Knock, knock

Flew into Washington, DC, earlier today – having come via Detroit.  The taxi driver from Ronald Reagan/National Airport proved to be a delightful Palestinian, born in Jerusalem in 1959, the only year I ever visited that beautiful, blighted city.  

He had been tricked into exile by the Israelis 35 years ago – and told me how the Israelis bulldozed some of his family members’ homes a few days back, homes that had been built in the 1950s on land given to them by Jordan, on the grounds that the land belongs to Jews.  Hard not to share the sense of grievance.  He had zero hope that President-elect Obama would do anything to rein in Israel, but I said I’m not so sure.  My sense is that Israel sits on a diaspora-spread Krakatoa which will blow at some point, though the magma chambers may prove to lie in geographically distant parts of Iran or similar.

As I tapped away at the keyboard, with an aromatic bottle of Sam Adams at my elbow, it struck me what an intricately cantilevered global house of cards we live in.  And as I sent an email to a new friend in Tokyo, it also struck me – today is Veterans’ Day here – how that this simple act would have been seen very differently a mere 65 years ago.  Treasonable.  

And listening to President Bush doing a Veterans’ Day speech on an aircraft carrier today, it struck me again just how unconscionably flat-footed he and his cabal have been.  Yes, Britain helped cause much of the mayhem in the area originally covered by the Palestinian Mandate, but you’d think someone in the U.S. government would have the capacity to learn the right lessons from history.  He seems to have been awarded the Freedom Medal and given a standing ovation, when I suspect the Court of History will conclude – whatever the motives – the results of his actions could scarcely have been more damaging if he, Cheney, Rumsfeld et. al. had willfully set out with treasonable intent.  

What thoughts, you wonder, were really running through Obama’s mind when the Bushes showed the President-elect and his family around the White House this week?