Are the Saudis now being used to bash Condoleeza Rice?

Speaking about how messages can be misinterpreted (see post below), here's what seems to me to be an example of how garbled things can get when one has an agenda.

Now you are going to have to bore down somewhat in agreements that may seem, well, irrelevant, but actually, I don't think they are as if you understand this background, you'll have an easier time following the news coming from Egypt this week. So try to bear with me here.

First recall the Mecca accord, the February letter agreement from President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, to Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, at long last authorizing him to form the government. Here was the translation of that letter as provided by the Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune:

In my capacity as the head of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the president of the Palestinian Authority, and after reading the Basic Law, and in accordance with my authorities:

a) I designate you to form the upcoming Palestinian government within the time specified under the Basic Law (five weeks).
b) After forming the government and presenting it to us, it should be presented to the Palestinian Legislative Council for a vote of confidence.
c) I call upon you as the head of the upcoming Palestinian government to commit to the higher interests of the Palestinian people, to preserve its rights and to preserve its achievements and to develop them, and to work in order to achieve its national goals as were approved by the Palestine National Council, the clauses of the Basic Law and the National Reconciliation Document and the decisions of the Arab summit.

Based on this, I call upon you to respect international resolutions and the agreements signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Note in particular this last line - and clause c). This was how the Saudi King, who brokered this agreement, was able to get Hamas to implicitly recognize Israel's right to exist. This is because on September 9, 1993, for example, Yasser Arafat, then chairman of the PLO, stated the following to the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (via The Jewish Virtual Library):

The signing of the Declaration of Principles marks a new era in the history of the Middle East. In firm conviction thereof, I would like to confirm the following PLO commitments:

The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.

But now see how David Samuels at the Atlantic Monthly bungles what was actually agreed upon in the Mecca accord:

This past February, King Abdullah, tired of seeing Palestinians fighting Palestinians (and concerned that Hamas was drifting toward Iran, which had been providing Hamas with money, weapons, and military training), invited Hamas and Fatah to Saudi Arabia, where he brokered a power-sharing deal known as the Mecca agreement. Saudi Arabia also promised to deliver $1 billion to keep the new Palestinian government afloat. The Saudi deal is widely seen as a defeat for Rice, because it created a Palestinian unity government that does not recognize past agreements with Israel and whose prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, a member of Hamas, proclaims the Palestinian “right” to “resistance in all its forms, including popular resistance to occupation,” which extends to suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. [Emphasis added.]

Now how could Samuels - not to mention the venerable Atlantic Monthly - have so botched the reporting here? Allow me to speculate.

I think Samuel's real intent was to undercut the Secretary of State. I say this because early on in the piece, he quotes Richard Armitage (and others), who essentially characterize her as a lightweight.

“I didn’t know that she had any strong views,” Armitage, Powell’s deputy, is quoted as saying. Then after describing him as someone "who did not think highly of her performance," Samuels allows Armitage to deliver the knock-out punch: “I mean, she was an expert in one country that no longer exists."

So to facilitate his storyline that Secretary Rice doesn't know what she is doing in the Middle East, I think Samuels thought he could mischaracterize the efforts of the Saudi king. This is a reasonable tact as very few people are eager to defend the Saudi monarchy after 9/11. In this way, he could demonstrate that the Secretary was naive for having been silly enough to trust King Abdullah's good faith.

This you see would reinforce Samuel's personal view which he divulges in a subsequent interview posted on the Atlantic Online. In response to the question: "You seem to like and respect the Secretary of State. Do you have confidence in her ability to bring stability to the Middle East?" this is what he says:

No. I do not. I don’t think that America can bring stability to other places in the world, any more than we can bring democracy. We are not Prometheus, bringing the gift of fire to man. We are a nation, with a particular history and a system of government that has worked well for us, so far, despite some pretty big bumps along the road. To say anything more than that strikes me as a kind of insane arrogance for which the Gods will have their revenge.

I don’t believe for a minute that humanity is moving towards a future global order of liberal states that will practice American-style democracy, and in which Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Chinaman and Jew will live in harmony with their neighbors. I don’t think the future of the planet will look like Bethpage, Long Island, on a global scale. I think it’s more likely that someone will wake up tomorrow morning and turn his neighbor into cat food.

Whether or not he's right or wrong about this cat food business, Samuels is by no means the first person to have thought of using the Saudis to bash the Bush administration. In fact, it's a fairly well established tactic, as this blogger reported earlier (again, scroll down for details).

Rumors are circulating that Cheney may not be Svengali afterall

Jim Hoaglund in today's Washington Post says that speculation is increasing, inside and out of the Beltway, that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has now replaced Vice President Cheney as the person with the most influence over President Bush.

Rice, according to Hoaglund's sources, is supposed to have "told Bush in January that he should devote his final two years in office to seeking diplomatic agreements with North Korea and Iran and an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. That account emphasizes that Rice is not simply outflanking Cheney in intermittent internal policy battles but has won full agreement and support from the president on the strategic goals and methods she and her diplomats are pursuing."

Hoaglund points out that "Bush has always been much more the decision maker than the Cheney-as-puppeteer image conveyed" and to prove his point, he cites a number of occasions on which Bush clearly did not follow Cheney's lead. He didn't take Cheney's advice to go back to the UN to get a second resolution to sanction the use of force in Iraq back in 2003. He didn't listen to Cheney in the aftermath of the invasion either, taking instead, as Hoaglund says, the "distastrous" counsel of proconsul L. Paul Bremer and others.

Hoaglund also claims that Cheney has had a "more relaxed attitude" towards Iran since he entered office because of his tenure at Halliburton, the implication being it was probably not Cheney who was urging Bush to take a hardline stance vis-a-vis the Islamic Republic.