The Cherry Orchard

George W. Bush, today:

“I get criticized a lot from different corners, and that’s just part of what happens when you’re President.”

No, it’s really not. Our besieged administration is still trying to pretend that the United States of America still has any confidence in its leadership, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This wall of defense has become so thin that often the personal angle is the Bush administration’s only remaining talking point. For instance, the White House’s official reaction to Jimmy Carter’s blessedly honest statement that this administration’s foreign policy has been the worst in the nation’s history is to attack Carter for committing a social faux pas, as if their biggest concern is how this will affect dinner place seatings at future ex-Presidential gatherings.

I love it that Jimmy Carter is willing to speak the truth, and once again I sincerely appeal to the insiders of the Bush administration to consider the common sense behind an honorable resignation. We are at war, and our country cannot afford another year and a half of confused no-confidence leadership.

There’s been a lot of reaction to Jimmy Carter’s new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, so I checked it out.

Pro-Israel opponents of the book claim that Carter is equating Israel’s painful Palestinian conflict with the former white government of South Africa’s exploitative policy of apartheid. Other critics have pointed out other signs of a biased attitude towards Jews in the book. I’ve checked it out, and it seems to me these charges are unfounded.

Jimmy Carter knows a lot about the Israeli-Arab conflict. As the broker between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat in the 1970’s, he demonstrated great leadership and finesse. There’s no strong evidence that the former President has a biased attitude towards any group. What about the comparison to apartheid? Well, it’s a harsh criticism, but Carter is calling the shots the way he sees them.

29 years ago, Jimmy Carter showed the world where his convictions lie: with peace, with compromise, with a humane sense of justice. Israelis and Palestinians are both well-served by Carter’s book, and I hope many in Israel and Palestine will read it.

Do independent non-governmental activist organizations like Amnesty International and Greenpeace accomplish anything? It’s hard to say. Some of these groups have large enrollments and keep extremely busy with focused activities and grassroots causes. But they rarely manage to penetrate popular awareness, and remain “niche communities” separated from mainstream dialogue. I am glad the major (and minor) organizations are there, and I know they do good work, but I wish they were more aggressive, more vocal, and more disruptive when needed.

To tell the truth, I haven’t paid much attention to any of the more well-known groups recently, but as background research for this new blog I am going to begin paying more attention, and I plan to use this space to report on the activities and pronouncements of as many independent international organizations as I can, including the following:

• Amnesty International, which works on many fronts and issues useful reports like this one

• Greenpeace (which is mainly an environmental group, but also engages in political dialogue

• The Red Cross

• The Carter Center (founded by Jimmy Carter)

• United for Peace

• Peace Action

• War Resisters

When we complain about the wars that rage around us, we often ask why the politicians and military leaders of the world can’t discover the path to peace. In fact, it’s our mistake to assume that politicians and military leaders are suited to this task.

Why do we sit and wait for them to do everything? The problem with this approach is obvious: they are the ones at war. Since when do peacemakers sit back and wait for the warring parties to create peace? We’d have to wait a long time. A person engaged in leading a nation must think strategically. This is why there’s such a vile sense of gameplaying when the top leaders of the world meet to shake hands and kiss and discuss “the world’s problems”.

The real problem becomes clearer when you think of the fact that all of these politicians and national leaders must satisfy their own constituencies and prove to their supporters that they are capable of tough military action. This explains much of what we see from both Israel and Iran — in Israel, Olmert’s aggressive response to Hezbollah and Hamas is helping to establish his credibility as a successor to Ariel Sharon, and in Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using the battle with Israel as a national call to unity. War is an essential political tool, and most political leaders are only capable of using it as such.

If peace is hard work (it is) and if we can’t trust our favorite politicians to do this work, who can we trust? Religious leaders? The United Nations? Independent organizations like Amnesty International? Artists and writers and musicians?  Theoreticians and academics? Journalists and bloggers? I’d like to spend the next few posts on this site examining this question in some detail.

In the past, political leaders have sometimes proved capable of working for peace. Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat come to mind (though Sadat sadly sacrificed his life for his actions, and Carter’s hard work failed to earn him re-election in 1980), as do Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk in South Africa and Albert Reynolds, Gerry Adams and John Major in Northern Ireland and England. But if I had to grade the work of our current crop of world politicians in promoting world peace, I’d give the whole class a D+. And that’s just because I’m feeling generous. How do the other parties I mentioned above stack up? I’ll be writing more on this soon.