Posted on 06/10/2005 10:16:32 PM PDT by CHARLITE
According to Ephraim Halevy, former chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence service and current national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, plans have been made for a substantial U.S. military presence in the Middle East lasting decades. “The U.S. campaign in Iraq was perceived [in the Middle East and Washington] as a signal of long-term American commitment to do whatever is required and to ‘stay in the neighborhood’ for as long as needed,” commented Halevy in a lengthy op-ed column carried by the April 24 issue of Ha’aretz. High-ranking U.S. policymakers have “raised the idea of establishing an American trusteeship regime in the areas of the Palestinian Authority, if it should turn out that the Palestinians are not ripe for self-rule. That arrangement would require an American operational military presence along Israel’s border with the Palestinian territories.”
“Speaking in a semi-closed forum during a visit to Israel a few months ago,” continued Halevy, “Bill Kristol, one of the most influential ‘neocons’ [neoconservatives] in the United States, noted in this connection that the American presence in Europe after World War II lasted for nearly 60 years. Israelis who are trying to promote a role for NATO in the region, in one form or another, are actually promoting a generation-long American presence.”
U.S. entanglement in the Middle East in the name of “democracy” has further destabilized the region and made violent fundamentalist revolution more likely, especially in Saudi Arabia. “In [an early April] visit to the United States,” comments Halevy, “I was told by several well-informed observers that should one of the more severe scenarios come to pass, the United States will have no choice but to deepen its presence in the Middle East. To that end, it will have to renew the draft, to ensure that there are enough forces to deal with developing situations in countries like Saudi Arabia.”
Nation building here we come.
We've been in Europe for decades...
You have to remember one thing. The Israelis NEVER retailated against SH for the scud attacks during the gulf war, why???
The Israeli feared that if SH fell Iraq would be three separate islamic nations, including one shia state.
Yup, the Mideast was the epitome of stability before 9/11 and the ouster of Saddam.
President Bush had the courage to "do the right thing." Clinton certainly didn't. He knew all about the threats and the danger, but he was carefully polishing his "legacy," while 9/11 was being prepared for America.
Char
This is the magazine of the John Birch Society, which said there were a million ChiCom troops massed south of the US/Mexico border awaiting the signal to invade.
Alarm bells go off whenever anyone uses the word Destabilize in conjunction with the middle east. The middle east hasn't been stable in my lifetime.
President Bush had the courage to "do the right thing." Clinton certainly didn't. He knew all about the threats and the danger, but he was carefully polishing his "legacy,"...
Hmmm, I always thought Clinton was spending his time having his "legacy" polished...
They are no longer there. They have moved here disguised as Mexicans. Haven't you wondered why so many Mexicans are eating in Chinese restaurants now, or eating fahitas with chop sticks?
>>polishing his "legacy<<
What an apt choice of terms.
And I couldn't agree more.
It's interesting that all these goals of the liberals are denounced by the liberals simply because someone not of their political ilk has created the conditions for them. In decades past all we heard from libs was that we never went to war to help people, only for financial reasons. Now that a Republican has begun the democratization of the Middle East, a long, hard, unpredictable process, they cannot behave in an adult manner and forget their petty personal feelings, they have to attack the entire enterprise. But in doing so, they only reveal their socialist core--these people are outraged that might makes right and that might is wielded by the US.
If all of these things occured under a Soviet army, Katrina Vanden Heuvel and her gang would be saying "This is how a military should be used, to spread democracy and freedom with minimal casualties."
Instead, all they can do is scream about a handful of prisoner abuse cases. Meanwhile, tens of millions are freed. What sad little people these liberals be.
Muslims rampaged all over the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, France, Hungary.....for 700 years, until "Los Reyes Catolicos" (Ferdinand and Isabella) finally threw them out of Spain in 1492, which turned out to be a veritable "banner year" for the world. Muslims are a perpetually "destabilizing" force, thanks to Islam and the culture of war, murder and death.
Char
I was just sitting here thinking to myself someone aught to point out that the ME has never, not in all of the known history of the area, judging by clay tablets written 5,00 years ago, enjoyed any lengthy period of peace. It was one war after another, one conquest after another; seems that when man begins agriculture and accumulates possessions there's always someone over the next hill or sanddune ready to ride in, rob and kill and rape the women.
If you want to keep your culture, your civilization and your possessions it's best to be prepared to defend them. 'Destabilized' might just mean pillage and plunder has been interrupted, not prevented.
It's my distinct impression that "destabilization" was the expressed purpose of our action. Appropriately so.
It is equally obvious that the Saudis will eventually have to clean up their act. Or be cleaned, themselves.
The JBS has always had a firm grasp on the obvious...
This guy lost me at "hello"...no thanks to any more Middle East "stability" leading to 9-ll and all the other terror atrocities through the years...
Honest to G-d. This says it all. Pitiful bunch, aren't they?........I mean, can you IMAGINE waking up one morning and discovering that you were Harry Reid, or Barbara Boxer, Howard Dean, Al Gore, Killery Kleentone......or Fat Boy? Just imagine such a frightful turn of events! - becoming one of these people!
Very interesting analysis.
Then again, I definitely can see Pelosi and Kennedy shaking Reid's dry hand and saying "That was a great moment in statesmanship history, Harry!"
I recently read "Misunderestimated"--it's a good reminder of, among other things, what a real sh** Reid was during the 2002 election.
P.S. Ted Kennedy should put on that wizard's hat and cast a spell that will wipe out a ton or two.
Not sure about MIRED, but we have been in Europe for 61 years now. And other than the lack of hygene, the place is not too bad.
"The Israelis feared that if SH fell Iraq would be three separate islamic nations, including one shia state.""
That is historically incorrect BS!
The Israelis were warned of US retaliation against the Jewish State if they defended themselves. Israel would have surely lost most of it's attack fighters to US missiles if they had made any attempt to counter-attack. Paul Wolfowitz made that very clear.
The real and enduring question is.....why, when the Saudis attacked the USA, did the USA not retaliate?
And,,,,,,,,When we are paying over $2.00 per gallon of gas...do the Iraqis get the same for a nickel??
Hello? That's some really stinky stuff. Ya got anything to back that up?
I am sure that anything I write can be easily confirmed at a library, the Google-search, or the Whitehouse.Gov site.
We have been in Europe since D-Day 1944, but we were not under fire after 1945. You can't compare cold war with hot.
Now, on the other hand, if we had fought in Europe like we are fighting in Iraq, then we would still be fighting in Europe.
Tagline.
imo
Sorry, it's not jumping out as easily as you'd like.
Please cite your claim.
You might check on the number of US military personnel who died from various attacks in the first few years after April 1945. You also might ask the relatives of various US personnel who were killed by the East Germans and USSR whether they felt their loved one was under fire.
We were actually in Europe I guess from the time we invade Sicily. We shall see how this works out.
Also Europe was not viewed as good duty in 1947. Just at Iraqi or even Kuwaitt is not viewed as good duty today. In 10 years, who knows.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, then a top Pentagon aide, recalls that after two nights of Scuds hammering Israel, the director general of Israel's Defense Ministry, David Ivri, phoned to "announce they were getting ready to launch fighter aircraft and C-130s with special forces troops into western Iraq. He was calling me to give us the timing and the coordinates" of Israeli planes so coalition forces didn't attack them by accident.
Mr. Wolfowitz reminded him that then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had promised President Bush that he would consult before taking any action. "I said I would take down the information but he shouldn't mistake that for consultation or approval. There was silence on the other end of the phone." Mr. Wolfowitz adds: "By the end of the afternoon they had calmed down."
Mr. Ivri says the decision not to retaliate "was the right thing to do." But he says that if the war had gone on much longer, the political pressures would have been too hard to resist. He also says that Pentagon leaders made clear to him that if the Israelis decided they had no choice but to hit western Iraq, they would move U.S. planes out of the way. "The question they asked us was, 'What can you do that we can't?' " A former U.S. official involved says that any such understanding was "informal."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030303-israel-sideline01.htm
>...carefully polishing his "legacy,"<
Oh, is THAT what they are calling those on the street corners now...?
I thought "Ms. Lewinsky" was responsible for that spit-shine polishing job...
A.A.C.
{adding yet another euphemism to his formidable arsenal of ripostes, non sequiturs, and all-purpose colloquy...}
Thanks for the ping!
The dictators and the terror-infested medieval islamic fiefdoms are snapping to attention!
-----
There was no way that Bush could or should have walked away from 9/11 as Gore, Clinton or Carter (God help us) would have done. The Arab-hosted world of anti-Western terror had to be dealt a blow to show it was not at all a good idea to attack America. To have done less, well, I hate to think of where we would be right now. The fall of Iraq, at a minimum, would have come anyhow - the question is just when. In the opinions of many, for more knowledgable about the region there, SH would have become a major supplier of WMDs to terrorist organizations, backed by plenty of Arab money. Just a matter of time, given the ardent help of Russia, France, Germany and eventually North Korea.
Applying the term "destabilizing" to the Middle East, is a bit strange, since it has been unstable for many decades. Being "stable" which some apparently equate to 'no visible action or trouble' really is meaningless. The breeding and training of terrorists, brutal totalitarianism, repressive stone-aged rule, and attacks on the Western world, would be in constant process regardless of the state of "stability" in the Middle East Arab nations...
On balance,
I'd rather keep the islamic potentates of Syria, Saudi Arabia Bahrain, Kuwait, Dubai, Egypt,UAE, Oman, Iran, etc... de-stabilized via democratic initiatives than allow them to continue poisioning the rest of the world unabated.
The Israeli feared that if SH fell Iraq would be three separate islamic nations, including one shia state.
That's not the reason.
The reason was simply that the U.S. did not want to carry the baggage of fighting alongside Israel in a Middle East war. Bad PR. So Israel agreed to stand down in terms of any offensive operations. Just defense. No offense. And the U.S. is and continues to be there to keep that defense strong. It is a sad state of affairs but the fact of the matter is we are still trying to win the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East. The prospects for that are not good because of the power of the Islamic fundamentalists and the daily propaganda war that they wage against freedom and democracy in the mosques. That's life. The U.S. is in the Middle East indefinitely to protect our interests and Israel will be a major beneficiary of that policy.
With all due respect (and I mean that) you're forgetting about Italy, specifically Sicily - which we landed on the night of 9-10 July 1943 with an Allied armada of 2,590 vessels.
Then there's the hundreds of thousands of troops based in Great Britain even prior to that (1942 IIRC).
And Sicily, Italy and GB are 'Europe'.
Two other reason here as well... a) The US knew that if Israel attacked Iraq in retaliation, the "coalition" would break up. That's why Iraq began shooting scuds at Israel. The US pressured Israel NOT to retaliate. And
b) The US did NOT give Israel the IFF codes. Had Israel launched warplanes against Iraq, those planes would not have "squawked friendly" when confronted by coalition warplanes, and they would have been shot down.
Mark
Yes we must have stability above all. There's been stability in the mid east since 1967, and what has it brought? Terrorism, Dictatorships, Poverty, Despair....etc.
What the writer doesn't seem to understand is in the long run democracies are much more stable than dictatorship.
I've been saying for a while now that 9-11 was the high water mark of Islamic terror.
"What the writer doesn't seem to understand is in the long run democracies are much more stable than dictatorship."
A hostile "Democracy" such as Iran is far more dangerous to the US than a stable "Dictatorship" i.e. the Shah's Iran.
Those who have not known war except the CBS/Fox broadcast version seem to entertain some very infantile notions of warfare and modern military history.
true.. I am just saying being in Germany since WW2 60 years does not compare to being in Iraq and staying in Iraq while involved in a full scale insurgency.
We were not involved in combat for 60 years in Germany. We can't afford to be fighting 60 years against Islamic Terrorist. We need to fight these fanatics like we fought the fanatics of Germany and Japan
How do you know a neo-con is lying? OK you know the answer. Anyway, Americans did not stay for 60 years being killed by Germans. They were there as part of NATO and defense against Russia.
The neo-cons have previously fed us with 'it will be a cakewalk' - 'troops will be welcomed with flowers' - 'oil will pay for it all' - 'Shenseki was completely wrong' - 'the roadmap for Middle East peace goes through Baghdad' - 'Democracy will make them friendly toward us and their neighbors'. Now what is it they want us to believe?
You do of course know that all candidates in Iran must be "vetted" by the guardian council, to insure that no candidate who wants to change the regime ever see's their name on a ballot.
That's right. Just ask yourself (not you personally, the rhetorical you) how did Saddam keep things in order before the US invasion?
The US "destabilized" Iraq by removing the brutal oppression and freeing these freaks. The whiners who complain about small incidents have no freaking clue what or why. They just oppose Bush, no matter what he does, and nitpick at everything, and say the US "destabilized" Iraq by liberating the radicals (and everyone else) that were oppressed by Saddam.
The US could stomp this out quickly and keep things under control very easily, just by behaving just like Saddam did. But the US won't and that is why there is so much terror going on in Iraq. These nutball leftists just don't understand at all.
A reader asked Diane Alden, 'What's a Doofus?" Here's her response:
"Doofuss: a person who tends to live in their own virtual reality. A person who for the most part couldn't find their way to the bathroom with a map, flashlight and a seeing eye dog. Doofuss: shallow and only sees the Bush not the snake coiled beneath it."
Quatrain:The Kingdom of Bush
http://www.israpundit.com/archives/2005/06/_quatrainthe_ki.php#more
(This is from a 2003 analysis on the current Iraq war: (my bolded):
"For that, the Israelis would need the U.S. to provide the so-called IFF, or Identification Friend or Foe, codes -- electronic passwords that are used by aircraft to recognize allied and enemy planes. The Israelis requested the codes during the Gulf War and Washington turned them down.
More here.
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