Dear John,
Every few years a messiah arrives in Jerusalem, shakes hands, makes demands and promises to make peace in our time. Then when the whole thing blows up in his face, he throws up his hands and flies back blaming the ungrateful Jews for not embracing his vision.
You must have known this would happen. So many false messiahs have come before you, squinting against the bright sunshine, muttering under their breath to aides and assistants, pounding the table at meetings, downing martinis and fantasizing about the Nobel Peace Prize that they were sure was waiting for them at the end.
And they left with nothing except sunburn and simmering rage.
Did you really think you would be any different? Were you so delusional that you imagined you could succeed where career diplomats with a lifetime of experience in the region had failed?
What convinced you that you were the negotiating genius that the conflict had been waiting for?
It’s not as if you had a good track record negotiating anything. Do you remember meeting Madame Binh in Paris? What about carrying Daniel Ortega’s peace offer after assuring everyone that he wasn’t a Communist? Right before he flew to Moscow. And let’s not gloss over your visit to Assad. Was that peace in the air or was it just the nerve gas?
I know you don’t have time to remember all your diplomatic triumphs. Or like Hillary, any of them.
When did you successfully negotiate anything, up to and including the purchase of your latest yacht?
You went to Paris to aid the Viet Cong. You went to Nicaragua to aid the FSLN terrorists. You went to Israel to aid the PLO. The USSR fell, but your old nostalgia for Communist guerrillas and killers hasn’t deserted you. It’s why you failed. And it’s why you’ll fail over and over again.
No matter what the PLO did, you blamed Israel. Just as no matter what the Viet Cong or the Sandinistas did, you blamed America.
The PLO can call for Israel’s destruction, champion terrorism and ally with Hamas, but one of your minions will still provide anonymous quotes saying that the PLO can’t be expected to negotiate while Israel possibly considers building houses in Jerusalem.
What’s a little thing like genocide compared to a house?
Israel is expected to free terrorists who murder elderly Holocaust survivors, but the delicate sensibilities of PLO terrorists are outraged whenever a Jewish family that they haven’t managed to murder yet moves into a home in Jerusalem.
Good negotiators can put their sympathies aside to achieve their goals. But you never could do that. No matter how many press releases you put out touting your special relationship with Israel, a relationship almost as special as the one your fellow Massachusetts senator had with a girl in a ’67 Oldsmobile whose drowned corpse turned up on the next day, you spoil it by threatening another intifada or calling Israel an Apartheid state. You lack the basic criteria of a diplomat. You’re a bad liar.
You show up to provide moral support to the murderers and go home as their useful idiot. That was the pitiful function you served in Paris, in Nicaragua and in Israel. Forty-four years later you’re still departing with that same awkward look on your face as if somewhere beneath the layers of Botox and suntan lotion you understand that something is wrong.
What you don’t understand is that the something wrong is you. It’s always been you. The only thing you ever did with any of your unsolicited interventions was make things worse. Your anti-war activism helped polarize a nation. Your malicious Winter Soldier testimony scapegoated veterans. Your Ortega intervention emboldened a terrorist group. And your peace initiative led to a unity agreement with Hamas.