The New York Review of Books reviews 3 books on the Middle East crisis, each different, yet reflective of and recording, from each author's perspective, the "happenings" of the last years.
As the writers of the piece say:
"For all three authors, George W. Bush provides a straightforward and relatively uncontroversial target. We are left with the portrait of a man—and an administration—who were uninterested in the peace process, inattentive to the impact of their policies, uninformed about reality, incapable of follow-through, and utterly unembarrassed by it all. Ideologically, the new Bush team was inclined to downgrade the importance of the Arab–Israeli conflict; politically it was inclined to do the exact opposite of what Clinton had done. "There's no Nobel Peace Prize to be had here," Indyk quotes Bush as saying early in his tenure.
Of the accusations leveled against Bush's policy, the most commonly voiced is that it was "disengaged." Kurtzer and Lasensky condemn him for not being "actively engaged" in the peace process and regret that the "administration effectively disengaged for close to eight years." Indyk evokes the President's "default position of disengagement." And Miller writes disapprovingly that "George W. Bush came into office with a mindset already predisposed to disengag- ing America from the Arab–Israeli issue." Forget about the "Decider"; in Miller's account, Bush has become the "Disengager."
Read the complete review and article here.
As the writers of the piece say:
"For all three authors, George W. Bush provides a straightforward and relatively uncontroversial target. We are left with the portrait of a man—and an administration—who were uninterested in the peace process, inattentive to the impact of their policies, uninformed about reality, incapable of follow-through, and utterly unembarrassed by it all. Ideologically, the new Bush team was inclined to downgrade the importance of the Arab–Israeli conflict; politically it was inclined to do the exact opposite of what Clinton had done. "There's no Nobel Peace Prize to be had here," Indyk quotes Bush as saying early in his tenure.
Of the accusations leveled against Bush's policy, the most commonly voiced is that it was "disengaged." Kurtzer and Lasensky condemn him for not being "actively engaged" in the peace process and regret that the "administration effectively disengaged for close to eight years." Indyk evokes the President's "default position of disengagement." And Miller writes disapprovingly that "George W. Bush came into office with a mindset already predisposed to disengag- ing America from the Arab–Israeli issue." Forget about the "Decider"; in Miller's account, Bush has become the "Disengager."
Read the complete review and article here.
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