December 22, 2006

Six Years of Insanity

The blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group (ISG) has finally identified and ratified what the rest of the world already knew. Namely, that US foreign policy badly needs a strategic overhaul, and that there cannot be peace in the Middle East unless the Palestinian problem is resolved. In short, the ISG report is a stinging rebuke and a stunning denunciation of the Bush Administration’s Mideast policy, which has pushed the world to the brink of an apocalypse. These are consensus conclusions supported by the American public through multiple opinion surveys.
In one month, the Bush Administration has faced three key setbacks: the loss of the mid-term elections on November 7, the downfall of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and now, this report. The Iraq misadventure is costing the US Treasury $2 billion a week, which is tantamount to about $100 billion a year.
The ISG report is also a snub of the neo-con cabal which wants to push the West on a catastrophic course of confrontation with the Muslim world. The US Establishment may finally be taking cognizance of the deep disquiet among the American people that the Bush Administration’s policies are at variance with vital US interests and are a threat to the security and well-being of Americans. By over-reaching in Iraq, White House warmongers have evoked an unexpected backlash among American public opinion.
Importantly, the ISG study represents a huge setback to Israel and its pro-Israeli lobby in Washington. It recommends that the United States engage Iran and Syria, instead of confronting them. Second, it connects the occupation of Iraq with the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Third, it recommends that the Palestinian issue be resolved in accordance with applicable UN resolutions 242 and 338, which Israel rejects. Fourth, it maintains that there can be no military solution to the political problems of the Middle East.
Already, there is a growing sentiment that America may be waging Israeli wars in the Middle East. Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, and author of his newest best-seller book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, describes in his own words “the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories” and calls it “more oppressive than what blacks lived under in South Africa during apartheid.” Further, in a damning and revealing indictment of US democracy, Carter goes on to say: “It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.”
As if the Middle East were not enough, the Bush Administration has further destabilized the already volatile Sub-continent region by persuading the US Congress to OK the nuclear deal with India which, in effect, rewards India’s nuclear weapons program while exempting it from the purview of applicable anti-nuclear proliferation laws. This display of nuclear double standards sets a bad precedent. Congressman Edward Markey called the plan “a mistake that will come back to haunt the United States and the world.” It may be pertinent to mention that India, with its Hindu majority populace, is seen as a country with a huge anti-Muslim constituency.
More telling perhaps is the silence and, in effect, the acquiescence of servile Muslim elites in not adequately questioning and discouraging the policies of the Bush Administration, which has caused so much mayhem and misery in the Muslim world.
It has been six years of insanity.