Posted on 04/10/2002 9:23:29 AM PDT by Seti 1
PRESIDENT PUSHED TO ESCALATE WAR IN ISRAEL AND BEYOND
WASHINGTON -- The mood in Washington these days is ominous, unlike anything anyone can remember. Although one hesitates to put it in these terms, it is almost a mood of wanting to strike out at perceived enemies anywhere and everywhere across the world. Beneath this pugnacious atmosphere, there is some hope that Secretary of State Colin Powell's upcoming trip to look in on the mayhem in Israel/Palestine may yield some answers. The secretary is the most accomplished leader of what's left of our polished diplomatic and political administration.
But increasingly, the zealots, the radicals and the "crazies" are gathering around George W. Bush -- and finally, analysts who have wanted to ignore this important development are beginning to ask: "Why?"
The Washington Post just attempted courageously and well to answer that question, now dominating foreign policy discussion on every level. "In the current debate, the Christian conservatives have joined forces with neoconservatives, many of them Jewish, to push the administration to apply the same moral clarity to its approach to the Middle East and Arafat as it has to the war on terrorism and Osama bin Laden," political analyst Dan Balz wrote in "Tension in the GOP."
In another fine article in The Wall Street Journal Europe, reporters Robert S. Greenberger and Jeanne Cummings tried to take apart George W.'s perfervid support of Israel at the expense of the United States' other relationships. Particularly, they pointed to the degree to which "W's" views differ from those of his father, who was very tough-minded and realistic about Israel.
In contrast, they show how George W. Bush is "bound to Israel by a strong religious faith molded by his convictions as a born-again Christian." He described his visit to Israel in 1998, one of his few visits abroad in his pre-presidential life, as "an incredible experience." He met with Gen. Ariel Sharon, apparently unaware of the man's shadowy past, and the two hit it off immediately; in fact, that encounter was an experience that has caused him to side without exercising even minimal judgment with Sharon, no matter what he does.
It should not be missed that the president was on that same trip miffed and insulted when Yasser Arafat, with his usual incompetence, refused to meet with the then-Texas governor, who was already a presidential candidate-in-waiting.
One begins to uncover a pattern here: A major clue to the president's thinking on foreign policy is his strong tendency to focus only on what he has himself seen and done. This is also true of his effusive relationship with Mexico, with which he feels comfortable because of his experience as governor of Texas.
Foreign policy by personal comfort level? "Unlike his father's vast diplomatic and government experience, the current president's philosophy toward Israel is based largely on personal experience," The Wall Street Journal Europe article averred, "and his relationships -- and grudges -- now are helping to shape his administration's policies."
But other congeries of people and ideas are also shaping these policies, and with ever greater consequence.
Most of the people now influencing Bush strongly on the road to a seemingly perpetual warfare -- men like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, military adviser Richard Perle and Irving and Bill Kristol -- are either combative neoconservatives, fervent Israeli supporters or Christian conservatives. The majority of them, including their most aggressive spokesmen, have never served in the military.
Yet they don't hesitate to express their views; indeed, their influence has led the president from fighting the immediate war against palpable anti-American terrorism in Afghanistan and al-Qaida cells, to helping Ariel Sharon dissolve Palestinian institutions and structures so he can keep hold of Palestinian lands, to (in the works -- really!) overthrowing governments from Iraq to Syria to Iran to North Korea. (And I know I've missed a few.)
One of this group, the influential conservative editor and author Norman Podhoretz, was quoted in The New York Times, using a euphemism for overthrowing governments: "On tactics, (the president) may be listening to Colin Powell. But he's very clear as to his strategic objectives -- not just to clean up al-Qaida cells but to effect regime changes in six or seven countries and to create conditions which would lead to internal reform and modernization in the Islamic world."
One wants to ask breathlessly: Is that all? Why, we could do that before lunch! Why not eradicate evil from the heart of man while we're about it? Why not redirect the winds and change the coming of the tides, and not give up until we stop the ice at the North Pole from melting? Why not make the lame walk and the dead arise from their sepulchers? We are, after all, starting (but only starting, thank you!) with the Holy Land!
Any rational person's non-snide conclusion must be that President Bush is getting himself -- and us -- into choppy, dangerous waters.
Every day, Prime Minister Sharon commits some new horror, all in the name of the America that provides all of his busy bulldozers, tanks and planes. Hardly a day goes by when he doesn't insult President Bush. Yet, despite some recent hesitation, the president still takes Sharon's side more forcefully and goes along with his own advisers, many of whom are also adherents of the extremist-right Likud Party in Israel. That mentality and influence are now contributing to plans to extend the war(s) to enforce all those enticing "regime changes" all over the world.
The president may feel comfortable swimming in the shallows of these policies, but in the end he will find that he clearly knew nothing about rip tides.
That is the alternate reality that the left-wing Jews live in, the ones with their heads up their.....
Right. Perfectly doable. What is the weenie's reaction?
"One wants to ask breathlessly: Is that all? Why, we could do that before lunch! Why not eradicate evil from the heart of man while we're about it?"
These are quite minor powers. We have "effected regime change" simultaneously in Germany, Japan, Italy, half a dozen minor axis powers and as many again quisling occupied nations. Undoubtedly that seems simply impossible to the weenie, but we did all of them, against direct military resistence, by joining a world-wide alliance of their enemies. Then for good measure we "effected regime change" in the USSR and all of eastern Europe, by sustained diplomatic means, leading half the world.
Now a much smaller power bloc, radical Islamic states (whether motivated by radical Islam itself or by Arab nationalism, socialism, or Jew hatred), has taken us on. And suddenly the weenie discovers that victory over minor powers is beyond our means. Yet our political, military, and economic relative power has never been higher than today. No superpower stands behind the minor terrorist states, ready to deter us from escalating or to bail them out after their defeats.
The coalition that has attacked us, and their fellow travellers, aiders, armers, is certainly dangerous. They showed that by leveling a significant portion of lower Manhattan, which the weenie seems not to have noticed. They are a threat because several of them are seeking far more destructive weapons, which proliferated into the hands of non-state actors, would allow them to strike at us with a veneer of deniability.
The inability to deter such threats with the usual method, threatened nuclear retaliation to annihilate the attacking state, requires another means to deal with it. (Unless the weenie would prefer we just nuke them off the planet - no? Didn't think so). Regime change is a quite limited means of dealing with this threat. It leaves the countries intact, altering only their governments. It may sometimes require conventional invasion, but temporarily - whereas we thought nothing of garrisoning Germany for 50 years, and directly ruling Germany and Japan with military governors for years after our arrival.
The weenie thinks it would be safer to sit around picking our noses until Saddam gives Hamas, or Iran gives Hezbollah, nuclear weapons. This is because he has scarcely any idea of the real world he is living in. He does not "grok" that all the shelter and normalcy he has ever known was carved out of an unwilling and hostile world by the main force of US military power, now or in the past. There is nothing new about it, the weenie just never noticed it before.
Both sides long ago ran out of tolerance. We should be on the side of US interests, which in this case means (IHO)neither side. Our support of Israel has brought us the enmity of the 1/4 of the world's population which is Muslim, the contempt of Europe, the condemnation (and hidden glee) of Russia and China. What do we get for that? Certain politicians get large cash donations and the support of the media.
You haven't been watching the news. I think the score is about five to one at last count but that doesn't include the hundreds killed in the last few days. Of course, it's Palestinians on the one hand and Jews on the other--that makes all the difference.
I can't speak for certain politicans, as I imagine they're equal opportunity bribe-able, but the media has been very anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian these past few decades.
Having said that, I guess you're right, we really get nothing from the Israelis--except--if you're a certain kind of Christian, you believe in certain Bilble passages that Israel sits in a central poisition in God's eyes and must be supported. While people agree and disagree with that, it is a topic that influences our policies. IMHO, the Israelis are the wronged party, and since 9/11, again, IMHO, their enemies are our enemies, so I support Israeli actions to rid (their part of) the world of terrorists.
If your point is what US special interest would cause us to be pro-Israel and therefore anti-Arab/Muslim, then I really don't have an answer, but I still sense it is more right than wrong.
You can try all you like to make Israel the aggressor, but the truth will always prevail. Israel has been attacked again and again by people whose desire is the elimination of the Jewish state ... and people.
An amphibious landing in Lebanon, an armored thrust through Syria, half right turn on to Baghdad. Another armored thrust from Kuwait towards Basra.
Let Israel and Turkey protect the flanks. Iran cant / wont move through the same marshes that stopped them back in the 80s.
Sure in heck would shake up the ba$tards, and shift the power base.
Oh and I don't think I'll plan on visiting Ohio anytime soon.
I new it would not take too long before the "your a anti-semite, neo-nazi, and white supremist" crowd would come out. Please refer to the post that Seti says he hates Jewish people.
This kind of crap should be pulled by the site monitor. It's a personel attack, and a disgusting one at that.
That's part of what it's about.
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