It looks like former Senator George Mitchell will have something a bit more substantial than investigating steroids in Major League Baseball on his plate within the first few days of the obama administration, if this report by the New York Times is correct:
People close to Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that George J. Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader and the chairman of a Middle East peace commission in 2001, was a leading candidate to be the Obama administration’s special envoy to the Middle East.
The appointment of Mr. Mitchell, a seasoned and well-regarded negotiator, would signal that President-elect Barack Obama was attaching a high priority to the Middle East and the current Gaza crisis from his first days in office. Obama transition officials declined to comment on Mr. Mitchell, but David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, told CNN on Sunday that Mr. Obama would move quickly to address the instability in the Middle East and hoped that the new cease-fires in Gaza would last.
Mitchell is an experienced and well respected peace negotiator, with former experience as President Clinton’s special envoy to Northern Ireland where he played a significant role in bringing about a peace settlement. He was also the chairman of a Middle East Peace commission appointed by President Clinton which issued it’s bipartisan report in May, 2001 (one whose recommendations were promptly ignored by the Bush administration who as we now know all too well didn’t do diplomacy). Being the son of a Lebanese immigrant (his mother) gives him a personal tie to the region. The fact that he is a former politician well versed in the ways of Washington, and an experienced diplomat has to help. The fact that unlike most of Bush’s special representatives he’s not a former military leader also sends a significant message that the policy of the United States will not look to military solutions or secretive plots to promote internecine violence as its primary option for influencing events “over there.”
I wish George Mitchell luck. The situation in the Middle East is in much worse shape now than when President Clinton’s 2000 peace initiative failed, and a significant risk exists that it could worsen further if Israel invades Lebanon again or decides to unilaterally attack Iran or Syria. The Bush administration, through its pursuit of spreading war and chaos throughout the region has poisoned relations between the United States and most of Israel’s Arab neighbors to an extent I wouldn’t have believed possible if I hadn’t witnessed them myself over the past eight years. Mitchell performed miracles in Northern Ireland, but if he can simply lower tensions in the Mideast to below the boiling point he will have made significant progress in this, far more difficult assignment.
