Annapolis: nothing from nothing leaves nothing

“As yet another attempt to get a final settlement gets underway, it is fair to ask if this is really more about giving the appearance of progress than making progress.”
Paul Reynolds, world affairs correspondent, BBC News

David Seaton's News Links
The legendary cafeteria of the Israeli parliament, where all the deals are done, where the fate of the Middle East and beyond is often settled in an incongruent corner deli atmosphere of chatty intimacy: a place that is usually a hotbed of rumors and activity, is strangely quiet.

Reading the article below from the Jerusalem Post tells the whole story. about Annapolis

In very complex situations, like this one where there is little real information, look for the significant detail: stories like this often tell you more than pages and pages of official drivel. DS

Why Annapolis draws yawns in Knesset corridors - Jerusalem Post
Abstract: To understand the difference between the upcoming Annapolis peace summit and previous peace efforts, politicians said they need only peer into the Knesset's unofficial conference room - the Knesset cafeteria. "In the weeks before Oslo, and before Camp David, the Knesset was so full the cafeteria ran out of food," said one Kadima MK, who was the only coalition member in the nearly-empty cafeteria Monday. "The excitement was tangible. Things were bustling. You couldn't find a table, and the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife... That is, if you even got a knife. Look at it now." Barely two weeks before the Annapolis peace summit, and the Knesset cafeteria remained largely empty of MKs despite three no-confidence motions and faction meetings on the day's agenda.(....) "This is not a serious effort at peace talks. It is barely a diplomatic step, let alone a historic step," said MK Ran Cohen (Meretz). "There is nothing new in these talks to garner excitement... I have been an MK many years and I don't see anyone here, in the Knesset, that really believes that a peace treaty [can be] reached at Annapolis."(...) On Monday, MK Arye Eldad (NU-NRP) sent a letter to the US administration asking that they postpone Annapolis to a future date "where the Israeli people and the political climate will be more receptive of peace talks." The move has been the most drastic step taken by the right-wing parties, said MK Yitzhak Levy (NU-NRP). "In past years there were serious protests and serious efforts being made by the right-wing lobby to make our concerns known ahead of peace negotiations. This time around, there is some talk, but no one is really taking it seriously," said Levy. "There is a general consensus that this whole process is more declarative than serious." READ IT ALL

Condoleezza Rice: the Republican's greatest success story

David Seaton's News Links
I disagree with the conclusion of Fred Kaplan's article, reprinted below. Far from being a failure Condoleezza Rice is the one great Republican success story of the Bush years.

Condoleezza Rice has done more than any other individual to reinforce the most basic conservative Republican positions on both feminism and affirmative action. Rarely ever has anyone so advanced the Republican's key agendas. DS

Condoleezza Rice: Why Her Dreams Crashed - Washington Post
Abstract: Rice isn't used to failure, and most Americans aren't used to thinking of her as one. (...) Rice remains one of the architects of a fantasy foreign policy, and her record as secretary of state gives little hope that she'll be able to reverse that verdict in the administration's final months. The case against Condi starts with her dismal tenure as national security adviser in Bush's first term -- perhaps the worst in the office's history.(...) The problem was that, in the course of counseling George W. Bush, she fell under his tutelage much more than vice versa. Instead of informing his instincts, she formalized them into doctrine -- and came to believe in it herself. In his second inaugural address, Bush declared that his main goal would be to end tyranny and spread democracy around the world. For a few months, some wondered whether freedom might really be "on the march." Iraq held its first free elections; in Ukraine, protests and turmoil followed a rigged presidential vote; massive rallies in Beirut forced Syria to end its 30-year occupation of Lebanon. Rice took these as signs that the world was spinning on a new axis, and she took Bush's words as a mandate to spin it harder.(...) While advising Bush's son during his 2000 presidential campaign, Rice remained firmly in this mold. In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, she called "power politics" and "power balances" the key elements of national security. Yet just five years later, she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, "the fundamental character of regimes matters more today than the international distribution of power." And: "Democracy is the only assurance of lasting peace and security between states, because it is the only guarantee of freedom and justice within states." Her friends and colleagues gasped at the reversal. Cynics ascribed it to a psychological complex about powerful male tutors. The merely skeptical attributed it to a pragmatic realization that she had to adopt Bush's messianic views to keep her job.(...) At times this year, Rice seems to have returned to her realist roots, most notably in striking a quick nuclear disarmament deal with North Korea. After years of scorning Arab-Israeli diplomacy, she now hopes to assemble a last-ditch Israeli-Palestinian peace conference; but Washington's leverage has diminished, the parties know she and Bush are lame ducks, and the region's ground is burning. She is said to be locked in a face-off with Cheney over Iran policy: He wants to bomb, she wants to keep talking. But it is a sad comment on the endurance of her one great asset -- her influence with the president -- that nobody knows whose side the decider will take. Finally, there looms Iraq, where the only recent tactical successes have involved building up tribal warlords, not creating a beacon of democracy. This war has been Rice's war as much as anybody's in the administration. Long after her celebrity and charm have been forgotten, her epitaph will endure: She pursued democracy at the expense of stability, and achieved neither. READ IT ALL