Were we to give credence to the timely upbeat pronouncements from Tyler in his new book as these establishment journalists do we would be deluding ourselves.

Fitting snugly into the current US political climate wherein anything is supposedly possible including a Middle East peace deal,Tyler’s account is a deeply flawed and misguided account of Washington’s regional policy.

The premise on which the Tyler account rests is the rather quaint and absurd notion that Washington statesmen were they but to overcome certain long-standing deficiencies,like an Orientalist mindset and a tendency to allow the Lobby (curiously Tyler omits mention of the phenomenon by name)to dictate US policy especially around election time,would be able to still yet to broker a deal is wholly fallacious and misleading.

Tyler can legitimately make a case for Ike being the last US President to actually make US Middle East policy but the stand he made for multilateralism during the 1956 Suez crisis owes much to US PR at the time and is not as important as the US aid to Israel cut-off three years earlier on which Ike had taken an earlier stand against Israel.

This came at a time when Israel was anything but self-supporting,its two main products being citrus fruits and chemicals dredged from the Dead Sea!

The Suez episode by contrast was not an event in which Ike distinguished himself at all.This is a myth that could only be peddled by an establishment historian like Tyler.

Throughout the summer of 1956 the US was aware of the impending attack on Egypt and had spent the period encouraging the arming of Israel by Canada,Britain and France.The pious cloak of multilateralism in which Ike proceeded to drape himself at that time fooled the world but should not deceive journo-cum-historians like Tyler armed as they are with the latest White House documents!

The reproachful mien Ike displayed on tv. lacked any real moral basis whatever.The US colluded with the Soviets who at that time were committing atrocities in Hungary that Ike pointedly refused to condemn.

Thus several incovenient facts contradict Tyler’s version of events with regard to Ike’s overall record re-Israel.

Along with his misinterpretation of the 1953 ouster of Mossadegh in Iran as a legitimate US counter to Soviet ambitions in Persia and his recent public pronouncements affirming the risible US propaganda that blames Syria for the Hariri assassination there are several reasons why establishment historians of Tyler’s ilk should be treated with the utmost scepticism.