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.
Unfortunately, a few people here are so pro-Israel they put her welfare ahead of America's, which to me is anti-American.
Possibly/probably nuke...again, this doesn't bother me (and since we are talking about my "America first" policy and not someone else's, I get to call the shots). If Israel needs to defend itself with nukes, I am all for it. I wouldn't worry about an arms race...Israel, unlike the US, would attack swiftly and surely, before a race could develop.
But I would see nukes (or other WMD) as a last resort...I don't think the Israelis would have to dig that deep into their arsenal to beat the Arab terrorists. I think Saddam, bin Laden, and others of their ilks are nothing but cowards that would shrink at the sign of strength. But you could be right - I may be giving the Israelis more cojones than they actually have.
There is no question the ultimate blame lies on the shoulders of the Arabs, and that US interests lie with Israel. As Buchanan himself said, "The U.S. has a moral commitment - to guarantee the security and survival of the Israeli state." But the ultimate duty of US leaders is the survival and success of the US.
And you never answered my question about who on this forum has advocated the victory of Arab terrorists over Israel..is this your paranoia peeking through?
More profound words have not been written in these pages, let alone this thread. Well put.
If this were true, I am certain you have in your records a screen print, a link, something, anything, to verify this assertion. Merely stating that someone else said it, and posting the source info, especially that source, is just so much poppycock. Puhleez.
Prove to me that Jimmy Hoffa is dead.
Hitler was a dispatch runner in WWI. Hitler received 5 medals one of which was the iron cross 1st class. Only two soldiers received that honor in WWI. Ironicly the captain that recommended Hitler for the iron cross was Jewish.
Why didn't Ronald Reagan sue the thousands of DEMONRATS that have accused him (alledgedly legitimately) of being involved in the Iran contra affair? Didn't they seek to impune his integrity? Anyone can say anything they want, it appears, with absolutely no facts to back it up as long as they are a scumbag democrat. The same rules do not apply to Republicans.
I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion from anything I've written. Perhaps you should be less paranoid.
We must be speaking different languages.
You see paranoia in my writing? You should look in the mirror.
Maybe you should read it again. Maybe I didn't make myself clear.
What I thought I wrote, was that all this garbage from your side about an "Amen corner" that influences American policy is paranoia considering the fact that Jews are an insignificant number in the population. If you believe this infinitesimal number can bend the 97% majority to it will....paranoia may be an appropriate description.
There is that word again. Apropos to nothing I wrote.
Is joining the Arabs in their desire to destroy Israel a pro-US policy?
Since you refused to answer my question about who on this forum that would advocate this position, it reeks of paranoia. Rabid paranoia.
Noone would deny that is the Arabs' desire, but to think that there are those outside of the radical Arab community that would join them is not only irrational but points to a deluded sense of self-worth.
Good luck on the SAT's
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