In coming here and accepting this challenge, Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat have shown they are ready to take risks to pursue peace. I have worked closely with them, and I believe they have the vision, courage and ability to build a fair, just and lasting peace. For seven and a half years, I have worked with Israel’s leaders and their Arab neighbors to resolve the root causes of their conflicts so that all the region’s children can enjoy the blessings of normal life. Those years have been full of moments of great promise (the handshake on the South Lawn of the White House) and of great tragedy (Yitzhak Rabin’s too early death). Now we must honor those who have given their lives to the cause by finishing the job.
Underlying this challenge are the most profound questions–about beliefs, political identity and collective fate. Etched in each side’s mind are intense fears and emotions and a deep-seated commitment to defend their people’s interests.
So why this summit, and why now? The answer is simple: while Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have made real progress, the most complex and sensitive issues are still unresolved. Success now depends on decisions only the two leaders can make. While there clearly is no guarantee of success, not to try would guarantee failure.
Delay is no longer an option: the parties themselves have set a September deadline for resolving the final issues dividing them. Moreover, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict knows no status quo. It can move forward toward peace, or can slide back into turmoil. It will not stand still. If the parties do not seize this moment to make more progress, there will be more hostility and more bitterness–perhaps even more violence.
And to what end? Eventually, after more bloodshed and tears, they will have to come back to the negotiating table, where they will face the same history, the same geography, the same passions, the same hatreds and the same tough choices that confront them now. Those choices are far better made today.
For Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat, the challenge is to draw the contours of a long-awaited peace–a peace that can fulfill the Israeli people’s quest for security and recognition, genuine reconciliation with Palestinians and true acceptance in the region–a peace that can fulfill the Palestinian people’s legitimate aspirations to determine their destiny on their own land and to build a better future.
Neither side can achieve 100 percent of its goals. The optimal solution of each party is, by definition, one the other party cannot and will not accept. Negotiations must create an outcome that is realistic, balanced and fair; that meets the fundamental objectives of both sides; that reconciles their competing grievances; that strengthens the two parties rather than weakens one of them.
America has a profound interest in a Middle East whose people are prosperous, at peace and willing to confront common challenges as partners. For the same reasons, the rest of the world–and especially the rest of the region–cannot afford to be bystanders. For all those who are committed to the cause of peace and to the well-being of the Israeli and Palestinian people, now is the time to lend support to the peacemakers.
title: “The View From The Top” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-15” author: “Tyson Kyle”
BETHUNE: Because it’s such a popular sport. It’s crowded. It’s like shopping at Christmas time. I could make it really unfrustrating at 3 a.m.; it’s just that you don’t want to do it.
It’s the waiting and not knowing when you’re leaving and when you’re going to get there. And the passenger doesn’t always know why they’re delayed. They’re usually on the airplane, and that’s even more frustrating. If you’re in a yellow cab in the Lincoln Tunnel and it’s stopped, you don’t get p–ed off at the cabdriver, because you see it’s not up to him. When you’re on our airplane and it’s a two-hour wait to take off from Newark because the weather’s bad in Cleveland and the system’s backing up, you think we’re responsible.
I think the biggest issue is the infrastructure in the air-traffic-control system. In 1978, when the airlines were deregulated, we were all allowed to fly the routes we wanted to fly. What didn’t happen in 1978 was that they didn’t deregulate the air-traffic-control system, and it’s still operating circa 1978. So the infrastructure to handle this growing traffic is not there. It’s as if we were back to two-lane roads everywhere in America. How frustrating would that be? It’s absolutely got to be modernized.
One of the things I learned at Boeing is that huge, complex programs take some skills to manage. The FAA has shown no ability to do program management. They’ve had some pretty huge technical failures. The procurement system that the government is required to use doesn’t work. So there’s not enough money or expertise to use the money wisely. And that’s why we haven’t gotten anywhere. Governmental bureaucracy doesn’t work very well in these very complex issues.
It could be a not-for-profit company, or maybe government-owned. It just needs to run like a company. It needs to be performance-based, and its needs access to the capital markets to get the technology it needs.
We became profitable when we increased our service. If you take the cheese off the pizza, you can make a pizza so cheap that nobody will eat it. You can make an airline so cheap nobody will fly it. We just put the cheese back on. Passengers will pay for clean airplanes; they will pay for reliable baggage service. We need to listen to what customers want and will pay for.
They’re talking about what kind of salve to put on the wound. Let’s stop wounding the people and get the airlines running on time. What we need is infrastructure.
They’re just human. Some of it’s just a lack of knowledge and high expectations. With better communication and better technology and education, we’ll have the expectations where the reality is.
Plenty of times. What I do sometimes is sit in first class and order the coach meal. All I want is a sandwich, and the food’s good. I try every meal we serve.
Well, the coach meals have better candy–those chocolate turtles–than the first-class meal. I asked why we can’t have them in first class, and they said the other ones are more elegant. I said forget that, people want something that’s good.
title: “The View From The Top” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-07” author: “Jewel Raab”
Everything we saw took us further from the reality we could not see. Five Augusts ago, hijackers in Florida trained in gyms, bought small knives and practiced flying in rented aircraft. In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden and Taliban leaders argued about targets and strategy,
until bin Laden gave his final orders. Nineteen tickets were booked and purchased, and leftover funds were wired frugally back to Al Qaeda. “And then,” as President Bush said, “there came a day of fire.”
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, while the president was on the road in Florida, I was working at home on a never-delivered speech announcing a long-forgotten initiative called Communities of Character. Warned by my deputy about the first attack, I headed by car toward the White House, neared the Pentagon and saw a plane in abnormally low descent–so low I could see the windows. Turned around by the police on the highway and sent home, I was finally able to call my evacuated staff at (of all places) the D.C. offices of Chrysler. Then came the first speech to the nation, with too much sentiment, not enough resolve and the president stiff and small. On Friday, a quiet motorcade in the rain to the National Cathedral; and the president filling his office completely; and the whole of official Washington singing, “Glory, glory, hallelujah. His truth is marching on.” Starting in those days, I felt not merely part of an administration, but part of a story; a noble story, but with a happy ending by no means assured.
From those events, President Bush drew a fixed conclusion: as long as the Middle East remains a bitter and backward mess, America will not be secure. Dictators in that region survive by finding scapegoats for their failures–feeding conspiracy theories about Americans and Jews–and use religious groups to destroy reformers and democrats. Oil money strengthens elites, buys rockets, funds research into weapons of mass destruction, builds radical schools across Africa and Asia and finds its way to terrorist organizations. Terrorist organizers exploit the humiliated and hopeless–channeling their search for meaning into acts of murder–and plot, as London 2006 proves, to surpass the mad ambitions of 9/11.
In the traditional diplomatic view, this chaos can be contained through the skillful management of “favorable” dictators. But what if the status quo in the Middle East that produced Muhammad Atta and his friends and successors cannot be contained, or boxed up, or bought off? What if the false and shallow stability of tyranny is actually producing people and movements that make the whole world less stable? And what if the problem is getting dramatically worse as the technology of weapons of mass destruction becomes more democratically distributed?
On this theory, President Bush set out a series of policy changes from the weeks after 9/11 to his second Inaugural in 2005. Threats would be confronted before they arrive, the sponsors of terror would be held equally accountable for terrorist murders and America would promote democracy as an alternative to Islamic fascism, the exploitation of religion to impose a violent political utopia. Every element of the Bush doctrine was directed toward a vision: a reformed Middle East that joins the world instead of resenting and assaulting it.
That vision has been tested on nearly every front, by Katyusha rockets in Haifa, car bombs in Baghdad and a crackdown on dissent in Cairo. Condoleezza Rice calls this the “birth pangs” of a new Middle East, and it is a complicated birth. As this violent global conflict proceeds, and its length and costs become more obvious, Americans should keep a few things in mind.
First, the nation may be tired, but history doesn’t care. It is not fair that the challenge of Iran is rising with Iraq, bloody and unresolved. But, as President Kennedy used to say, “Life is not fair.”
Behind all the chaos and death in Lebanon and northern Israel, Iran is the main cause of worry in the West Wing–the crisis with the highest stakes. Its government shows every sign of grand regional ambitions, pulling together an anti-American alliance composed of Syria, terrorist groups like Hizbullah and Hamas, and proxies in Iraq and Afghanistan. And despite other disagreements, all the factions in Iran–conservative, ultraconservative and “let’s usher in the apocalypse” fanatics–seem united in a nuclear nationalism.
Some commentators say that America is too exhausted to confront this threat. But presidential decisions on national security are not primarily made by the divination of public sentiments; they are made by the determination of national interests. And the low blood-sugar level of pundits counts not at all. Here the choice is not easy, but it is simple: can America (and other nations) accept a nuclear Iran?
In foreign-policy circles, it is sometimes claimed that past nuclear proliferation–say, to India or Pakistan–has been less destabilizing than predicted. In the case of Iran, this is wishful thinking. A nuclear Iran would mean a nuclear Middle East, as traditional rivals like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey feel pressured to join the club, giving every regional conflict nuclear overtones. A nuclear Iran would also give terrorist groups something they have previously lacked and desperately want: a great-power sponsor. Over time, this is the surest way to put catastrophic technology into the hands of a murderous few. All options have dangers and drawbacks. But inaction might bring the harshest verdict of history: they knew much, and they did nothing.
The war in Iraq, without doubt, complicates our approach to Iran. It has stretched the Army and lowered our reservoir of credibility on WMD intelligence. But Iran’s destabilizing nuclear ambitions are not a guarded secret; they are an announced strategy. If the lesson drawn from Iraq is that the world is too unknowable and complicated for America to act in its interests, we will pay a terrible price down the road.
As these events unfold, our country will need a better way of doing business, a new compact between citizens and their government. Americans have every right to expect competence and honesty about risks and mistakes and failures. Yet Americans, in turn, must understand that in a war where deception is the weapon and goal of the enemy, every mistake is not a lie; every failure is not a conspiracy. And the worst failure would be a timid foreign policy that allows terrible threats to emerge.
There are still many steps of diplomacy, engagement and sanctions between today and a decision about military conflict with Iran–and there may yet be a peaceful solution. But in this diplomatic dance, America should not mirror the infinite patience of Europe. There must be someone in the world capable of drawing a line–someone who says, “This much and no further.” At some point, those who decide on aggression must pay a price, or aggression will be universal. If American “cowboy diplomacy” did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
A second point: the promotion of democracy in the Middle East is messy, difficult, but no one has a better idea.
There is no question that democratic societies are more likely to respect human rights, less susceptible to ideological extremism, more respectful of neighboring countries, more easily trusted with nuclear technology.
Yet the democracy agenda is under heavy questioning. Some critics–who might be called soft realists–concede the spread of democracy is desirable. It is just not possible. They argue that democratic governments require democratic cultures, which develop over centuries, and have never developed at all in the Arab Middle East.
Realism, however, is not always identical to pessimism. Arab societies, in fact, have strong traditions of private association, private property and a contractual relationship between ruler and ruled. It is not realism to ignore unprecedented elections in Afghanistan and Iraq and serious reforms elsewhere. The past half century has shown that the cultural obstacles to democracy are less formidable than many predicted, from Roman Catholic Southern Europe to Orthodox Eastern Europe to Confucian Asia. Our times provide strong evidence that liberty improves life and that people in many cultures eventually prefer liberty to slavery. And Americans, of all people, should not be surprised or embarrassed when our deepest beliefs turn out to be true.
Other critics of the democracy agenda–what might be called hard realists–think democracy in the Middle East may be possible, but it is not desirable because elections are likely to bring anti-American radicals like Hamas to power.
It is certainly true that democracy means more than voting. Successful democracies eventually require the rule of law, the protection of minorities, the defeat of corruption, a free press, religious liberty and open economies. Any democracy agenda worthy of the name will promote all these things.
But it is something else to claim that democracy itself is a threat in the Middle East because dictatorships are more stable. This duplicates the argument of the dictators themselves: it is us or the Islamists … the junta or the jihad. But the choice is false. Political oppression in nations like Egypt has increased the standing and appeal of radicals and forced all opposition into the mosque, while state media continues to provide a steady supply of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. The real choice to be made in the Middle East is between radicals and democrats; both groups have been emboldened by the events of the last five years. We may have limited time to take the side of democratic forces–not merely as an act of altruism, but as an act of self-defense.
Five Augusts from 9/11, in a summer of new fears, in a war on terror that has lasted longer than World War II, public weariness is understandable. And that exhaustion is increasingly reflected in our politics. In a conservative backlash against the president’s democratic idealism. In a liberal backlash that has moved from the fringes to the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Ned Lamont, in his primary victory over Sen. Joe Lieberman, summed up the case this way: “We are going to get our troops out of Iraq … we’re going to start investing in our own country again.” Lamontism–the elevation of flinching to a foreign policy–is McGovernism, and a long way from “bear any burden, pay any price.”
But these political conflicts seem pale and puny in comparison with the broader civilizational conflict that engages us–a reality we cannot claim we do not see. Our enemies set out their goal with neon clarity. To kill, as intended in the London plot, as many as their technology allows. To seek technologies that will make radical Islam a global power, allowing new killing on an unimagined scale. The response of many Americans to all of this is … up in the air. And, unfortunately, the demands of history may just be beginning, requiring more engagement, more sacrifice, more promotion of democracy, more foreign assistance to raise failed states where dangers gather. Setting out this case will fall to presidents of both parties, in calm and crisis–and making it will always be difficult in a weary hour. But necessity, in the end, makes a stronger argument than the finest rhetoric. And from London to Lebanon, history is proving that peace is not a natural state; it is achieved by a struggle of uncertain duration. In that struggle, the cynical, the world-weary, the risk-averse will not inherit the earth.
