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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (86096)	11/14/2004 3:48:43 PM
From: Captain Jack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

LB-- you are probablycorrect. The surgeon said I did not have to have the gall bladder removed if all fat, grease, fried foods & etc was avoided. The operation was never considered being put off then. Eating fish & chicken without skin only forever sounded crazy.

To: LindyBill who wrote (86096)	11/14/2004 4:00:57 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793964

"Star-Search Palestine": Do we want to encourage another drama queen to succeed Arafat? By Beldar on Politics Does anyone know off-hand if NYT op-ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman has kids? Friedman consistently amuses me by the way he turns "moderation" into "mush-headedness." His column today starts off fairly enough by noting that "any honest history of Yasir Arafat will judge him on his voids, not his visions." But he concludes with this bit of cluelessness: If only President Bush called in Colin Powell and said: "Colin, neither of us have much to show by way of diplomacy for the last four years. I want you to get on an airplane and go out to the Middle East. I want you to sit down with Israelis and Palestinians and forge a framework for a secure Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and progress toward a secure peace in the West Bank, and I don't want you to come back home until you've got that. Only this time I will stand with you. "As long as you're out there, I will not let Rummy or Cheney fire any more arrows into your back. So get going. It's time for you to stop sulking over at Foggy Bottom and time for me to make a psychological breakthrough with the Arab world that can also help us succeed in Iraq — by making it easier for Arabs and Muslims to stand with us. I don't want to see you back here until you've put our words into deeds." Any parent who's had any success dealing with his or her kids knows that there's a difference between discipline and drama. Drama — including that generated by family summits ("Tell me how you were feeling, Molly, when you decided to slam your textbook into your brother Adam's left ear?") — can and often does encourage more of the misbehavior you're trying to discourage. One of the key reasons that Yasser Arafat got away for so long having done so little constructive (and indeed, with having continued to do that which was incredibly destructive) was that American Presidents, European leaders, the Nobel Peace Prize committee, et al. continually put him into the dramatic spotlight. They treated him with a dignity he'd never earned and respect for which he'd consistently proved himself unworthy. They gave him ample incentive to continue misbehaving, and until Dubya's administration, they never included being ignored and isolated and marginalized as among the permissible range of diplomatic options. I hope that genuine leaders will emerge to represent the Palestinian people. I believe that quiet, behind-the-scenes diplomacy from the United States — emphatically not conducted in summits with Colin Powell in front of CNN's and al-Jazeera's TV cameras — may materially assist in that prospect. Inviting the Palestinians to promote a new drama queen to take Arafat's place, however — defining "success" primarily in terms of what America and Israel do (or whether Cheney and Rumsfeld are being properly supportive of Powell, for pete's sake), and thereby allowing thugs like Arafat to "succeed" by doing nothing more than frustrating everyone's hopes — is exactly the wrong thing to do.