Posted on 11/19/2001 9:07:12 PM PST by ouroboros
"Israel controls the Senate," said J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, in 1973. "We should be more concerned about the United States' interests." That nothing has changed was evident this weekend. Secretary of State Powell received a letter, instigated by the Israeli lobby and signed by 89 U.S. senators, directing him not to interfere with Israel's crushing of the Palestinian uprising.
President Bush may have promised the Peace Party, Tony Blair and the Saudis he will use his muscle to broker a just peace. If he did, he made a promise he cannot keep. For the conditions of peace that seemed present when Ehud Barak led Israel no longer exist. The moment has passed, the window has closed.
Real peace requires something close to what Barak offered Arafat: a Palestinian state with full sovereignty over Gaza, the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem and the Islamic holy places. This would entail a dismantling of Israeli settlements and withdrawal to something like the borders of 1967.
That is impossible now. Sharon not only distrusts Arafat, he detests him and rejects the Oslo formula of land-for-peace. Sharon believes the Arabs will use a Palestinian state as a base camp for a new war of annihilation. He won his office by accusing Barak of pandering to terror and inviting national suicide. Should he offer Arafat a similar deal, his Cabinet would break up and he would be replaced by Benjamin Netanyahu.
More important, with this latest intifada marked by massacres of children at pizza parlors, Israelis no longer believe security can be found cheek-by-jowl with an Arafat-led Palestinian state. Who can blame them?
But if Arafat is considered by Israelis to be a terrorist, among the Palestinians, he is increasingly viewed as a poodle of America and an appeaser of Zion. Palestinians have lost 700 dead in this uprising – including women and children – and thousands wounded. For fighting against Israeli troops, it is Hamas and Islamic Jihad who are capturing the hearts of the young. Arafat's mandate is running out.
Moreover, Bush cannot force Sharon to give up occupied land, for he cannot threaten Sharon with a cut-off in aid. Should he try, he will call down the rage of Congress and the wrath of the Israeli lobby and its Amen Corner. Not since Dwight Eisenhower, safely re-elected, ordered Ben-Gurion to get his army out of Sinai in 1957 has a president compelled Israel to meet U.S. demands.
When Israeli and U.S. policies clash, it is U.S. presidents who back down. For 30 years, the United States has held that settlements in the territories occupied in the 1967 war were "illegal" and impediments to peace. Yet, despite $100 billion in U.S. aid to Israel since 1972 – $20,000 for every Israeli – the number of settlers has risen from 8,400 to 357,000. Israel ignores U.S. pleas and demands, for it knows they are bluster and bluff, designed for Arab consumption.
Should Bush invest his postwar popularity and prestige in a Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem, he will see both dissipated, while failing, even as his predecessors have failed.
Already, Bush's suggestion that he supports Israeli concessions for a Palestinian state, to draw down anti-American venom in the Islamic world, was met with Sharon's retort that Israel will not play the role of Czechoslovakia to Bush's Neville Chamberlain. In a normal relationship, such a gross and gratuitous insult would have brought a recall of the U.S. ambassador. Instead, it produced a wimpish little peep of protest from Ari Fleischer.
Bush should look over the horizon and ask himself what Israel will demand as the price of a Palestinian state. It is: scores of billions of U.S. dollars to take down settlements, whose building we opposed, and a permanent U.S.-Israeli military alliance, backed up by the presence of U.S. troops. This would guarantee Americans fighting in every future Israeli war. And this we cannot give.
Prediction: Bush and Powell will start up the road to a brokered peace and find they are on a political Highway of Death. Karl Rove will walk into the Oval Office and say, "Mr. President, it is not worth it, it is not working – we are down to 60 percent in the polls. Let's go back to benign neglect."
Israelis will emerge victorious and delighted. The Arabs will be frustrated and outraged, and Bush's prestige in the Arab world will vanish as his father's did after Desert Storm. In Kuwait, they no longer name their children Bush, but Osama. So, the downward spiral toward an Arab-Israeli and U.S.-Islamic war will continue and the enemies of peace, on all sides, will be exulted, and exalted.
Where have you gone, Gen. Eisenhower?
Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. Now a commentator and columnist, he served three presidents in the White House, was a founding panelist of three national televison shows, and is the author of six books. His current position is chairman of The American Cause. His newest book, "Death of the West," will be published in January.
I haven't whined once here or are you just throwing out a Jewish stereotype?
I've posted many quotes by Pat that always run anti-Israel or anti-Jew. Somehow, not one of his quotes has ever been pro-Israel or Jew. He has praised Hitler, denied there was gas in a concentration camp etc. etc.
I always thought it particularly funny that he rants that we should buy American and drove a Mercedes. It's probably just a coincidence that he chose a German car.
Quite simply, yes.
Using your own logic it's much more accurate to say that lobbying groups control our Senate. That statement would actually be accurate. Who exerts more influence on Congress, Israel or the oil lobby, or the cig industry or the credit card companies etc.? Do these members of Congress enact laws based on the Israelis or the corporations mentioned?
Wake up. The amount of influence Israeli supporters have over Congree is infinitesimal compared to corporate America yet somehow we constantly see threads bashing Israel and none bashing corporate welfare and corruption. The latest example would be the crimes the airline industry are perpertrating against our country.
Hehehe. Buchanan whining about the Palestinian uprising being crushed. When is this puke going to show up in shiny boots and with a little riding crop? Say, do you think the Buchanan crowd will get to wear armbands or something?
Geez, the fifth column in America - the Muslims and the Buchananites and the other assorted screwnuts.
S, I got to agree with that anyway. Peace and love, George.
I didn't know whining was a Jewish stereotype. I guess you learn something new every day.
I've posted many quotes by Pat that always run anti-Israel or anti-Jew.
Is it possible in your mind to be anti-Israel and pro-Jew, or how about anti-Jew and pro-Israel?
Somehow, not one of his quotes has ever been pro-Israel or Jew.
Nope not a one...
"The U.S. has a moral commitment - to guarantee the security and survival of the Israeli state." - Pat Buchanan 1992
He has praised Hitler
The full quote....
"Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him."
In reality, the column was, in large part, an account of historian John Toland's biography of Hitler.
, denied there was gas in a concentration camp etc. etc.
Yeah that would be in the same column where Buchanan writes that 900,000 Jews were murdered at Treblinka.
*sigh* Makes you wonder who the real HATERS are.
It's foolish to say we cannot change our Mid-east policy because that would be to "reward terrorists." There's no wrong time to replace a bad policy with a better one.
I assume you would also deny US protection to Korea, the Saudis, pull out of NATO...
Foreign aid has to be evaluated in view of what we get for it. I'm not in favor of throwing money around to everyone who shows up with his hand out.
I would pull US troops out of Korea, gradually, although I certainly would not cut ties. And I would help them build them build up their military, much as we have helped Israel (the distinction is that Israel already has a second-to-none military).
Why should we risk the lives of US troops defending them? Their economy is strong, and they can build their own military (over time, I emphasize).
The joke is that we are over there to keep them from invading North Korea. They resent being an occupied country anyway. Fine. Let them fend for themselves.
As for the Saudis, I am not convinced we need their oil. Why hang around over there making enemies?
Our involvement in NATO has been measurably beneficial to the US, and I would not pull out (although, again, I would pull our troops home). I would even expand membership in NATO to Israel (yes, I know it stretches the definition of "North Atlantic" a bit, but that's ok).
...pretty much hide under the bed.
I don't consider what I've outlined as "hiding under the bed".
Aid does not make an iota of difference to the Federal budget. It does however, when it is used to purchase American goods, create American jobs.
Agreed. This is not a budget argument I am making.
Now lets suppose aid is pulled and Israel- vastly vastly outnumbered, fights valiantly, but to save themselves from certain death, resort to a nuclear option- would that be a positive for the US?
Why would Israel nuking Arab terrorists be anything but postive for the US? I know the Israelis have the cojones and wherewithal, and it would not bother me one bit. As I've said, I don't think we need middle eastern oil. If Israel wants to nuke Saddam (or whomever), let 'em.
I don't think you give Israel enough credit...I think the reason Israel has not yet wiped out the Arabs is because the Americans hold them back with threats of cutting off aid. Unlike South Korea, the Israeli military is damned good and the Israeli intelligence community is arguably the best in the world.
It's a Catch-22. The US is unable to use the aid as leverage to get Israel to do anything - as much as Israel may wish, and be able, to do so - because any threat to cut off aid raises the alarms of the American Jewish lobby. At the same time, I think Israel's hands are tied because of the threat of the aid being removed. Catch-22.
The end result is that the US continues pouring money into a hole without getting anything back (except the occasional Jonathon Pollard; how's that for gratitude?), generating enmity, and Israel is unable to properly deal with her enemies.
This knee jerk "pro-US, not pro-Israel" sentiment is so much garbage.
I am more confused by American Jews who put Israel's interests ahead of the US.
The thing I find most strange about it, is the intrinsic inferiority complex it manifests. Jews are less then 3% of the US population- it implies that we Jews are either Supermen (in which case it would be smart to be on our side) or that Gentiles are easily manipulated mindless idiots (is that your opinion). Neither is true.
I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion from anything I've written. Perhaps you should be less paranoid.
Or the agriculture business, or the automobile business, or the banking business, or the insurance business, or the construction business, or the health care business, or no doubt others.
None as catchy as "Amen corner." Could Pat say "Backhoe corner" or the "Prescription corner?" Pat Buchanan is a pony with a few, predictable tricks. He is correct about the threat of uncontrolled immigration. He is wrong about Israel.
Writing of "group fantasies of martyrdom," Buchanan challenged the historical record that thousands of Jews were gassed to death by diesel exhaust at Treblinka: "Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody." (New Republic, 10/22/90) Buchanan's columns have run in the Liberty Lobby's Spotlight, the German-American National PAC newsletter and other publications that claim Nazi death camps are a Zionist concoction.
Sigh.
I don't think Pat's coming back, he's just staying out there way ahead of the floundering establishment politicos, who are trying to profit by manipulating reality, and daring them to catch up and acknowledge the actuality of the present.
This seems more obvious as time passes and we witness all the hacks and other foolish minions of the political establishment’s “amen corner” never really denying the truth Buchanan presents, just hating him for doing so.
The Buchanan '96 campaign's World Wide Web site included an article blaming the death of White House aide Vincent Foster on the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad -- and alleging that Foster and Hillary Clinton were Mossad spies. (The campaign removed the article after its existence was reported by a Jewish on-line news service; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2/21/96.)
Sigh.
As a 3rd generation native American myself, I have no problems if legal immigrants stay.
It's the ILLEGAL aliens that got to go.
You don't get it.
Cojones yes, wherewithal is something else.
Without American military aid, Israel could not compete in an arms race with the Arab nations. The Arabs would attack and Israel would likely need to defend itself with the means at its disposal.
American aid, allows Israel to keep the potential war conventional. It is an American interest to do so.
Note this, if the Arabs were not bent on Israel's destruction, Israel would not need a dime of military aid. Civilian aid is already on the way out by agreement (bet you didn't know that).
I agree with you about the catch 22. American aid brings pressure on Israel which gives the Arabs hope of victory which requires a stronger Israel which requires American aid and on and on.
Put the blame where it belongs...on the Arabs. If they meant for peace, there would be peace and the US would need be only involved with Israel as a place Americans enjoy visiting.
I draw the conclusion you refer too by the inference from Buchanan and you that American support for Israel is not because of some sinister "amen Corner"(read Jewish) force manipulating the Congress.
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