A Democracy Worth Reclaiming

One of the rules of diplomacy is to occupy space and time between and among antagonists while the facts on the ground change to become more amenable to a solution. You do not walk away from it unless you are prepared to see a situation go from bad to worse, and the situation in the Middle East has gone from less than a dozen Palestinians and half a dozen Israelis killed in 1990, 1991, to a situation now where you've had 600-plus Israelis killed and well over 2,500 Palestinians killed. There's no excuse for that.

The solution, if there is a solution, in the short term, is to put a much heavier emphasis and a much heavier political will behind a mediation process that will involve having a presidentially appointed Middle East mediator, upstanding, someone who can get the president on the phone whenever he wants, somebody who can speak to Sharon and Arafat and everybody else, and they will understand that that word is coming directly from the president of the United States. And that person would have to be there all the time. Condi Rice can't do that.

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Joseph Wilson in the limelight last year.

Details

JOSEPH WILSON SPEAKS
At McCaw Hall on Friday, Feb. 6, as part of the "American Voices" series sponsored by Foolproof Performing Arts and co-sponsored by Seattle Weekly.

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More About

• Joseph Wilson
• United Nations
• Saddam Hussein
• The White House
• International Relations

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Last question. With all of these grim issues, what gives you hope within all this?

One of the things that has given me hope is having had the opportunity to go around my own country. I've been to Iowa several times, New Hampshire, Maine, New York, Massachusetts, California several times, I was supposed to be in Arizona today. I find that there is still no finer people than the American people, and there is no better system than the one that we have. And it is well worth fighting for and it is a democracy that's well worth taking back from those who have usurped it and taken it into their own hands.

gparrish@seattleweekly.com