Few in high political offices have done as much to betray the interests of their country as Dick Cheney has. Cheney’s betrayal even extended to his final days in office as he sought to undermine both the Mideast peace process and then President-Elect Obama. Seymour Hersh reports:
The Obama transition team also helped persuade Israel to end the bombing of Gaza and to withdraw its ground troops before the Inauguration. According to the former senior intelligence official, who has access to sensitive information, “Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama” when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a “pro-Palestinian,” who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would “never make it in the major leagues”).
I absolutely agree that it is inappropriate for a sitting vice president to disparage the president-elect to foreign powers.
That being said, I would not conflate “undermining the Mideast peace process” with “undermining peace in the Middle East”. I have not seem much evidence that the two are more than semantically related.
‘Peace in the Middle East’ does not exist, and something that does not exist cannot be undermined.
That said, right now, the ‘Mideast Peace process’ (for all its flaws, false starts, and misconceptions) is the most significant effort to change that fact. Undermining it, with no alternative in place to advance in its place, could possibly be called undermining the goal of Mideast peace. It certainly won’t improve matters.
I intended to write “Mideast peace process” in the title (as I did in the post) but wound up dropping the word while trying to write a briefer title than the original.
I wonder whether the current “only the Chinese can use ‘right of conquest’ anymore and have it accepted” is really better for peace and stability than the old days. On the one hand you don’t have many wars of conquest. But on the other hand, nothing is ever really resolved.