Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower

The irony of all this is that back in Washington the usual suspects, the neocons, or Iagos, as I call them, are already planning their next move into the Middle East cauldron. The neocon plan involves constant war as long as war keeps Israel safe, which it does under the circumstances. Their plan is to convince the new regime that the biggest fallacy in the world is that distancing Uncle Sam from Israel would win the goodwill of the Arabs. In other words, be nice to the Arabs and get shat upon. Kick them rather hard and everything will be hunky-dory.

The Middle East is in the throes of a prolonged period of instability. Uncle Sam got rid of anyone who could keep that historically unstable place peaceful to begin with, and as I write is trying to make things far worse by waging secret war against Assad and the Russians. The neocons are on the move. Let Bibi be Bibi, is their cry. That means the whole West Bank becomes part of Israel proper and Jordan becomes Palestine. We need an Ike to put a stop to all this madness.

As I sat down to write this, my thoughts went back four years before that trip to Bermuda this week sixty years ago. It was August 1952, and I was on the French Riviera with my parents; we were on board the Vagrant, Niko Goulandris’ motorsailer. The news came over the telex machine that a Colonel Nasser and General Naguib had overthrown King Farouk of Egypt. He got what he deserved, he was too much of a playboy, was the consensus of opinion on board. “Personally, I prefer purple to khaki,” was what my father said before jumping into the then-clean sea off Cannes.