Israeli Prime Ministers' failure to do what they said they would do.
Reader comment on item: Israel's Wayward Prime Ministers

Submitted by Donald W. Bales (United States), Jun 29, 2004 at 15:16

I perceive the Israeli Prime Minister to have the same problem that the U.S. President has . Representative government has its good points, but it also has some bad ones. One is is the opposition. Another is the fickle and often (it seems) thoughtless electorate.
Some think that one can negotiate with people like Arafat and the radical Palestinians. But they couldn't and they can't as long as they continue to have as their goal to kill or run out all Israelis.
In the U.S. some think that the Europeans can be brought to understand the nature of the enemy-the radical Muslims-and that there can be no peace with them. They can only be dealt with by defeating them. A large percentage of the U.S. population has the same idea of appeasing the radicals or just hoping that the problem will go away.
Or that changing our foreign policy will help. Again the only remedy is to defeat the radical Muslims. To do so will require more unity and cohesion than I have seen so far. It can't be done with half the population not behind it. We can be defeated at the ballot box or on the street in this war just as we were in Vietnam.
Donald W. Bales

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