It seems hardly credible, but according to top US medics, pretzels can make you faint. We are therefore assured that when President George W. Bush passed out in front of his television set, long enough to fall off a sofa and cut his face, it was nothing to worry about. This unlikely explanation for the president’s tumble suffers from the fact that it is known that Bush had been complaining of feeling unwell for the previous two days. There is, therefore, cause for concern that the most powerful man in the world is by no means at his best.
While no one believes that it is anything serious, there are already speculations about the impact of a lame-duck White House on the world. These are particularly dangerous times internationally. The United States has assumed considerable responsibilities and powers in its campaign against global terrorism. In order to bring together a coalition of support within the Arab world, the White House had to focus its attention more constructively on Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.
There were many who argued that once the campaign aims had been achieved in Afghanistan, Bush would back away from his commitment to pressure the hawkish government of Ariel Sharon into genuine moves toward a just settlement. Since the establishment of Israel, successive US administrations have followed a consistent policy of slavish support for “plucky little” Zionist Israel, against the “massed ranks of its aggressive” Arab neighbors. This blind commitment has even survived Israel’s sinking of US ships, its drowning of US sailors and its unrelenting espionage campaign against its friend and supporter. What the US hesitated to give the Zionists in the way of advanced technology, they stole anyway.
Now that their soldiers are gunning down Palestinian kids cowering in the streets, Israelis don’t look so plucky. American public opinion is still ill-informed. But it is precisely because it is stuck in “good guy-bad guy” mode that there are signs that Joe Public could be heading toward a switch, to believing the child-killing, suburb-bombing, home-bulldozing, assassinating Israelis are perhaps actually the bad guys after all.
Until he became president, Bush shared his fellow countrymen’s ignorance and general disinterest in “abroad”. But though he has run with Washington’s traditional Middle East policy, some insiders have suggested that he is impatient with the Zionist dominance of State Department thinking. Bush may not grasp it fully, but even he can probably see that supporting any proposed deal that is based on Israel’s unbending terms will be no deal at all. If via the Mitchell plan and the Zinni mission, Bush is actually seeking to introduce some even-handedness into US Middle East policy, then he is set to stir up a hornet’s nest of Zionist wrath. It may yet prove too much trouble for the president to take on his State Department.
If, however, Bush’s unusual collapse is a symptom of more serious medical problems, we can be absolutely sure that, lacking any clear direction from a troubled White House, Washington’s foreign policy will click back on to its traditional Zionist track. Palestinians will continue to choke on Israeli aggression, while the US president may again choke on a typical Yiddish pretzel.
