Published
April 1, 2001
If President Bush thinks
he can minimize the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he is
making a strategic blunder that will cause pain to the United States and the
American people.
I've developed the uneasy feeling lately that Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell are living in the past. They seem
to think nothing much has changed in the past decade. They seem to believe that
the United States can still say, "Jump!", and every country in the
world will reply, "Yes, sir. How high, boss man?" Those days, if they
ever existed, are over.
They, as well as the president, seem to be totally unaware of just how dangerous
the situation in the Middle East has become. Perhaps they think that the
Palestinians will meekly submit to being bludgeoned into submission by the
Israelis. They won't. They apparently think the other Arab countries will do
nothing but watch and pass meaningless resolutions.
They should understand that there is a fuse burning that could blow that region
and the world economy to bits.
Past performance shows, I believe, that most leaders of the Arab countries do
not wish to take any risks on behalf of the Palestinians. They are content to
talk and to write a few checks.
The exception is Saddam Hussein.
The burning fuse is the rising anger of the Arab people, the folks in the
streets, in the cities and in the villages. Americans are insulated by the
self-censorship of American news media, but, through satellite television, the
Arabs (and Europeans to a greater extent than Americans) get daily coverage of
the brutal treatment and injustices the Israelis commit against the
Palestinians.
The Arabs are aware that the United States, which has voted many times to send
United Nations peacekeepers here and there, just vetoed a United Nations
Security Council resolution to send peacekeepers to protect the Palestinians.
The Arabs see correctly that it is United States support -- military, financial
and chief blocker at the United Nations -- that allows Israel to act in any way
it pleases. Therefore, they can conclude with perfect logic that the United
States is an enemy of the Arab people. The United States is willing to cause the
deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children in the name of enforcing "sacred"
United Nations resolutions, but blocks the enforcement of more than 60 United
Nations resolutions critical of Israeli actions.
American politicians are clever at covering their tracks and at deliberately
misleading the American people. Every time an American is killed in the Middle
East, the politicians act as if the perpetrators had parachuted down from Mars
and attacked Americans for no reason whatsoever.
In fact, though, too many Americans who have died in terrorist attacks in the
Middle East have died because of the grossly unfair and unjust policies of the
United States vis-à-vis Israel and the Palestinians. Eventually, if America
continues to allow the Israelis a free hand, the Arab people will get so angry
they will force their leaders to act or replace them with leaders who will.
At that point, the United States will find its policy in shambles.
It is not an impossibility that one day Persian Gulf states may say to the
United States, "Get out and take your ships and planes with you."
It is not inconceivable that one day Russians and Chinese will be guarding the
oil in the Persian Gulf. At this very moment, Chinese are exploiting the oil in
the Sudan -- oil that had been discovered by an American firm, which got bounced
out along with the pro-American dictator.
We have, in fact, been thrown out of other countries.
And it most definitely is not an impossibility that the region could explode
into open war with an untold cost in lives and with dire economic consequences
for the whole world economy.
The American government is endangering the nation's strategic interests and
American lives simply to cater to the lobby of a foreign government. Merely
repeating whatever the Israeli government says is not a policy or a strategy.
That is acting like a ventriloquist's dummy.
Bush promised us leadership.
Well, here's his chance.
Reach Charley Reese at [email protected] or 407-420-5315.