WTF Is It Now?!?

There's a new sheriff in town - and he's an asshole

It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at U.S. President {sic} George Bush's much-awaited "vision" of Mideast peace unveiled last week, a speech so obviously crafted by special interests and driven by domestic politics that the rest of the world winced in embarrassment. Even moderate Israeli leader Shimon Peres called it a "fatal mistake."

The view abroad was captured by veteran British journalist Robert Fisk, who acidly wrote that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, who has made six visits to Bush's White House, should be allowed to run the White House press office, to "spare the American president the ignominy of parroting everything he is told by the Israelis."

Bush, a man untroubled by deep thought or irony, had the chutzpah, as we New Yorkers say, to urge Palestinians to adopt Scandinavian-style democracy, while telling them they cannot re-elect Arafat, who was elected in a fair vote by over 80% of his people - rather better than President Bush, who slid into office thanks to court orders and voter exclusions in Florida.

As for corruption, Arafat's thieving PLO cronies look like the homeless compared to Bush's mega-crook pals at Enron who helped finance his elections.

Bush has put domestic politics and his re-election before America's proper national interests. He has undermined real peacemakers among the Israelis and Arabs. Worse, instead of playing honest peace broker in the Mideast, Bush's total identification with Israel's far right ensures America will again become the target of extremists from an increasingly enraged Muslim world - and of furious Palestinians who now have nothing to lose except the cruel mirage of a fraudulent "provisional interim" state.

- - Read more of Eric Margolis here.