Before Israel was Our Ally, We had NO Enemies in the Middle East

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020809/index.php

Last September, when President Bush declared his war
on terrorism, I said that you can't kill your way out of a
terrorism problem. I cited the Israelis as an example.

Does anyone want to argue with that? Israel is still
wracked with terrorism, despite having reoccupied
virtually all of the West Bank and having killed
Palestinians at a prodigious rate. Nor have we solved our
terrorism problem, even though, for the time being, the
terrorists are lying low.

I also said in October that American troops would be in
Afghanistan long enough to realize that Afghanistan's
summers are as blazing hot as its winters are cold. That
was when everyone was celebrating the "short" war. Our
troops are still there. Moreover, the Bush administration
doesn't have the foggiest notion of how long they will
have to stay.

We are in this mess because the Bush administration
foreign policy is based on lies. It is based on lies in order
to avoid the politically incorrect truth that our problem
with terrorism is solely the result of our outrageously
unjust policy of blind support of Israel. Neither Bush nor
Congress wants to admit this, so they come up with
absurd lies that terrorists are jealous of our freedom and
wealth.

Really now, do you suppose that a multimillionaire
(Osama bin Laden) who chose to live in caves is jealous
of American wealth? That makes no sense at all. The
Zogby organization, which has emerged as one of the
country's most competent polling organizations, recently
did extensive face-to-face interviews with a cross
section of people in several Arab countries. What did
Zogby find?

It found that people in the Arab countries do not hate
America or Americans or American culture or democracy.
They just hate our foreign policy. As Zogby put it, "It's
the policy, stupid."

While I could write 10 columns on the injustices of that
policy, one example will suffice: We have inflicted a
terrible economic siege and periodic bombings on Iraq in
the name of enforcing United Nations Security Council
resolutions. A former secretary of state, Madeleine
Albright, said on global television that 500,000 dead Iraqi
children were "worth it to enforce the resolutions."

At the same time, the state of Israel stands in open,
stick-it-where-the-sun-don't-shine defiance of more
than 60 U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is able to do
so because the United States refuses to allow any
enforcement actions to be taken against Israel.

You do see the contradiction, do you not? Enforcing
U.N. resolutions against Iraq is OK, even if it means
killing half a million Iraqi children, but no U.N. resolution
can be enforced against Israel. It is not surprising that
Arabs do not like that policy. Their dislike is quite
rational and moral.

The only thing the Arab world, and indeed the Muslim
world, asks of the United States is simple fairness.
Israel's terrorism problem will never be solved as long as
it continues to occupy the West Bank and Gaza. Instead
of pressuring Israel to do the right thing, President Bush
is trying to imitate the Israelis' failed and
blood-spattered policy.

Get a video of the American film "The Patriot," with Mel
Gibson. In your own mind, substitute the Palestinians for
the American patriots and the Israelis for the British. You
will have a correct analogy of what is going on in
Palestine. Every time the Israelis kill and maim Palestinian
children and commit other injustices, the Palestinian
determination to fight grows 10 times stronger.

It is sad indeed that our government rejects the
Palestinian freedom fighters and instead supports the
oppressor, Israel. We'll pay for that stupidity in blood.

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020809/index.php