Misspoken President
Reader comment on item: Bush is rewarding terrorism

Submitted by Vitaly Purto (United States), Jun 26, 2002 at 20:48

You're right on all five topics: misreading Palestinian opinion, moral equivalence, victimology, good governance the key, and over emphasizing terrorism.

But even criticizing this Administration is totally irrelevant: for Bush the Second reminds me very much late Russian czar Nicholas II, who always followed the opinion of the last man to whom he listened .

This parallel, I'm afraid, is not entirely superficial. There is much in common between elites, whose members, brought up in times of peace and prosperity, do not have the foggiest idea of reality.

The British Empire finally lost to the Arab nationalism (with American help, of course) in spite of the fact that British services were awash with Arabists who were renowned for thorough knowledge of the region. Some of them, like the infamous Jack Philby, even converted to Islam. Neither the State Department nor the CIA can sport anything close to a lifetime dedication to a particular region, where they are supposed to command expertise...


Vitaly Purto

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