dissatisfaction amounts to important leverage. They certainly have watched it work wonders in recent weeks. If you believe in the Arab governments' good faith, perhaps the administration can do something to satisfy them. If not, every concession the administration makes will only set the predicate for the next concession, which has been the dynamic of the last three weeks. Unless Bush manages to draw a line in the sand somewhere, the rolling may have just begun. |
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<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
f
you've ever tried to shove a stalled car, you know how hard it is to move
it, how impossibly unbudgable it seems right up to the moment . . . when
it moves. That moment comes as a blessed release, and suddenly the car
isn't so unmovable any more. It just rolls and rolls. 
