The Iraq Study Group, Part 2

The Iraq Study Group Report calls for dialogue with Syria and Iran. Unfortunately, this is unlikely because America has been morphing into Israel. (See blog entry 1/25/06 "Morphing Into Israel") As soon as President Bush was elected, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon came racing across the ocean to convince Bush not to talk to Palestinian President Arafat. President Bush, held tightly in the clutches of the Neoconservative Zionists, (N.Z.s), complied. Thus, President Jimmy Carter complains in his new book, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," that there have been no Israeli/Palestinian peace negotiations for many years. The N.Z.s prefer occupations, invasions, bombs, missiles, and bulldozers to diplomacy. President Bush considers Syria and Iran to be our "enemies" for the same reason that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was so labeled: all these countries rightfully oppose Israel's occupation and colonization of Palestine. To make certain that there is no dialogue, the N.Z.s set impossible preconditions to talks, in particular the halting of all resistance to Israel's occupation, i.e. inactivating Hamas and Hezbollah. N.Y.U. Professor Tony Judt wrote in the September 21, 2006 "London Review of Books" www.lrb.co.uk that Israel is "a country which for fifty years has rested its entire national strategy on preventive wars, disproportionate retaliation, and efforts to redesign the map of the whole Middle East." "It is one thing for the US unconditionally to underwrite Israel's behaviour (though in neither country's interest, as some Israeli commentators at least have remarked). But for the US to imitate Israel wholesale, to import that tiny country's self-destructive, intemperate response to any hostility or opposition and to make it the leitmotif of American foreign policy: that is simply bizarre. Bush's Middle Eastern policy now tracks so closely to the Israeli precedent that it is very difficult to see daylight between the two." The more America morphs into Israel, the more America will be detested around the world, and the more difficult will be the task of creating stability in Iraq.