Rattlesnake Ridge      

 
      BFF
I am expecting two much-publicized speeches on the Middle East this next week. My advice to both speakers (I prefer speechifiers in this case) is or would have been: don’t bother. But one of them is dead. Bin Laden reportedly has an audio tape prepared for after his death. I wonder if we will hear it as we watch some of reported porno tapes found in his hideout in Pakistan (some say they were under his bed). Okay, like many of us he can watch almost all the porn he wants, there are no religious injunctions against it because in the old days they had no video recording and Arabs did not draw lewd figure on walls like the Romans and Greeks.
Osama’s speech will be a waste of time because it will not turn the tide and make his movement any more attractive to many Arabs and Muslims, especially outside the Arabian Peninsula.
The other speech, by President Barack Obama, will be as useless. Mr. Obama’s hands are tied behind his back by the coming elections and by the powerful Israeli lobby that has a veto power over American Middle East policy. He must know his speech will be useless at this time, for it will avoid or evade the Palestinian-Israeli issue. He will make some general statements about the Palestinian issue and his support for democracy in Libya and Syria but not in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. I wrote here about two years ago or so when the US administration introduced a Middle East initiative and said it expected a solution within a year: I said fohgetaboutit. As did others, and we were all right.
Cheers
mhg



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