|
Banned
|
Got a destabalized and still deteriorating M.E. region on our hands here, with no inclination to even call for a cease fire, or any influence to broker one, even if the will in the U.S. existed to do so????
It is telling, that.....on a politics forum with a primarily U.S. membership, there is no will to discuss the politics and policy failures that are the root cause of the descent into violence in the M.E.
Israel has so successfully achieved it's goal of unilateral U.S. support, that it's leadershp apparently saw no need to consult with the U.S. before destroying the runways at the Beirut airport, cutting off the possibility of a low risk and timely evacuation of any of the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon, at the time, who might decide to leave after hostilities commenced.
Thomas Friedman and most other posters are either "missing the boat", or are avoiding admitting what has actually happened in the M.E. In my last post, I demonstrated that at least one white house correspondent asked the right question, but got no coherent answer from the POTUS, so he asked again:
Quote:
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=2
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
July 28, 2006
Remarks by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair of the United Kingdom in Press Availability
......PRESIDENT BUSH: David Gregory.
Q Thank you. Mr. President.....effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored. <h3>So what has happened to America's clout in this region that you've committed yourself to transform?</h3>
PRESIDENT BUSH: David, it's an interesting period because instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability...
.......blah....blah...blah, blah...
<h3>Q I asked you about the loss of American influence in the region......</h3>
|
Quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_...curity_Affairs
JINSA's advisory board includes such notable figures as Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, and James Woolsey, while <h3>Vice President Dick Cheney, US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and Undersecretary of Defense for policy Douglas Feith were all on Jinsa’s board of advisers before they entered the Bush administration.....</h3>
.......Further, <b>JINSA supports regime change</b> in "rogue" nation-states known to provide support or knowingly harbor terrorist groups, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Libya, and supports a re-evaluation of the U.S. defense relationships with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.........
One of JINSA's most important programs is to invite, with the assistance of the Pentagon and the U.S. Department of State, retired U.S. senior military officers to Israel and Jordan. The General and Flag Officer's program, as it is known, <b>allows participants to see with their own eyes, the problems facing the Middle East, in meetings with Israeli and Jordanian political and military leaders.</b> More than <b>200 retired Admirals and Generals,</b> including Shock and awe author Adm. Leon "Bud" Edney, USN, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, USA, Maj. Gen. David Grange, USA, Maj. Gen. Jarvis Lynch, USMC, Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow, USA, Adm. Leighton "Snuffy" Smith, USN, Adm. Carlisle Trost, USN and Brig. Gen. Thomas E. White, USA, have participated in the trips over the last 21 years......
|
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...45652-2003Feb8
Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy
By Robert G. Kaiser
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 9, 2003; Page A01
......For the first time, a U.S. administration and a Likud government in Israel are pursuing nearly identical policies. <b>Earlier U.S. administrations, from Jimmy Carter's through Bill Clinton's, held Likud and Sharon at arm's length, distancing the United States from Likud's traditionally tough approach to the Palestinians.</b> But today, as Neumann noted, Israel and the United States share a common view on terrorism, peace with the Palestinians, war with Iraq and more. Neumann and others said this change was made possible by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and their aftermath.
The Bush administration's alignment with Sharon delights many of its strongest supporters, especially evangelical Christians, and a large part of organized American Jewry, according to leaders in both groups, who argue that Palestinian terrorism pushed Bush to his new stance. But it has led to a freeze on diplomacy in the region that is criticized by Arab countries and their allies, and by many past and current officials who have participated in the long-running, never-conclusive Middle East "peace process."
"Every president since at least Nixon has seen the Arab-Israeli conflict as the central strategic issue in the Middle East," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, President Bill Clinton's national security adviser. "But this administration sees Iraq as the central challenge, and . . . has disengaged from any serious effort to confront the Arab-Israeli problem."
The turning point came last June, when Bush embraced Sharon's view of the Palestinians and made Yasser Arafat's removal as leader of the Palestinian Authority a condition of future diplomacy. That was "a clear shift in policy," Kenneth R. Weinstein, director of the Washington office of the Hudson Institute, a conservative supporter of Israel and Likud. The June speech was "a departure point," agreed Ralph Reed, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and former director of the Christian Coalition.
<h3>Since then, U.S. policy has been in step with Sharon's. The peace process is "quiescent," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, Bush's special envoy to the region. "I've kind of gone dormant," he added.</h3> In December Bush appointed an articulate, hard-line critic of the traditional peace process, Elliott Abrams, director of Mideast affairs for the National Security Council........
.......One of Abrams's mentors, Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, led a study group that proposed to Binyamin Netanyahu, a Likud prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999, that he abandon the Oslo peace accords negotiated in 1993 and reject the basis for them -- the idea of trading "land for peace.
<h3>" Israel should insist on Arab recognition of its claim to the biblical land of Israel, the 1996 report suggested, and should "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."
Besides Perle, the study group included David Wurmser, now a special assistant to Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton,</h3> and Douglas J. Feith, now undersecretary of defense for policy.........
|
With a U.S. V.P. from "JINSA", a U.S. "recess appointed" ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, on record as believing that <b>"Israel should insist on Arab recognition of its claim to the biblical land of Israel,"</b>, and the POTUS himself, reported as <b>"Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy""</b>, for Israel, the current <b>"the loss of American influence in the region."</b>, is a:
Quote:
fait accompli \fay-tah-kom-PLEE; fet-ah-\, noun;
plural faits accomplis \same or -PLEEZ\:
An accomplished and presumably irreversible deed or fact.
|
I sense my own level of anger at this administration and horror over the obviously avoidable violence. If I was an M.E. Muslim or a person of any faith living now in Lebanon Gaza, or in Iraq, I would not be inclined to sit with and sip tea with the NY Time's Thomas Friedman!
Last edited by host; 07-30-2006 at 12:18 PM..
|