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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Charley Reese Returns |
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| Anonymous |
| 04/11/02 at 11:58:18 |
| Salam, Charley Reese still writes articles on the internet. http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020410/index.php Here are two articles Another Shot In The Foot I've often thought that the United States does not really need any foreign foes, since our own politicians are so adept at shooting us in the foot when it comes to really looking out for national security. President Bush, out of deference to the Israeli lobby, happily ignored the conflict in the Middle East. A few people tried to warn him that the Arab world has changed significantly since the 1990s. Today, Arabs are served by Arab satellite television, and watching the Israelis brutalizing the Palestinians was creating boiling anger not only against Israel but its accomplice, the United States. Oh, pooh on the Arab people, the administration said. Their opinions don't count even in their own countries. Wrong. Except for Iraq, there are dictatorships but no totalitarian governments in the Middle East. They might not follow the Anglo-Saxon form of democracy (sorry, but that's what it is, even if most Americans today are so poorly educated they don't know it). But they have various forms and means for consulting their people. All dictators know that there is always a line in the sand that they cannot cross without facing a rebellion. King Abdullah of Jordan, for example, sometimes disguises himself and goes out alone to see how his government is treating the people. I don't see George Bush doing that. In Saudi Arabia, they have councils of representatives from different tribes. So when Mr. Bush decided to attack Iraq, he was surprised to find all the Arab leaders saying that they won't support an attack on Iraq as long as the United States continues to allow the Israelis to trample on the rights of the Palestinians. He sends the vice president overseas, and Dick Cheney gets the same message. To save face, Cheney comes back and slyly resurrects the old canard that Arab leaders say one thing in public and the opposite in private. Notice, however, that Cheney did not say that any Arab leader either said or implied that he would support an attack on Iraq in private. No, Cheney, a master of double talk - as all experienced politicians are - said that in private "they expressed concern about Saddam Hussein." Hell, they've been expressing concern about him in public for years. But Cheney wanted to leave the impression that they secretly support the U.S. policy. They don't. Neither, for that matter, do most of the European countries. So Bush belatedly discovers the Palestinian conflict and rushes people over to end it by at least restarting the peace process. Now he's discovering, though not yet admitting it publicly, that Israel's idea of partnership is for the United States to do what it says while it refuses to adopt any suggestions we make. Look, here are the facts: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the day he took office that he would not negotiate a final settlement with the Palestinians. And during his entire time in office, he has refused to meet with Yasser Arafat and has engaged in a campaign to discredit Arafat and to break the spirit of the Palestinians. When the Saudi peace plan was proposed, he rejected it immediately. Israel, he said and still says, will never withdraw to the 1967 boundaries. Well, no withdrawal, no peace; no peace, no Arab cooperation with the U.S. scheme to overthrow Saddam. We are in the beginning of payback time for our hypocritical policy of exempting Israel from every one of the ideals that we laboriously preach. Self-determination is a must for Albanians in Kosovo - not for Palestinians. Refugees have a right to return or receive compensation - but not Palestinian refugees. Countries must obey U.N. Security Council resolutions - but not Israel, which sits in defiance of more than 60. Countries that routinely violate human rights deserve sanctions - except Israel. Countries that assassinate political enemies are state sponsors of terrorism - but not Israel. Countries must not use American-donated weapons for offensive purposes - except for Israel. People who commit war crimes must be put on trial - unless they are Israelis. I could go on and on, for the sins against the Palestinians are practically endless. Americans are about to learn a basic truth enunciated by writer Ayn Rand: We can avoid reality, but we cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. Bush is on dangerous ground. He'd better kick the Israel-first cabal out of his administration and replace it with people whose only interest is in America's welfare. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charley Reese can be contacted at briarl@earthlink.net. © 2002 by King Features Syndicate, Inc. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operation Humbug One of the attractive ladies of the TV talk channels heard a report from Kabul, Afghanistan, recently. The story was simple: A peacekeeping patrol heard two or three shots in the distance. They determined the shots came from a camp housing one of the warlord's soldiers. The shots were not fired at them. They went on about their business. "Nevertheless," said the lady anchor, her brows tightly knitted in her professional anxiety look, "It was a scary moment." After I got up off the floor where my laughter had put me (it would take a lot more than the sound of distant gunshots to scare a British marine), I wished so hard that I had the creative imagination to write a novel about how today's journalists would have covered World War II. I wonder if they would have thought that the Normandy invasion was a "scary moment." I can just hear them at a press conference with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in May 1944. "General, there are rumors that you are planning an invasion of Europe. Could you tell us if that's true, and if so, when do you plan to do it?" It would be just as interesting to imagine how today's generals would have acted during the last Big One. "Ladies and gentleman, I can now say that we have just completed a successful bombing raid against Hiroshima, and our targets have been completely destroyed." "Uh, general, what were the targets?" "Oh, a Japanese military camp and a gear factory." "Was there any collateral damage?" "Yes, about 80,000 civilians. We think, however, that this raid, which we call Operation Why Can't We All Get Along, will go a long way toward ensuring the success of Operation Peace on Earth." Forgive my odd sense of humor. I suppose that having grown up during a war that took 55 million lives, I'm a bit more calloused than these younger folks. They seem unable to just stick to the facts. They can never say just a suicide bombing. It's always a "horrifying" or a "terrifying" suicide bombing. A bomb, like a rose, is a bomb is a bomb, and the dead are the dead. The place to be when bombs are exploding is wherever you can say, "What was that noise?" By the way, these suicide bombers are carrying explosives that are roughly equal to one high-explosive tank round or one missile from a helicopter gunship. So, you can say that the Palestinians, during the Passover week, fired six rounds at the Israelis. How many rockets and tank rounds do you suppose the Israelis have fired at Palestinians? How did the casualties get so lopsided for the Palestinians? And how can a people with no army be said to be "besieging" the Israelis, who have a very large army? I suppose it's no crazier than demanding Yasser Arafat, locked up in three rooms surrounded by tanks and soldiers, "do more" to stop terrorism. Sure, in the middle of an Israeli invasion, Arafat should say to anyone he can reach on a cell phone, "Please ignore the Israeli invasion, the tank and machine-gun fire, the arbitrary arrests, the killings and brutalizations, and let's all welcome our Israeli friends, who, after all, just want to restore order and live in peace on our land." I wonder what kind of silly names the Israelis use. Is this Operation Bagel? Or Operation Here Comes Samson? Perhaps it's Operation Chutzpah. That's pronounced "hootspa," said fast up North, and "Hoots Paw," said slowly in the South. It means outrageous audacity. In the meantime, President Bush has put another wrinkle on his forehead trying to figure out how to OK Ariel Sharon's destruction of the Palestinian Authority and at the same time convince other Arab countries that he's so evenhanded they ought to help him destroy still another Arab government. That could be called Operation Ain't No Way. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charley Reese can be contacted at briarl@earthlink.net. © 2002 by King Features Syndicate, Inc. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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