Bush is just a cockeyed optimist

President George W. Bush will be in the Middle East from January 8 to 16, when he will visit Israel, the occupied West Bank, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Seven countries in nine days minus the hours spent flying. He has little more time than to do a spot of glad-handing hail-fellow-well-met and to promote the US cause to the countries he is visiting. It would serve as the ideal platform for him to try and reassert the US's Mideast policy, while at the same time recapitulating the virtues of American foreign policy.

As if in preparation for his visit, Bush called upon Israel to dismantle all wildcat colonies in Palestinian territory as they were in contravention of the spirit and intent of the Annapolis agreement. It is a curious agreement to call upon, for very few people are aware of what the spirit or intent of the Annapolis meeting is as so little came out of it.

But, undeterred, Bush is determined to talk up the agreement in the hope that the Arab nations he is visiting will fall in line with his thinking, with the ultimate purpose to see an end to the "Palestinian question" - as US commentators like to call it.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in recognising Bush's comment, has admitted that Israel has violated the roadmap - something that most Arabs have dismissed as ineffective but Israel hangs on to tenaciously. But the admission alone is inadequate as no indication was given by Olmert that Israel intended to reverse its policies of illegal colony building.

Bush hopes to achieve peace in the Middle East before he leaves office in January 2009, claiming he was an "optimistic guy". But, to paraphrase the song from South Pacific, this Bush is a cockeyed optimist, immature and incurably green.