October 23, 2009
What Is Not Debated
While there is considerable debate about US-Afghan strategy in Washington circles, centering on whether the US should stay put, scale back, or increase troop levels, there is little discussion focusing on America’s Mideast role.
It is a classic illustration how otherwise vibrant democracies can be suborned, subdued, or made subservient to special interests. Here, the think-tanks cease to think and have, in effect, let thinking stagnate in the tank of still waters. Those few who rear their heads find themselves nailed to the cross, like former US President Jimmy Carter after writing “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”.
The core problem underlying Western-Muslim tensions remains as is. Unless it is addressed, the rest is window-dressing.
The think-tanks work overtime to keep Israel – which General George S. Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1974 to 1978, famously described as a “strategic burden” – off the radar screen of debates, discussions, and deliberations.
On this pivotal issue, liberal voices in the Muslim world have allowed themselves to be distracted by secondary issues and have been less than vocal – thereby giving space to guns and bombs to express and exploit pent-up rage. All the stratagems and ruses of statecraft cannot succeed unless the core Palestinian problem underlying Western-Muslim tensions is tackled head-on. The more the Palestinian dimension is kept off-limits, the more it nourishes the climate of hate. It also exposes the leadership deficit in the Muslim world.
Instructive here is the dilemma of Obama. Despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize and trying to placate Israel, he remains suspect in pro-Israeli eyes, primarily because of his Muslim ancestry. In the most recent poll of the Israeli newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, only 4 percent see Obama as pro-Israel. Also, it has been recently uncovered that the California-based woman behind the move to challenge Obama’s eligibility to be US President, by portraying him as a Manchurian Candidate secretly working for the Arabs, is Orly Taitz, a long-time Israel resident.
Compare, for example, the questioning, critique and scrutiny of Pakistan’s actions, policies, and motives, with the swallowing of what Israel does in its occupied territories and with its nuclear weapons program.
US politicians and pundits who are adamant in inserting inflammatory conditions on the disbursement of US aid to Pakistan should be gently asked whether they would be similarly inclined to attach strings on US aid to Israel. Reputable sources estimate that Israel receives $15 billion worth of US aid – all of it without discussion, debate, or argument. It goes to a country whose actions in Gaza have been defined in a UN report as a war crime and one whose policy-makers associated with that atrocity are hesitant of traveling to Europe because of fears of being apprehended as war criminals, according to the front page story of the Washington Times of October 13.
Based upon the foregoing, can any US politician dare to suggest that the US make the release of aid to Israel contingent on the curbing of its settlement expansion activity which is in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions?
The US has to choose – at this strategic crossroads of history – whether its policies are going to be based on politics or principles.
