infinite improbability

Was Jimmy Carter's Mideast trip really US back channel negotiations?

Jimmy Carter's recent jaunt around the Middle East, meeting with Syria and with Hamas, has been condemned by both the United States and Israel, but I've been thinking, and I'm not entirely convinced that the public language condemning the trip actually represents the real stake that the US may have in the meetings.

I know this sounds crazy, but stay with me. The US has a problem. They've stated that they will not negotiate with Hamas, to do so goes against their policies against negotiating with terrorists. All well and good, except that Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people, and no one has denied that it was a free and fair election. If there's going to be a Palestinian state, both the US and Israel is going to have to figure out a way to talk to Hamas, something they won't do so long as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. How then is anyone going to accomplish George Bush's goal to have a peace agreement and an independent Palestinian state by the end of his term in office? The clock is ticking, and there's less than 9 months left to pull off that goal.

If only there was a third party who could set the stage for negotiations. Someone who Hamas would trust, who could possibly convince Hamas to make the concessions necessary for the US and Israel to begin talks, but who both countries could distance themselves from, both in the eventuality that it didn't work out, and so that they are not seen negotiating directly with terrorists. Who out there could possibly play that role? Oh, I don't know, maybe Jimmy Carter?

Think about it for a minute. Carter is someone who Hamas trusts--his organization monitored the Palestinian elections, his one great success as president was helping negotiate the peace deal between Israel and Egypt, and his post-presidency reputation of doing these sorts of things gives him the appearance of being a neutral party. He's the perfect person to send if the US wants to open back channel negotiations with Hamas. He's not there in an official capacity, because he's from a different political party and because of his past criticisms of the Bush administration policies, plausible deniability isn't even a question. He goes over there, the Bush administration soundly condemns the trip, he's able to play the ol' "I'm not supposed to be doing this but..." game, and to use that to communicate what areas the US might be willing to bend on, if Hamas makes certain concessions. It's all highly unofficial, of course, but that's the point. It's a way to float trial balloons without the US government making any sort of promises, and if nothing comes of it, well, it doesn't really matter since everyone made it abundantly clear that Carter was on his own. And if it works, even better, the goal was accomplished, Carter looks like a hero, Bush gets the legacy he wants of being the one to bring peace to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the Palestinians get their state, and Israel doesn't have to worry about attack. A win, win, win, win, all around.

Umm, Hillary, I don't think you should be calling Obama an elitist

What's wrong with this picture? The woman who, between her and her husband has made over a $100 million in the last 6 years, who grew up in a generally privileged upper middle class family, is calling the guy who needed scholarships to get a private school education, and who didn't finish paying off student loans until he got a book deal 4 years ago, an elitist. Sure, Obama's not poor by any means, but the kind of money he has is nowhere in the ball park of the kind of money the Clintons or McCains have.

Hillary Clinton no more knows what it means to be poor than I do, but she keeps running around talking about her grandfather who worked in a lace factory to sound like she understands the blue collar everyman. I could play that game too, talk about my grandfather who worked for a time in the Wilbur Chocolate factory, my great aunt who worked in the Hershey factory, tell about how my mom grew up on a farm--complete with outhouse--in rural PA, about my dad working in a pretzel bakery during college (and if I really wanted to lay it on thick, I could talk about the back injury he got working there, of course leaving out that it wasn't bad enough to stop him from playing college soccer but that if need be, he could have used the injury to avoid getting drafted). The point is, it's easy to pull stories out to make it seem like you're less privileged than you are, but despite the fact that everything I wrote about my family is true, it would be dishonest of me to pretend that I was anything other than your average middle class kid, and it's dishonest of Hillary to pretend that she was anything other than a middle class kid, or for someone with her background go be going around calling someone with far smaller financial resources than she does an elitist. It's especially disingenuous when she does so in the context of Obama trying to describe (admittedly, poorly, though I understood the point he was trying to make, and I think he was right) why lower income, blue collar folk don't trust what politicians promise them.

I guess if I ever run for office, I can pretend to know what it's like to be a struggling blue collar worker too.