The middle east is complicated.
Reader comment on item: Bush's Middle East Hopes

Submitted by David (United States), Jan 17, 2008 at 21:01

There are so many moving parts that it is difficult to summarize the situation there. Your point about not labelling the problem and therefore not addressing the enemy is unproductive. The war on terror is a euphemism that is as ambiguous as it is impossible to win. To win we have to say Islamofascism is something that needs to be defeated. Defeated militarily but also economically. We continue to have energy dependence on a region that we should stop pumping money into. Let's marginalize the clowns like Putin, Chavez, and the mullahs and be self sufficient.

Regarding preemptive war and the Bush Doctrine I don't know how Bush could have communicated his vision any better. The "intelligence" (I use that word loosely) felt that Iraq had WMD's. I also believe that Hussein's brazen acts of belligerence against Israel was also our casus belli but not one that can sell in the USA. I only wish that we found the WMD's because most of the mistrust is cast because of their abscence.

This leads us to the Arab-Israeli conflict where I will focus much of my energy. Israel lost our help after they didn't damage Hezbollah sufficiently. The US and Condoleeza Rice gave them every opportunity to inflict damage on them and they arrogantly failed to fight the fight necessary to achieve this end. She was embarrassed by this and fast forward to today and our stance towards Israel. Our failure in Gaza was the cherry on top to further punish Israel because road blocks were the reason Gaza didn't thrive not the Palestinians. Why stop the UN gravy train by actually building a productive society if you could be the the world's welfare for eternity. Now we add the Iraq war which has been on the upswing now but has exhausted our political capital around the world and you see the difficulty.

Lastly, Iran who has been building a nuclear weapon even though our "Intelligence" doesn't think so. The US and Israel may be the only countries that seem to care. In a perverse way, Annapolis was about protecting these Arab "Moderates" from a country that they only pretend to be afraid of so we can solve the issue that will make it all better "Israel-Palestine". Unfortunately, when we protect them we are really protecting our oil which leads us back to an earlier point. Too bad Israel has such a weak leader and weak press that begs to be raped by the US. Israel had better learn to be self-sufficient until this administration is out of office. I believe they need to get the mattresses out and fight this fight by themselves and not ask for US aid. Do what they need to do with Iran and pretend the US isn't there to help because they aren't.

Lastly, Democracy in the region is hard but to quote Bernard Lewis if we don't give them freedom they will destroy us. If Iraq is a democracy and there is a Palestinian state maybe Lebanon can stick and perhaps the dominoes fall right. Too bad Pakistan is burning and these dictatorships have too much to lose to just give up. That is the nutshell in my eyes.

david

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