The Truth Will Out

Recent events have been instructive. The foiled terror attacks which would have used liquid explosives on ten airplanes show that anti-American terror has not been lessened by President Bush's cowboy bravado and multiple invasions. The rockets into Israel show that their much praised fence is not the answer either. Nor are guerrilla wars the answer since they are unwinnable when the population hates the foreign invader, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon. Clearly, the truth is that terrorism will persist until the root causes are addressed through diplomacy. Scott Atran, in a NY Times op-ed August 17, 2006, notes that, "As the Pew survey made clear, the Israeli-Palestinian issue has become the principal fault line in world conflict." Also, Lakhdar Brahimi writes that Israel should end its longstanding occupations, including Shebaa Farms in Lebanon, and "urgent and sustained attention must be focused on the problem that underlies the unrest in the Middle East: the Palestinian issue. A wealth of UN resolutions and other agreements already exist that provide a basis for a just and viable solution to the Middle East conflict." (NY Times August 18, 2006). The chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, have written a book, "Without Precedent--The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission," which was reviewed by James Bamford in the NY Times August 20, 2006. Bamford quotes, "Lee felt that there had to be an acknowledgement that a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was vital to America's long-term relationship with the Islamic world, and that the presence of American forces in the Middle East was a motivating factor in Al Qaeda's action." Bamford's own comment: "Given the Bush administration's current policies in the region, another 9/11-style attack is less a matter of if than when." It is time the Bush administration stops listening to the Israeli-Lobby warmongers, who are greedy to hold onto their occupied land no matter what the cost to America, because the truth is out there.