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How deep is your Memory Hole?
Here’s a question that I would like to pose to all conservatives, neoconservatives, Bush supporters, and Israel supporters. I call it the “How Deep Is Your Personal Memory Hole?” Test. “Memory hole,” of course, is a reference to George Orwell’s 1984, in which all records and news stories about the past policies of the regime that are no longer in conformity with its present policies are systematically destroyed, by being dropped into the memory hole. As a setup for the question, here is a report from the Forward:
WASHINGTON—The Bush administration is telling foreign diplomats in Washington that the United States might significantly scale back its involvement in the peace process and curtail its relations with the Palestinian Authority if the Islamic militant group Hamas wins next week’s Palestinian parliamentary elections or becomes a key force in a Palestinian government.Now the question is: What is wrong with these reported warnings by the U.S. to the Palestinian Authority representatives? I’ll bet most conservatives, neoconservatives, Bush supporters, and Israel supporters would have no idea what I’m talking about. The story says that the Bush administration is threatening to scale back its involvement with the “peace” process and its relationship with the PA if the terrorist organization Hamas gains a share of power in the PA. What could be possibly wrong with that? Here’s what’s wrong. In June 2002, President Bush announced, in a radical shift of U.S. policy, that the U.S. would have nothing more to do with the Palestinian Authority or with the “peace” process or with helping the Palestinians get their own state until the PA had renounced terror, dismantled the infrastructure of terror, and ceased all terror supporting activities and incitements to terror. Of course, the PA did not do that. Yet by summer 2003 Bush, in a flush of imperial arrogance following the apparent military victory in Iraq, was having a Mideast summit with Israel and the PA telling Israel it must make concessions to the PA, as though his history-changing June 2002 statement had never been made. Meanwhile, U.S. diplomatic relations with the PA, U.S. funding of the PA, visits to the White House by the PA’s president, repeated U.S. urgings that Israel make more concessions to the PA, and, last but not least, repeated statements of U.S. support for Hamas participation in the PA elections—all these things have continued to be done by the Bush administration. And now, almost four years after Bush’s solemn rejection of any U.S. relations with the PA unless the PA gave up terrorism, the administration is saying that a Hamas victory might result in some kind of partial downgrading of its relationship with the PA. In other words, Bush is threatening to return, half-way, to the very position that he would have already been in and would still be in if he had kept to his June 2002 statement. So what credibility does this new threat have? Bush has already given up any credibility on this issue. Now, does this mean that the U.S. threats to downgrade its relations with the PA will not be carried out? Not necessarily. But the point is, we can have no assurance that they will be carried out.
This is because, with occasional exceptions (and our civilization still exists only because of those occasional exceptions), the warnings that liberals make against barbarians are like all other liberal statements that either assert a traditional truth or oppose an enemy of society: all form, no substance. Email entry |