So it took me about a month to slog through the 214 pages of the Edward Lucas book about Russia, The New Cold War. Hoping to explore my reaction to that book in a subsequent blog post. For now let's just say that I'm really enjoying its successor, Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound. One of the best things about finishing the writing of my own book is that I'm once again allowing myself to read novels. That said, the Roth novel opens with a depressing scene. It starts with Zuckerman the novelist getting recognized on a Manhattan bus and then accosted and harangued until he has to flee the bus for the street. Set in the late '60s, the novel's showing its age, and that's the depressing part. Can you imagine any living novelist being recognized on a bus these days?
Hillary, it's time to quit. There's the latest stupid thing you said -- which succeeds the previous stupid thing you said. Meanwhile, pretty much every aspect of Bush's Knesset speech last week has been gone over and refuted. Never mind Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert's domestic political troubles; it remains a huge slap in Bush's face that the week after the U.S. president's visit, Olmert has contradicted American wishes and opened negotiations with Syria, which the U.S. government has called a state sponsor of terrorism. Oh, and remember how Bush referenced the 1938 Munich Conference? Daily Kos diarist revbludge refutes that on several levels. And a New York Times news analysis piece earlier this week quoted a Brookings Middle East expert thusly: "“Bush’s rhetoric is completely disconnected from everything on the ground.” And of course, as I am apt to do, I've already pointed out that my book argues that friendships between then-Soviet ambassador Aleksandr N. Yakovlev and such Canadian figures as Pierre Trudeau and George Cohon helped to set Yakovlev on his path toward perestroika.
All of which raises the question: Why is Bush so dead-set against speaking with enemy states? Why be so dogmatic and inflexible? Why pin himself to such an absolutist position? I don't have an answer, although I'd be interested in hearing others' opinions. For what it's worth, I wonder whether his hardline, isolationist rhetoric has anything to do with his fundamentalist Christian beliefs -- with a belief in evil and a tendency to see the world in moral absolutes. If one is able to write off other human beings as evil... and if one is able to write off terrorists as evil-doers... then of course they should be isolated and ignored. Because they're irredeemable.
To me, the reality is a hell of a lot more complicated. I don't think it's possible to completely write off as evil other human beings, regardless of how much they disagree with you, and I believe that a seemingly intransigent disagreement -- between people, between states -- can usually be improved with discussion.
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