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.
For many years our support of Israel was justified as a bulwark against the USSR in the Middle East. The USSR has collapsed but national interests have not.
NO, we would of had that anyway.
The enmity of the muslem world is directed at the WEST, oh they hate the jews no doubt, but they hate us as well.
The Europeans can't stand us and we don't care.
The russians are undecided and the chinese would as soon see us brought down as the muslims.
Try and get this, no amount of kissing ass, groveling, kowtowing or hand wringing is going to bring their love acceptance,or respect of us.
On the other hand, we MUST not accept or deal with TERRORISTS. The evidence is plain, they can only be exterminated.
"OH the horror, you'll just create more!"
Guess what, more are being created and sent our way everyday! They are coming no matter what we do!
No matter how good our defense is some are going to get through, and the next time it won't be something as small as a couple of thousand dead.
Get with the program, the war has already started, and as comforting as it may seem to say,"Nope, not gonna get involved.", that ain't gonna happen,cause they aren't going to care.
Now don't get me wrong, this is not directed to you personally, I am just tired of seeing so many folks who are turning a blind eye to what is happening NOW.
Radical Islam, yes. But the radicals have been a force only recently and that largely as a result of our support of Israel. At the very least, that support has furnished the rallying cry which the radicals use to get the destabilizing mobs into the street. If those mobs succeed in bringing down the moderate Arab governments there will be war to the knife. That is what Saddam (and his buddies) want and that is what the Israel First bunch wants--hence, all the media chatter about those terrible Saudi princes and how awful women have it in Egypt, etc.
Our support for Arab countries has been a disaster for U.S. interests.
We have extended our hand in friendship to the Arab nations for decades. We send them billions of dollars in aid every year. We buy their oil. We prop up their regimes. We defended Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and, by extension, the U.A.E., Qatar, Bahrain and Oman from Saddam. Our support of Israel does not invalidate the support we've shown them and the goodwill, free money and commerce they've received from us.
How are we repayed?
They finance terrorism and fuel the propaganda that causes it, aiming at our closest ally in the region and daring us to stand beside that ally. You'd have us capitulate to these terrorists and abandon Israel.
Learn this: Arab leaders are using radical Islamic leaders who are using the Palestinian terrorists who are using children to murder innocent Israeli civilians.
This is a moral conflict. You're on the wrong side.
Just to name two things a non-nuclear Iraq and eyes and ears on the Arab world while it was sucking up to the Soviet Union during the cold war. Of course, in reality, the Arabs "helped" the Soviet Union about the same way they are now "helping" us -- by weighing us down with their endless rivalries, power games, and shame avoidance. I think we should arrange things so that they offer their "help" to China.
Okay, let me think about that for a moment. Those who support the Jews hate them, and those who don't support them really support them? So I must be a Jew-hater since I support them. Huh. And to think I never even knew!
"It must be nice to not have to think"
I am humbled to be in the presence of such an intellect. One who can see truths like you've unveiled for me here. Someday I want to be able to be a deep thinker like you. You're my hero.
True however.
You would be the expert on that considering it went right over your head.
Seti I uses a Clinton definition of "recently" (i.e. "recently" by comparison to the age of the solar system).
Bull#1: What do people truly expect Powell or anyone for that matter of doing over there?
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?"
Bull#2: Zealots? as opposed to whom? Liberals? Arafat? and this Why! Why are we the way they defined us which we are not? WHAT PSYCHOBABLE!!
"HEy, don't accuse me Georgie", "I'm not the one chosing sides and pushing for war here." THese people are incredible, they need to be caged in a mental institution. They are not ashamed of what they are saying, they keep repeating and imagining things left and right. It is unreal. THey are more demonic than an enraged WWF wrestler smashing a chair on top of his opponent. It is unreal, the face of Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union is alive and "well".
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