His departure is not a “low point”, George Mitchell’s Mideast Failure and Obama's Foot is in his Mouth

Like a bum who's lost everything, then gone crazy. The bum wanders around telling strangers on the sidewalk about what a great man he once was and his one great achievement, or at least the one for which he takes credit.

All you want to do is get away from this bum, he reeks of false pomposity (that's redundant and so is Obama's position).

FrontPage Magazine » George Mitchell’s Mideast Failure

by Seth Mandel, he is a writer specializing in Middle Eastern politics and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Horowitz Freedom Center.

....Mitchell was bound to try and translate his work in Ireland to negotiations with the Israelis and Palestinians. Walter Russell Mead has a typically thoughtful and comprehensive rundown at The American Interest of why the peace processes are so unlike each other, but it basically boils down to four major differences: territorial maximalists in Ireland were few and far between compared to the Arab-Israeli conflict; there were effective governments and institutions on both sides—something the Palestinians have yet to produce; all indications are that anti-Israel violence will continue no matter what; and the international community was willing to play a constructive role in the Irish situation. ...

....There are few constants in the Arab-Israeli conflict that can help a negotiator plan a strategy. Foremost among them is what Hillary Clinton said in an interview with the New Yorker in 2007: “You do not get people into a process or to the table to make any kind of tough decisions, including compromises, unless the other side knows that your commitment to Israel is unshakable.”

There are two noteworthy parts to that quote that make it a concise expression of one of the basic rules of the Middle East. The obvious one is the unshakable commitment to Israel. That is the first requirement for productive negotiations—a lesson the Obama administration should be learning from all this. The tangible sacrifices in any deal are being made by Israel—often at a serious risk to the security of the Jewish state. Those sacrifices will not be made in isolation.

But also remarkable is the phrase “the other side”—which Clinton uses here to refer to the Palestinians. The special relationship between Israel and the U.S. was not an accident. It developed because the two countries have shared values and shared strategic goals. The same cannot be said of Arafat’s PLO, Abbas’s PA, or Hamas—the progression of Palestinian power has been consistent on this score. ...

Read on: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/20/george-mitchell%e2%80%99s-mideast-failure/