U.S. President Barack Obama greets members of the military at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 31, 2010.The Associated Press
Eleven months ago, less than a year after taking office, President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As Leonard Cohen would put it, it seems so long ago.
Looking back to those heady days for the new U.S. Administration, it's inconceivable that any serious person could have defended the Nobel committee's choice of Mr. Obama for the 2010 peace prize. As one quipster put it at the time, next thing you know the committee will be awarding a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry.
Today, almost two years into his mandate and with his popularity in sharp decline, Mr. Obama - after twice blowing a renewal of the Mideast peace process through major unforced errors - has finally succeeded in persuading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to meet face-to-face. Few observers are optimistic about the prospects for peace - other than those who've made a career out of the process.
For example, in a piece in The New York Times that was re-published in yesterday's National Post, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk writes:
"There are four factors that distinguish the direct talks that will get under way on Sept. 2 in Washington from previous attempts - factors that offer some reason for optimism.
"First, violence is down considerably in the region. Throughout the 1990s, Israel was plagued by terrorist attacks, which undermined its leaders' ability to justify tangible concessions."
In fact, there was virtually no violence in the first half of the decade. During that period, Israelis and Palestinians signed the Oslo peace accords. U.S. officials were not involved in the process, nor did they even know that Israelis and Palestinians were negotiating until very late in the day.
After Mr. Indyk and his colleagues took control of the peace process, it blew up in everyone's face with great loss of Mideast lives. In part, that was because of the Palestinian violence to which he refers, in part it was because of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. But it was also due to the Americans' mistake of inviting Israelis and Palestinians to Camp David before they were ready - to meet Bill Clinton's timetable, not theirs.
Tonight, to mark the occasion of the opening of negotiations that are supposedly to reach a Mideast peace agreement in one year, Mr. Obama has invited Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah II to join the protagonists at a White House dinner. It's hard to believe that any of these gentlemen - much less the presidents of Iran or Syria - thinks he has much to learn about matters of war and peace from the U.S. president.
Last night, in only his second Oval Office speech since taking office (don't ask about the frequency of White House press conferences), Mr. Obama "turned the page" on Iraq. And, after having adopted George W. Bush's General and that General's surge strategy that he rejected in 2007, the President promised that the U.S. would remain sort-of-committed to Afghanistan until it could turn the page on that one too.