Pat Buchanan: Bush, Obama and the Gaza Blitz (Still believes in "Moderate" Muslims)

Townhall ^ | December 30, 2008 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[2ndDivisionVet]

Unwilling to control its fighters, who fired scores of missiles into Israel at the end of their six-month ceasefire, Hamas gave Israel the provocation it needed to deliver a savage blow to the Palestinian enclave in Gaza.

Saturday was the bloodiest day in the history of the Palestinian people since being driven from their homes in the War of 1948. One thousand were killed or wounded, as the Israeli Air Force conducted over a hundred strikes -- on graduation ceremonies for Hamas fighters, police stations and storage sites for rockets.

About Israel's right and duty to defend its border towns, there is no dispute. When Hamas permits Gaza to be used as a launch pad for rockets, it must expect retaliation. Nor can Hamas claim some right to dictate the limits of that retaliation.

Yet the wisdom of so savage a retribution for rockets that killed not one Israeli is open to question. And crass Israeli politics seems to be behind this premeditated and planned blitz.

With Likud's hawkish "Bibi" Netanyahu ahead in the polls for the Feb. 10 election, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Labor's candidate, had to show that he, too, could be ruthless with Hamas.

Kadima Party candidate and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has an even greater need than the highly decorated Barak to show toughness. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, departing in scandal, wants to exit in a blaze of glory, to blot out the memory of a botched war against Hezbollah that he launched in the summer of 2006.

However, while Israel's politicians all seem to have a stake in these devastating strikes, Israel herself will pay the price.

Given the casualty toll, over 300 dead and 1,300 wounded as of this writing, Hamas will have to exact its pound of flesh. The Hamas wing that seeks renewed war with Israel will now shout into silence the wing working with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak on a new ceasefire.

The moderate Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas, who has been talking to Israel, testifying to her good faith, has been made to appear the puppet and fool. A new intifada spreading to the West Bank, with suicide attacks inside Israel, is now possible.

Moderate Arabs, who have recognized Israel or backed peace, will now be seen by the Arab street as appeasers impotent to stop the public suffering of the Palestinian people.

As for President Bush's hopes of midwifing a peace that would create a Palestinian state, they are as dead as the Annapolis process he set in train. In advancing peace in the Middle East, Bush's eight-year record is now a near-absolute failure.

For four years, Bush refused to talk to Yasir Arafat, though Bill Clinton had negotiated with him, as had four Israeli prime ministers, two of who shared a Nobel Prize with Arafat. In his second term, Bush, after insisting Hamas be included in free elections in Palestine, refused to recognize Hamas when it won those elections.

Arafat was a terrorist and Hamas is a terrorist organization, declared Bush, and we don't negotiate with terrorists. Yet, Bush de-listed Libya as a state sponsor of terror and sent Condi Rice to chat up Col. Gadhafi, though Gadhafi still has on his hands the blood of scores of American school kids from the Lockerbie massacre of 1989 that Libya and Gadhafi engineered

For eight years, like the "dummy" in a hand of bridge, Bush has sat mute as his Israeli partner, Sharon or Olmert, played America's cards as well as their own. The Bush response to Saturday's carnage, as anticipated, was to blame Hamas for causing it and urge Israelis to be careful about civilian casualties as they go about their reprisals.

Whatever Israel decides, we support. For eight years that has been the most reliable guide to U.S. Middle East policy.

And Barack Obama? Forty-eight hours after the Israeli blitz began, he and his national security team remain silent.

Hopefully, Obama will bring with him a new Mideast policy, one made in the U.S.A., for the U.S.A. Hopefully, just as Israel has its private links to Syria through Turkey, to Hamas through Egypt and to Hezbollah, Obama will establish independent U.S. channels to all three, and adopt a separate U.S. policy toward all three, as Israel does.

While the United States must support Israel's right to defend her towns and to strike bases from which Israelis are being attacked, Obama should denounce the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, by Israel's cutting off their electricity in the dead of winter and denying them the food and medicine many need to survive.

For us to remain silent in the face of this comports neither with our interests or our values. Israel's policy of withholding from the weak and innocent of Gaza, women and children, the necessities of life, to punish the guilty who rule at the point of a gun, is a policy that Obama should declare the United States will no longer support with tax dollars.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Hard to hide anti-Semitism behind "concern" for Israel's well-being, when everyone can read between the lines, Pat.

[thecabal]

Pat never met a Jew he didn’t hate.

[RightOnline]

Sorry, Pat, but try as I might....I seem to fail to squeeze out even a single tear for these schmucks.

You reap what you sow, and the Palis have made life a living Hell for Israel for long enough. Payback’s a......well, you know.

[Thorin]

Buchanan is exactly right. We need an America First foreign policy, just as Israel as an Israel First foreign policy.

[PasorBob]

You can always tell the “moderate muslims”. They are the ones being shot at by “radical muslims”. “Moderate muslims” only shoot at us infidels.

[San Jacinto]

Pat is a real Jew hater, ain’t he?

The only question I would raise about Israel”s “savage retribution” againt Hamas is : When are they ever going to get around to doing it?

[kabar]

Hard to hide anti-Semitism

Where is the anti-Semitism? It seems as though anytime someone criticizes Israeli foreign policy, they are an anti-Semite. Yet, Israelis themselves disagree strongly on these issues. US national interests are not identical to Israeli national interests. These attacks will not help our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and their mission.

[mvpel]

Unwilling to control its fighters, who fired scores of missiles into Israel at the end of their six-month ceasefire, ...

"At the end???" Try "throughout," Mr. Buchanan. See the Palestinian Rocket Report by the Jewish Policy Center, and note all the Qassam and artillery attacks throughout November and months prior, including one in June that grievously injured a two-year-old child at a medical clinic in a shopping mall.

Yet the wisdom of so savage a retribution for rockets that killed not one Israeli is open to question.

So as long as your civil defense system is excellent, a rain of thousands of indiscriminate deadly rockets launched against innocent civilians, leaving CHILDREN suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, is not worthy of decisive military force?

Germany launched fourteen hundred indiscriminate V2 rockets against Britain, another 1,600 against Belguim, and another 75 against France - and nobody batted an eye when the allies stormed in and utterly destroyed the German government and military.

Here's what the German city of Dresden looked like when the allies got sufficiently fed up with indiscriminate rocket attacks against civilians:

As if we have anything to say about precision attacks against military targets in Gaza with minimal collateral damage.

[Venturer]

It’s all Bush’s fault.

Pat is already making excuses for future Hamas atrocities, Yes Clinton negotiated with Arafat, in fact he spoke with Arafat while Monica serviced him. The service Monica gave him did more good than the Arafat negotiations.

The only way to deal with Hamas is the deal Israel is giving them right now.

[Rammer]

Pat Buchanan is such a tool.

It’s time to stop posting his drivel. He doesn’t need an audience.

[Blennos]

Poor Pat. Anti-semitism has poisoned his thinking and writing for all of his public life. It tarnishes every article he writes. What a burden to bear in life.

[ml/nj]

since being driven from their homes in the War of 1948

By whom?

ML/NJ

[Nuc1]

In advancing peace in the Middle East, Bush's eight-year record is now a near-absolute failure.

As is all his fore runners records. Pat, the people you are supporting are evil murders. And in the beginning they attacked infant Israel, and they lost. That is why the pali's were forced out, you make it sound like they were innocent bystanders. I have no pity for them. None. They reap what they sow. And they best be glad I don't set the objectives for the armed forces attacking them.

[steadfastconservative]

Hamas’ decision to fire rockets into Israel at the end of the six-month cease-fire was an act of war whether or not anyone was killed. What does Buchanan expect Israel to do? Should it have sat through continued bombings and rocket attacks until someone was killed? How many deaths and attacks does Israel have to suffer until it is permitted to defend itself?

Buchanan’s entire assessment of this situation is way off base. President Bush’s policy of trying to carve a Palestinian state out of Israel can hardly be called favorable to Israel in any sense of the word and is proving to be a dismal failure.

In the end, the only way for Israel to deal with enemies like Hamas who want to destroy her is to kill them first.

[AdvisorB]

Pat is divining “moderate” Paleostains among the hamass. That’s like looking for moderates in the Nazi heirarchy in the 1930s.

As has been stated before, moderate Muslims, are those Muslims on the weak side of the coalition of forces, or out of ammunition.

[kabar]

The bombing of Dresden in February 1945, two months before the end of the war, was very controversial. It had little to do with indescriminate rocket attacks against civilians.

[ecomcon]

It is folly to live with your enemies. Eventually, one will purge the other, because they are implacable enemies with nothing in common.

Jewish Fabianism and a belief in multiculturalism keeps the two sides in constant friction.

[supremedoctrine]

This is and has always been Pat’s big blind spot in global affairs. He starts the rhetoric with the telltale and “loaded” phrase
“since being driven from their homes in the War of 1948”
A lot has happened since then, Pat. And if that was Israel’s
(and the U.N.’s) original sin, one would think that the world community , including the Palestinians, would’ve found a way to accommodate that reality after SIXTY YEARS!
Israel can’t give back any more to rectify what might have
been a historical mistake, but they keep trying/
The Palestinians blew decades of what could have eventuated in goodwill and slow but sure progress by allowing worldclass thug Yasser Arafat to be their “leader”. Arafat played them like the fools they are.

[StayFocused]

You took the words out of my mouth.

[kabar]

Close to 20% of the population of Israel is Arab with 16% being Muslim. They are growing faster than the population as a whole. Israel is bound to have more problems in the future as this segment increases in size.