We are not going to get anywhere as a nation until we understand that George W. Bush just doesn’t care about making this world a better place. If you didn’t see Bill Clinton’s appearance in CNN tonight, I encourage you to see a repeat. Christiane Amanpour hosted a kind of roundtable of experienced foreign policy and peace negotiation hands. There was Shimon Peres and the Queen of Jordan and George Mitchell and others. They took things seriously. They talked about how to solve problems. The most glaring thing about the whole spectacle was just how rare it is to see serious debate on television. Yesterday, Larry King interviewed Oprah’s Winfrey’s husband. Today they actually made good use of their airwaves.
But it all seemed like wasted breath because the foreign policy debate in this country is not being held by polite and civilized debaters. Bush just doesn’t care whether there is peace in Israel or whether the killing stops in Darfur, or whether the murder rate in Philly is spiking. He doesn’t care. Cheney doesn’t care. The sooner we realize this the sooner we will agree on what steps we need to take.
