OT: strategic schizophrenia

Whistle
1

Please let me get this off my heaving chest:

According to the news today, the upper echelons of
the Israeli military are blasting the Israeli government’s
‘anti-terrorist’ campaign as counterproductive,
fomenting as much or more terrorism as it prevents..
Meanwhile the USA has markedly reduced its diplomatic
involvement, saying in effect to the disentegrating Palestinian
Authority, ‘call us when you’re ready to dismantle Hamas.’
The road map to peace is internationally called the
‘road wreck’ to peace.

Invading Iraq and then failing to follow through in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict strikes me as catastrophic.
Many if not most people in that part of the world think we
invaded Iraq at Israel’s bidding. In abandoning the peace
process, we confirm that perception. Many hate us for what they
see as our one-sided backing of Israel against the
Palestinians, for our arming Israel to the teeth, for
funding its economy, etc. The failure to follow through
on the peace process confirms that perception, too.

The hatred has long ago turned violent, but what was missing
were accessible American targets. Now we’re spread all
over Iraq, the targets have come to them. Doubtless
the main force of people fighting us in Iraq is made up of
remnants of Saddam’s fedayeen, but there is
indication that they are being joined by people from
outside Iraq. I suspect that this is going to increase
considerably, as we have abandoned the peace
process.

I remember in Vietnam there was a sense of unreality:
it wasn’t as though our policy was bad, it was crazy–it
was discounting reality at a very high level. And there
was a public craziness too; certain thoughts couldn’t be
thought, or spoken. I remember a newspaper writing:
‘Some people say that the Vietnammese were promised
elections after they drove out the French, to unify the
country. Some people say that Diem refused to allow
the elections and the war began again.’
That was as close as they could come to speaking
the simple truth: ‘Some people say…’

Now we’re like that too–we seem unable to speak
what strikes me as the plain truth. The Israeli-Palestinian
conflict was the main motive behind 9-11–that’s what
Al Qaida says, anyhow. It is the principal spur to terrorism,
and I suspect we are about to pay dearly for it in Iraq.
It is perhaps the single most important
strategic fact in the middle east, affecting everything else,
yet we treat it as if it is happening on another
planet–unconnected to anything else. We don’t have
time to deal with it, we’re so busy in Iraq; and it’s
an election year.

We seem like people who believe that the engine dragging
the train over the cliff is just a noisy wheel that turns without engaging
the mechanism–a nuisance. Or, to shift metaphors, like a man who
is dying of a treatable disease, but cannot be brought
to name it. Thanks, I feel better now.

2

The Israel/Palistine conflict will never be resolved as long as the Palestinian Authority doesn’t recognize the right of Israel to exist.

As long as they have the objective of genocide of the Jews, I see no hope for them except to exterminate them first… and I have seen no attempts to do so.

One man is mostly responsible for that conflict, Yasser Arafat, a murdering criminal if there ever was one.

I see no sense in extensive diplomatic effort as Yasser Arafat will spit on anything that doesn’t result in the elimination of Israel. It would be wasted effort.

No one said that the war against terrorism would be either easy or quick.

If we cut and run again as we did under Clinton, we becone even bigger targets to the terrorists.

I still think that we are taking a great risk in our efforts in the middle east, but is Afganistan and Iraq are successes and decent governments do break out, the benefits would be tremendous strides towards peace in that region.

Historically, no one has succeeded when meddling in the middle east.

If that area didn’t have such proven oil reserves, perhaps they could just be ignored, but that area seems to produce a lot of people willing to do evil in the name of Allah, so how do you ignore them when they declare war on our civilians?

3

After 9/11, the time finally came for America to ask who are our enemies and who are our friends. In this ever-shrinking world, we can no longer afford to ignore faraway problems. Threats to our national security can now come from all corners of the globe. We have many enemies, that we have been ignoring for quite some time now. I remember seeing on TV thousands of Palestinians dancing in the streets after 9/11. I would submit that each and every person in that crowd has declared themselves to be an enemy of the United States. Our national leadership now has the responsibility of leading us through a long hard war against terrorism. What government could be morally justified in doing anything less than everything it can to protect the security of its citizens? Israel has the same challenge in its fight against terror. However, they may not be doing enough. The Israeli war on terror thus far seems to consist of symbolic rocket attacks following a suicide bomb. A better approach would be a concerted effort with the assistance of other nations in rooting out the terrorist networks themselves. A terror network is remarkably easy to hide if they have a safe country that they can dpend on for support. These countries share the same moral responsibility with the terrorists as the getaway driver shares responsibility with the bank robber. In the words of our president, “we will make no distinction between the terrorists, and those who harbor them.” This is the only model that will work for the US and Israel. It is only once security can be guaranteed for all involved, that serious diplomatic discussions about things like statehood can commence.

4

Hmm, let’s see: enemies: the French, the Germans, the UN and most of the civilized world. Friends: Pakistan and England. As the staunchest supporter and financer of terrorism around the world, the US would find it very hard to make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them, so instead, it decided to re-fashion itself into a police state and occupation power in the Israeli model. They tried, but then they realized that the CIA were the ones who had financed and trained the 9/11 terrorists in the first place.

Rhetoric, bullshit and fear. Talk of friends and enemies, and Big Brother who will save us from Osama and Sadam. This government may not be the best this country ever had, but it’s exquisitely adept in generating and controlling fear.

And almost everybody falls for it, how sad…

P.S.: US killed a lot more people in Panama when it went there to punish misbehaving CIA employee Noriega, than were killed by the 9/11 terrorist acts. Compare the population of the 2 countries. 3,000 people is a lot of people, even in a big country like the US. Imagine 3,000 dead in a small country like Panama… Their fault? they just happened to be living and sleeping in the same general area where the US thought Noriega was.

So lighten up, folks, and play your whistles. Nobody is coming after you, it’s just your government using mind control techniques on you.

5

Fancy and Ants, I think you guys are confused as to who is committing genocide against whom. Who dropped in out of nowhere 60 or so years ago? Which group is being treated about as well as black South Africans were under apartheid, or Native Americans during westward expansion? How would you react if this were done to you? Suppose someone arrived from another country and told you to get out of your house and off your land because they have a holy book that says it belongs to them. Would you just pack up and go peacefully, or would you fight and be angry, and pass that anger on to your children?

Don’t believe everything you read in American papers about what’s going on is Israel. The film footage of Arabs dancing on 9/11, for example, has already been proven to be old footage unrelated to the events of that day. Just another case of the media speculating as to events and feeding the frenzy.

6

Oh, and didn’t the Palestinians say they would recognize the right of Israel to exist if Israel recognized their right to come back to the cities from where they were driven out at gun point by the Israeli colonists?

Answer another one: why is it ok for the Israeli state to be based on race? IF it’s ok for them, why wasn’t it ok for, say, the South Africans? Or (gasp!) the Nazis? :adminok:

Oh yes, we need to stop treating this Israeli state as if it were God’s people from the Bible, and above all, stop treating them as if they can never do anything wrong.

Oh, another perfectly rotten thread has been spoiled even further…

7

We seem to be going by each other. I supported the
invasion of Iraq; I support the war on terror. I’m
a Republican, etc.

I do agree with the Israeli military high command that
the Sharon government bears considerable responsibility
for the breakdown of the peace process, but my
principal concern isn’t who is more to blame,
the Israeli’s or the Palestinians. My concern is
that there is something crazy about our
foreign policy. That it is discounting reality
at a high level and treating the causes of things
as if they were causally irrelevant.

We are walking away from the peace process, as if
what will happen there has no connection to what
will happen to our forces in Iraq. There seems to be
a fundamental inability to connect the dots–both
within the American government and among the
American people–to understand WHY things are
happening.

8

IIRC, Arafat is/was an Egyptian (at least he was born there and was a citizen) and is asking that people “from the river to the sea” leave their homes to the “Palestinians”.

9

Suppose the Palestinians have contributed substantially
to the failure of the peace process, more than the
Israelis. Suppose the Palestinian demands are
wrong.

We are still not
understanding why our forces are under attack in
Iraq, I submit.

10

I do not condone all of Sharon’s policies either. The Palestinians should be allowed back to their homes, but Israel’s war on terror must also continue. Israel is not based on race. Its existence was made official by the same UN that you all so dearly love. Unless, of course, there was some grand worldwide CIA conspiracy to make that happen.

11

Your troops are under attack in Iraq mostly because you are a hostile occupying power there, isn’t this obvious? :roll: I believe the technical term is “war”.

Ants, no the CIA conspiracy was in Iraq and Iran.

12

Glauber, please read my original post again. Thanks.

As to the right of return, Palestinian negotiators
have been signalling for some time that they would
negotiate that for funding.

13

Let me put it one more way:

Walking away from the peace process is extremely
imprudent with troops spread out in Iraq.
We didn’t go into this road map business thinking that peace was
impossible, and frankly nothing has happened
that we couldn’t have dealt with if we had had
the will. We are disengaging because of
the presidential election.

I expect that most Americans still don’t
know why 9-11 happened.

14

Jim, it’s impossible for most Americans to know why the events of September 11, 2001 took place. In order for most people to know, our leaders would have to be honest with us, our media would have to be more concerned with the truth than with making money, and our citizens would have to be ready to understand that there are peoples who have legitimate gripes with us.

Unfortunately, we seem to have developed a national policy of deliberate ignorance and misinformation. Sadam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, you know. So we’re in Iraq to avenge that attack. Since we were attacked first, anything and everything we do to anyone in a turban is justified. We are the kind-hearted big brother to all other nations and would never do anything wrong. Those who continue to fight against us are the misguided victims of brainwashings by Sadam, Osama, or their local Muslim Imam.*

“My country, right or wrong,” a weird saying and sentiment to begin with, has come to mean, “My country is always right.” A person is called unpatriotic who doesn’t fully support our president and our troops. Well, this kind of pressure leads people to stop examining the facts, just in case the facts lead them to unpatriotic conclusions. I think most Americans would rather be accused of being ignorant than of being unpatriotic.

Rant over.

(*Ironic portion of post.)

15

Yet I think there’s something more–the papers don’t say it,
nobody says it. 9-11 happened principally because of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This isn’t the kind of thing you
say in America. The thought is unthinkable. Creepy!

16

I just cant believe how stupid and gulable americans are. We have established a totaly out of control capitalist system with no morals and its only tenent is "Seek Advantage". Well we seem willing to except this and wash our hands of responsibility. I keep hearing our president saying that our enemys simply hate freedom. BS. They are simply tired of being raped by a supper power. I think you are watching the fall of a great experament. We are well on our way to a totalitarian form of government and no we dont have any friends out there. Wake up, get your heads out of your butts. The big lie has been launched and it seems we are more than willing to believe it. Let her rip glauber, I dont have the patients to discuss this shit anymore. We ARE NOT THE WHITE KNIGHTS here folks. And we havent been for quite some time. But hey who cares as long as we have friday nights.

Tom

17

Capitalism and totalitarianism are two entirely different things. If this nation becomes totalitarian, it would first have to renounce capitalism.

Personally I do not like being handed guilt trips all the time just for being American. I have had enough of the anti-American establishment tracing every single problem in the world somehow back to “American capitalist greed and imperialism” rather than analysed to find the true causes.

18

:laughing: that’s a good one, pants

19

Yes, Ants, capitalism is not a form of government. It’s an economic system.

There certainly have been examples of Totalitarian states whose economies ran under the capitalist system.

I don’t think every problem in the world is the fault of America, by any means, but I’ve had enough of people trying to deny that America is ever at fault for anything.

20

A curious feature of this problem is that it’s operating
from the bottom up, too. It is politically dangerous for an American president to be involved in the peace process, because there is
so much grass roots sentiment favoring Israel,
yet it’s plain that we must take a stronger stand
(agreeing in effect with the Israeli military that Sharon’s
policies must change) if the process is to move forward.
Bush’s advisers know that this is how he can lose
the next election–that if he does what needs doing
the Democrats will make it a campaign issue.

When the Palestinians were cobbling together a cease fire,
persuading Hamas and Islamic Jihad to halt terrorist
attacks, the Israelis, at just that moment, tried to assassinate
Rantisi, a Hamas political leader who favored a truce.
This was a guy the Israelis could have killed any day
for months–they went for him THEN. Bush spoke
before his political advisers could reach him.
He said that he was ‘deeply disturbed’ by Israel’s
actions–the message was that he saw in the
Israeli missile attack a clear effort to destroy the peace process.
Immediately Congress insisted that he mustn’t criticize Israel. Bush’s next
comment, two days later, was to blame the Palestinians.

Everytime Powell or anybody else attempts to suggest
Israeli policy must change, Congress speaks out
against it and the administration backs away. Part of the problem is that many Congressfolk
are funded by pro-Israel lobbies–it has been called
‘Israel-controlled Congress.’

But another piece of the problem is us.
It isn’t just the ‘system’–it’s the people too.
The system that’s at fault is democracy, partly.
At the end of
the day these guys want to get reelected,
and as things now stand one needs to be in
denial about the middle east to stand a chance.
A totalitarian government would probably
be doing a better job.