Michael Goodwin:
First, it was the United Arab Emirates and Israel making peace. Then it was Serbia and Kosovo agreeing to set aside political disputes to sign an economic deal. And now Bahrain and Israel are set to sign a peace treaty.
The last month has been a remarkable one for the Biblical injunction to turn swords into plowshares. Most dramatically, the number of Arab countries recognizing Israel’s right to exist has doubled, from two to four, a leap that is reshaping 75 years of Middle East politics before our eyes.
These breakthroughs were brokered by President Trump and his administration. It is an extraordinary record of peacemaking, yet in too many circles, it is being treated as a sideshow without significance.
Naturally, The New York Times took the low road, insisting Saturday that the deals show Trump trying “to position himself as a peacemaker before the elections in November.”
So being an actual peacemaker doesn’t count because the Times spies a personal motive?
In the same vein, talk of the president getting a Nobel Peace Prize is instantly dismissed. Over the dead bodies of the world elite will Trump be so honored.
Make no mistake — had these feats been achieved by a Democratic president, he would be celebrated. When Trump does it, meh.
That much is obvious, but there’s another dimension to these deals, one that bears on the dangerous polarization gripping America. We are now in an election year where political violence is growing and both parties are expressing reservations about whether they will accept the outcome.
Future historians will chart the decades-long path of how we got to this perilous point, but they must not ignore the incredible damage done by Democrats’ decision to reject the legitimacy of the Trump presidency.
Having never accepted his election, they resisted and tried to destroy him. They weaponized the Justice Department and the FBI, CIA and State Department, and enlisted the left-leaning media — meaning most of the media — to paint Trump as unfit, unworthy and even a Russian agent.
Worse than personal slander, it was character assassination masquerading as concern for national security. It reached rock bottom in the impeachment fiasco, where they tried to undo 2016 and prevent Trump from being on the ballot this year.