Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Writing in the Middle East Times he gives a damning assessment of George W and Condi Rice in their "efforts" in the Middle East in the last 8 years:
"In the past week, both U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have given us the intellectual equivalent of what lame ducks do when they paddle away into oblivion, as they offer one more flap of the wings and spread of the tail feathers.
Both Bush and Rice have been attempting valiant but ultimately pitiful efforts to attract some praise for what most would see as deserving of ignominy and isolation. In separate media interviews, they have tried their hand at real-time historical revisionism and plain old-fashioned political fantasy, by claiming that they leave the Middle East in better shape than it has been for decades.
It is hard to imagine a more false statement of fact, but perhaps this is no surprise for an administration that has based its policies in the Middle East on a foundation of falsehoods, constructed it largely of misdiagnoses, and buttressed it by recurring misperceptions.
These two otherwise honorable citizens rose far beyond their political and intellectual abilities, to wander in alien and confusing corridors where they have understood little, fantasized often, and done much more harm than good.
Their claim of leaving the Middle East in better shape than they found it is their ultimate insult and lie. Here, from the vantage point of the Middle East, is what Bush and Rice leave behind in our region....."
Read the 11 - yes 11! - failings, here, of the Bush administration and what it has wrought in the Middle East.
Writing in the Middle East Times he gives a damning assessment of George W and Condi Rice in their "efforts" in the Middle East in the last 8 years:
"In the past week, both U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have given us the intellectual equivalent of what lame ducks do when they paddle away into oblivion, as they offer one more flap of the wings and spread of the tail feathers.
Both Bush and Rice have been attempting valiant but ultimately pitiful efforts to attract some praise for what most would see as deserving of ignominy and isolation. In separate media interviews, they have tried their hand at real-time historical revisionism and plain old-fashioned political fantasy, by claiming that they leave the Middle East in better shape than it has been for decades.
It is hard to imagine a more false statement of fact, but perhaps this is no surprise for an administration that has based its policies in the Middle East on a foundation of falsehoods, constructed it largely of misdiagnoses, and buttressed it by recurring misperceptions.
These two otherwise honorable citizens rose far beyond their political and intellectual abilities, to wander in alien and confusing corridors where they have understood little, fantasized often, and done much more harm than good.
Their claim of leaving the Middle East in better shape than they found it is their ultimate insult and lie. Here, from the vantage point of the Middle East, is what Bush and Rice leave behind in our region....."
Read the 11 - yes 11! - failings, here, of the Bush administration and what it has wrought in the Middle East.
Comments