Time to Dissociate

With the Israel/Palestine peace talks coming up in Annapolis, the Israelis as usual are dragging their feet, refusing to talk about substantive issues. Israel has no interest in peace. Meanwhile, the Israel Lobby is pushing for war with Iran just as they pushed for war with Iraq, to the benefit of Israel and to the detriment of the US. Frank Rich describes the propaganda to which the American public has been subjected ("The NY Times" 11/4/07) with the result that "A Zogby poll last month found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now supports a pre-emptive strike on Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons." The Iranian president is perpetually misquoted and demonized.

The US says it has so-called evidence on Iran's nuclear programs ("The NY Times" 11/16/07) but keeps this secret, as was the case with our so-called evidence of Saddam's WMD. If we had shared our Iraq evidence with the UN inspectors, as they requested, it would have been shown to be false, and the Iraq invasion could have been prevented. Instead, the US Air Force recently commissioned a book, "Divining Victory: Airpower in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War" byWilliam M. Arkin, which is a study of this war designed to advise about future US wars. Stephen Erlanger ("The NY Times" 10/14/07) writes that Arkin "said, 'We're looking into a future that involves pre-emption and wars against terrorism' -- wars like Israel's." Instead of fighting "wars like Israel's" we should dissociate ourselves from this peace-averse war-mongering country.