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US Muddles Along In The Middle East
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has a mess on its hands in the Middle East, due to its inept policies in Iraq and Palestine.
As the president continues to muddle along, Congress and the American people remain incredibly mute, marking time.
Real time for Congress is September when Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, is due to give a definitive report on the progress of the war there.
The critical time for many people is 2009, when a new president may come to the rescue.
The invasion and unprovoked occupation of Iraq is now in its fifth year and is projected by some generals to last for 10 more years.
The perennial Palestinian dispute has become more explosive through sheer neglect. President Bush brags that he is the only president who has proposed an independent Palestinian state -- but he has done little to achieve his goal. And his unabashed pro-Israeli approach has made compromise difficult, to put it mildly.
A couple of months before Bush decided to implement his unilateral agenda by attacking Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein in 2003, an Arab diplomat told me that the president would be putting his finger in a hornet's nest if he pursued his aggressive goals in the region.
That prediction has come through in spades. Thousands of Iraqis and Americans are dead; thousands more wounded and about 2 million Iraqis have fled to seek refuge in Syria and Jordan. Both countries have been kind enough to set up camps for them.
What a tragedy we have with this war to nowhere.
The Palestinian civil strife was intensified with the brutal ousting of the Fatah forces from Gaza by the more militant Hamas.
Bush keeps touting his desire to spread democracy in the Arab world, yet last year when Hamas won a majority of seats in the legislative council -- fair and square, according to the U.N. observer team -- the administration refused to recognize the election results.
What's more, the U.S. cut off all financial aid to Gaza and imposed tight political and economic restrictions on the Palestinians.
That was a strange way to promote democracy. The U.S. and the Western powers have now resumed aid to the pro-Western government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to bolster the Fatah forces against Hamas.
Bush also keeps insisting that the Palestinians have to recognize Israel but he has never urged Israel to return to its pre-1967 war borders.
So the Palestinians are right to ask: Which Israel are they supposed to recognize? The one with new settlements on the West Bank and walls built on Palestinian land?
White House press secretary Tony Snow set conditions for U.S. acceptance of the Hamas in a Palestinian government, declaring it has to release the Israelis it holds in captivity and to accept the existence of Israel.
All that has become moot with the defeat of the Fatah forces in Gaza by the Hamas. Abbas promptly ejected Hamas cabinet members from the West Bank government, and the U.S. rewarded him with an infusion of $40 million in aid. Israel also eased up on Palestinian checkpoints.
The moves left the Hamas -- now in control of Gaza -- high and dry except for some humanitarian aid.
Whether in Iraq or Palestine, administration officials tag as a "terrorist" anyone opposing the U.S. military presence in the Middle East.
On Tuesday, Snow denounced Hamas, saying that members of that group have been "slaughtering the opposition "in the streets."
There is no question that the U.S. approach to the region has radicalized the Arabs. On June 14, The Washington Post quoted Alvaro de Soto, the United Nation's former top Middle East envoy, as sharply criticizing U.S. and Israeli efforts to isolate the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
Before retiring last month he filed a confidential report accusing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of "hijacking" efforts of former U.S. envoy James Wolfensohn to negotiate an agreement to provide greater freedom of movement for civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
DeSoto also said the U.S. "clearly pushed for confrontation" between Fatah and the Hamas. He quoted an unnamed U.S. representative as saying: "I like this violence ... it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas."
U.S. officials may soon long for the good old days when the late PLO chief Yasser Arafat was in power. The demonized Arafat made many diplomatic concessions and signed several peace accords, but Bush refused to ever meet with him before his death in 2004.
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com.
Copyright 2007 Hearst Newspapers.
23 Comments so far
Show AllI nominate this woman for sainthood. A few years ago our small Maine peace group asked her to come and speak--and she did! We had nothing to pay her and could only provide a place to stay. The largest place we could find to hold the presentation could only hold about 200 people, if I remember correctly. And yet there she was. What a great woman.
stolen elections...
sad world
so many hungry people..
as you continue making more nukes....Why?
Helen Thomas wrote: "The critical time is 2009 when a new administration will come to the rescue."
Now I love Helen Thomas and all but doesn't she know that no one will come to our rescue to 2009? In fact most of the candidates under pressure from AIPAC are advocating for war with Iran? See below. No one is going to save us people!
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Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told "the Chicago Tribune on September 26, 2004, '[T]he big question is going to be, if Iran is resistant to these pressures [to stop its nuclear program], including economic sanctions, which I hope will be imposed if they do not cooperate, at what point ... if any, are we going to take military action?'
Senator Hillary Clinton told some 1,700 AIPAC supporters that the US must take any step to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Senator Hillary Clinton "U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," she said. "In dealing with this threat ... no option can be taken off the table."
"To deny the Holocaust places Iran's leadership in company with the most despicable bigots and historical revisionists," she added. Clinton excoriated the Iranian administration's "pro-terrorist, anti-American, anti-Israeli rhetoric."
"We need to use every tool at our disposal, including diplomatic and economic in addition to the threat and use of military force," she added.
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani: Pre-emptive meant Afghanistan and Iraq as I pointed out, I think, in the last debate we were asked the question, did you agree and do you still agree with taking out Saddam Hussein? The answer to that is, absolutely, yes. And I don't think that we should exit Iraq in any way in which we give the terrorist an advantage and I think that the recommendations the democrats have been making to exit would all give the terrorists an advantage. We have to remain on offense in: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Being on offense is not just military it means the Patriot Act, it means electronic surveillance, it means interrogation, being aggressive in those areas, nothing illegal but being aggressive and not pulling back the way the democrats want to do. Each one of the areas I just mentioned, the democrats over the last year, including the candidates for president have talked about significant steps backwards. This is no time to be stepping back into a defensive posture. We have to remain on offense.
Senator John Edwards: All the options are on the table to ensure that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon," said Edwards, who is running for president for the second time. He also ran in the 2004 election both as a presidential and then as a vice presidential candidate.
In speaking via satellite to the conference from the US, he said Iran's nuclear ambition represents the single greatest security threat not only to Israel but to the United States as well.
He added that his country had abdicated its responsibility and had not done enough to stop Iran.
I think spreading democracy might take shape if the US under its mercenary armed forces manages to secure Iraq's oil. Bush will name the new oil company, "Democracy, Inc." And on the subject of names, how about SNOW, born to the task of offering one SNOW JOB after another. What a baboon hierarchy we've got running the show, as the world looks on alternately horrified and laughing out loud.
[quote]As the president continues to muddle along, Congress and the American people remain incredibly mute, marking time.[unquote]
Muddle? Marking time? Recall what David Michael Green wrote a coupla weeks ago:
"Bush and Cheney must actually leave office on January 20, 2009. I still have concerns about this, though fewer than I did a few years back. It worries me, though, that we've taught these reprobates an unfortunate lesson - namely, that you can steal elections, trash the Bill of Rights, blow off Congress, manufacture a war, and steal the national crown jewels - all without much more consequence than a bit of photo-op grumbling by an anemic opposition party, the occasional off-script question from an otherwise completely obsequious press, and the latent hostility of a powerless public. After all that, would it be so much to fake another international crisis and suspend elections? If you can kill habeas corpus after nearly a millennium of it being woven deep into the fabric of Western cultural tradition, could you not readily spike an election or two under conditions of 'national emergency'? And let us not be under any illusions about the massive incentives that exist for them to stay in office, not least of which is to avoid losing the ability to block investigations of their crimes once they're out of power. The Bush junta has plenty of good reasons not to go when their (stolen) term expires. And then, of course, there is the matter of that mysterious underground bunker Cheney has been building, and the giant prison complexes recently constructed for as-yet unspecified purposes…"
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/08/1746/
Let AIPAC and ADL keep whining about "the new antisemitism." Let the Israeli elite keep whining about the Palestinians not "recognizing" Israel, while Israel refuses to "recognize" the Palestinians' democratic choices. Let all the Likudniks and their Jesus-freak supporters continue holocaust-mongering. Because nothing's gonna change until a critical mass of Westerners gets as fed up with all this whining and complaining as we are.
They will go.
There is no way donors would be spending billions on candidates just to have President Cheney and VP Bush stick it out.
If another 9 11 happens there will be less shock, and the response would more likely be to blame them.
Zoya: your Greene quote chronicles the REAL scale of loss and the dangerous precedents it sets. So much for a nation under the RULE of law.
What a great article that concisely pulls everything in the Middle East together! The only thing that mars it is the statement that someone will save us. It's not going to happen. If we are going to be saved, it will have to be us that does the job because Superman exists only in the comics. There won't be any big man (or woman) who will save us because it is a problem created by our society and it will have to be solved by our society.
I, too, would be surprised if we are allowed to actually have an election in 2008. If you all will recall, the administration mentioned the possibility of suspending the election in case of an emergency during the last presidential theft. This was just a trial balloon sent up to get us used to the concept.
I told my friends in 2004 that I feared the 08 election would be called off when they said that.
Sure hope I'm wrong but so far I haven't been about any of the other predictions I've made concerning Bush Co.
Well the election system is rigged anyway by the DNC and the RNC so even if they suspend elections at this point it matters little. Its all one big sham.
Zoya agreed and a lot of us already are incredibly fedup but our politicans are sell-outs and our media covers up the truth.
Endless war is assured for the Middle East because that is the neocon plan. It is Israel's plan and always has been. No one wants peace less. And they always get their way. Israel's massive nuclear program was merely a necessary component in a hegemonic blueprint. Violence in the Middle East is never an accident. It is always an expression of a master plan. If you view Israel in this light you will never be surprised and everything that it does makes perfect sense. America simply does what it's told. Twas ever thus.
A few people seem to misunderstand Helen's statement "The critical time for many people is 2009, when a new president may come to the rescue."
Note that Helen does not say that she feels we will be "rescued". She says many people feel that a new president will rescue us, but she gives no indication that she thinks that will be the case.
Ms Thomas did not say a new President WILL come to the rescue in 2009. She said MAY come to the rescue.
Newsweek announced the results of a nation-wide survey of "What Americans believe"...
20% believe that most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Iraq...
20% believe that WMD was found in Iraq...
Purely coincidental that about 20% of American public gets their news from Fox...
41% still believe that Sadaam had something to do with 9/11...
Can't say that the Bush admin wasn't successful at something...
574 days... Deliver us from evil...
As dcbeltway noted:
Hillary Clinton: "To deny the Holocaust places Iran's leadership in company with the most despicable bigots and historical revisionists"
Barack Obama: "Iran's nuclear ambition represents the single greatest security threat not only to Israel but to the United States as well."
So, where do we start? Isn't it obvious that we need to solve that other festering problem in the Middle East first? Once the US and its "coalition" seriously and with fairness to all apply themselves to leaning on all the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the threat to Israel will wither away. And as for the threat to the USA -- Iran...? perhaps Belgium, Canada, Mexico. Not Iran.
The event I hope to happen that is crucial in our day in age is that the Palestinian people have a nation to call their own again. The West Bank should be an independent, autonomous, sovereign nation for the Palestinians. They can rename their COMPLETE control of the West Bank whatever they want - provided that both Israel and the new Palestinian nation leave each other alone for a while. Extremely important as we all know. Once Palestine is re-established, although the Palestinians will have to accept that at least half of their original land would have to be forfeited to the Israelis, as was promised to them shortly after WWII, as we all should know the story. The Palestinians will have to deal with this fact and I feel confident the vast majority of Palestinians worldwide would pay that price to have a nation that belongs strictly to them. I am unable to express in words the importance for the re-establishment of a Palestinian nation to take place in human history. The UN needs to establish a nation for the Palestinians to call their own for all of our sakes.
This was the one promise George W. Bush made in his entire White House stint that I still hope he will keep - to do what is necessary for the Palestinians to have an autonomous, sovereign, independent nation to call their own. Hopefully, Mr. Bush Jr. may wind up higher in American polls if he does this very action. He definitely needs a good PR move in nearing the end of his Presidency. What better way than to have the establishmet of a Palestinian nation happen before January 20th, 2009.
It's amazing. These idiots in the U.S. Congress, the morons who are the frontrunners to be the next president of this terrorist, rouge, duplicitous, hypocritical, and criminal regime, including President Cheney (!) and brainless, puppet Bush who can't even speak his native language all have the audacity to bleat and bray as to who can and cannot enrich uranium, and there is no one in the whole world to tell them all: It's none of your fogging business, if you mean what I know.
One candidate who has never wavered: Dennis Kucinich. When the people of the US begin to take peace and change of direction seriously,
Kucinich is ready and willing to lead. It always seems strange to me that so few people take him into consideration when talking about future elections. One hears "he can't win, not electable." Well, of course not, not without commitment on the part of the public.