MICHAEL CARMICHAEL

archived: 21 - 27 May, 2006         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  May 23, 2006                       

                        ON THE WARPATH:  OLMERT IN WASHINGTON 

Earlier this spring, Bush’s White House reshuffle led to the appointment of Joshua Bolten and his aide de camp, Joel Kaplan, to key positions.  Bolten became Chief of Staff and Kaplan was named Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.  Shortly after Bolten took over his new office, Ehud Olmert became the Prime Minister of Israel. 

Prior to his appointment to official positions in the government of George W. Bush, Bolten worked at Goldman Sachs in London, where he dealt with the legal and financial affairs of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party.  Olmert has been with Likud for decades.  He served the Shamir government as a member of the powerful Finance Committee, as well as two other key committee assignments:  the Foreign Affairs & Security Committee and the Defense Budget Committee.  In the early 1990s, Olmert was elected to two terms as Mayor of Jeruslem.  A successful businessman, Olmert has been linked to Likud’s finances for years. 

When Ariel Sharon broke with Likud over his Gaza withdrawal gambit, Olmert joined his old comrade in the new political party, Kadima.  Preferring to call the shots from behind the scenes, Olmert never expected to lead the government.  But, events intervened, and Olmert was forced into the position of party leader when Sharon suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke and entered what now appears to be a terminal vegetative state. 

When Olmert meets with Bush this week, both leaders will be facing difficult political situations.  Bush is more pressurized than any president in US history with dwindling credibility and a costly, unpopular and escalating civil war in Iraq.  Deeply despondent by the collapse of his presidency, Bush has turned over the reigns of power to Bolten who has devised a five-point game plan designed to restore presidential credibility.   

Bolten’s plan is deemed to be borderline and desperate mainly because it involves a unilateral US bombing campaign against 400 strategic targets in Iran.  Time magazine calls Bolten’s plan to bomb Iran the “riskiest” element in his dangerous endgame strategy to close out the presidency of George W. Bush.  In order to bolster the domestic support for US military intervention in Iran, Olmert, Bolten’s associate from Likud, is being moved into position and required to visit the White House in order to begin the drumbeats for escalating an already deeply unpopular war in the Middle East. 

When Sharon collapsed into coma, he left Olmert with a gigantic political burden:  an unfulfilled plan to withdraw a vast majority of the Israeli settlements from the Occupied Territories.  While only a few thousand Israeli settlers were uprooted from their encampments in Gaza, tens of thousands of Israelis will be torn from their homes on the West Bank in accordance with Sharon’s shifty plan.  Sharon devised his plan in order to grab land deemed to be indispensable to the security of Israel for it violates the Oslo Agreement because it is on the wrong side of the Green Line drawn up decades ago as the final border between Israel and Palestine.  During the election campaign and since taking office, Olmert has committed himself and his government to the fulfillment of Sharon’s devious plan.  In reaction against Sharon’s plan – which is seen purely as a land grab – the Palestinians elected a government dominated by their most militant political faction, Hamas.  Driven by short-sighted misjudgment and hypocritical policies, the situation in the Middle East is rapidly sinking into the quagmire of tectonic instability. 

Bush needs Olmert’s support for what will be a unilateral attack on Iran, and Olmert needs Bush to concede to the Israeli land grab. 

Of the two men, Bush is politically the weaker.  He will clearly acquiesce to any demands placed upon him by Olmert in exchange for the merest gesture of support for a US bombing campaign against nuclear targets in Iran. 

While the political calculus of the situation is blatantly obvious, it is far from convincing.  There is no guarantee that Bolten’s plan to punish Iran will not backfire, just as the ill-conceived war on Iraq has become a gross liability for the Bush White House.  Neither is there any certainty that Israel will be made more secure by a US bombardment of Iran.   A US bombing campaign might result in a parallel escalation of Islamist terror that could lead to major attacks on either on US soil or in Israel or both.  For Israel, the threats are greater.  Targets from Tel Aviv to Dimona, the reactor which provides enriched plutonium for the manufacture of their considerable nuclear arsenal could be endangered by the Bush White House’s desperation for a policy, any policy that might restore their deflating credibility. 

When Olmert is in Washington this week, he will not only be leading the drumbeats for expanding Bush’s deeply unpopular war in the Middle East from Iraq to Iran, he will also be leading Israel on the warpath.      

Michael Carmichael has been a professional public affairs consultant, author and broadcaster since 1968. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement, a global nonprofit public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC's Today Programme, Hardtalk, PM, as well as numerous appearances on ITN, NPR and many European broadcasts examining politics and culture. He can be reached through his website: www.planetarymovement.org