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.
And a question for you...who on here is advocating "joining the Arabs in their desire to destroy Israel"?
Regarding our terms; if we as a nation or a portion of our citizenry is to be put in peril or injured in some way by any entity "over there", we then strike. I was under the impression that your view was that we should be a supporter of Israel, period. I DO agree that we should saturation bomb the PA because and ONLY because they support or are allied with terrorists. It's Bush's mandate. That DOES NOT include providing economic aid of ANY kind to their post-bombed transitional government. If the hatred grows and their venom spews forth following their destruction, so does the bombing. I'm for complete obliteration of their entire civilization if necessary. Absolute complete eradication if necessary. Same goes for Israel. It won't win me any points on the floor of the UN, but that's another story......
I'm not familiar with that phrase.
Anyone?
I assume you would also deny US protection to Korea, the Saudis, pull out of NATO, pretty much hide 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.
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?
This knee jerk "pro-US, not pro-Israel" sentiment is so much garbage.
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.
From Buchanan's own website:
In 1973, as a special assistant to President Nixon, he strongly supported the decision to aid the Israelis with a massive airlift that saved the country in the Yom Kippur War.
This knee jerk "pro-US, not pro-Israel" sentiment is so much garbage.
Are you saying unequivocally that we cannot be Pro-US, not Pro-Israel? We not only should be, we must be. Using your reasoning then, we are either for Israel or against Israel. We cannot be neutral.
I'm for pulling aid out of Kenya, and all other garbage dumps around the world. Justify to me just why we should shore up these cesspools. The preservation of their lives? Their contribution to the arts? Do we value the lives of one human being over the lives of another? Yes. Abso-f'n-lutely. The simplicity of it is earth shattering. "If you take from me, then you harm me. If you contribute to me or my community, then we can work something out". I'm not for arbitrary eradication of groups or nations (if you can call them nations), I'm for destroying those who would do harm to me or my community. Arguably, my community is the world.
Bush has an opportunity now to demonstrate just what that means. Pull aid out of N.Korea. Pull troops out of S.Korea. It's sink or swim. If one attacks the other, kill them decisively. That is what is necessary. It will come to this one day, what I'd like to know is just why we are pussy-footing around the God damned globe half-assed. I'm sick of it.
You sure?
I can't figure out what they think besides parroting the idiotic utterances of a congenital loser.
"Amen Corner" makes the Congress bend to their will, because if not for the "Amen Corner" we would do.......something.....great things.... prostrate before the Arabs....make them love us...something....
If not for measly, by budget standards, aid to Israel, everyone would get free cable...at least free HBO.
Utopia if not for the "Amen Corner"
And who is the "Amen Corner"? Christians and Jews, Americans all. Anyone who supports Israel. But it is somehow sinister.
You're apparently still horribly confused. He's basically saying it is pretty much imposible for the US to broker a peace deal, and then lists the reasons. He offers no solutions, no pax america, nothing.
You know about Kitty Genevese [sp]. She was a woman murdered in NYC whose long cries for help went unanswered by many neighbors- who didn't even call the police.
Where you have Israel outnumbered by numerous multiples who want to destroy her, when you are not pro-Israel, then you are anti-Israel.
Thank-you, Luis.
In addition to Europe, there are also large numbers who migrated from America and Russia. Yet I suspect that both you and I would be banned from making this migration ourselves, Luis, based on our respective racial/ethnic/religious heritages.
Oh stop the whining and hyperbole. We should cut all aid to Israel and all the Arab countries surrounding her. I love Jews. And Pat loves Jews too.
"As a Jew, I never felt any hostility from Buchanan on that score, never heard him make a disparaging remark about Jews, never noticed any difference in the way he treats Jews and non-Jews," -Michael Kinsley
"I've known [Pat] now for twenty-five years. We have agreed on almost nothing, starting with Richard Nixon . . , there's not a scintilla of evidence in all I've known about Pat that he is anti-Semitic . . , This is an attempt to say that if you disagree with Israel on a matter of policy, you can be called anti-Semitic..." -Jack Germond
"No true Christian can carry within his heart hatred for any of God's children . . . I am as aware as any other Christian that our Savior was Jewish, His mother was Jewish. The Apostles were Jewish. The first martyrs were Jewish...So no true Christian, in my judgment, can be an anti-Semite." - Pat Buchanan
Anyone can immigrate to Israel same as to other countries.
Let's see, Pukechanan, Reese, Sobran, Lew Rockwell.com, so many crackpots so much wasted bandwidth.
S, Is Pat wrong?? If not, how is this considered "bashing"? Peace and love, George.
I lived in Kitty's building...... but a few years later.
So skewed is Pat, that he sees SUPPORT for Israel from 89 Senators as part of some grand conspiracy.
I would proffer that the Pat Buchanan's of the world are the odd men out, they are the ones with an agenda. And it simply just does not jibe with the majority of Americans.
And Senator Fulbright was Clinton's mentor. I am not impressed.
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