George W Bush recently told the Israeli Knesset (and the rest of the world) that those who wanted to talk diplomacy with Iran were out to appease the terrorists:
“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’
We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
Bush is wrong on so many counts one wonders how his speech writers get away with it. If ever a statement caused the US president to look foolish in the eyes of the world, then this was the one to do it.
Historically, diplomacy fails when nations turn to war against each other. No war has ever been won against terrorism – and God knows, enough nations have tried and failed. Conflicts of ideology can only be resolved through diplomacy, once each side gives up banging its own militaristic head against the solid stone wall of combat.
Bush’s analogy of the war on terror and Hitler’s invasion of Poland, is a pointless correlation. The former is an ideological struggle; the latter a power-struggle over lands and national control, similar to the war in Iraq.
Inter-national wars usually resolve themselves by one side winning over the other in a relatively short period of time. Ideological struggles grind on monotonously for decades, until each side has had enough and can be persuaded to sit down and talk it out.
The conflict in Northern Ireland was a good example of the latter; the ongoing feud between the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan government forces is another. It could be argued both were struggles over land, but neither was/is a war between nations, and it was/is a conflict of ideologies that has continuously fueled both conflicts.
The British found it impossible to resolve the Irish troubles militarily, despite the conflict being confined to a relatively small island. How much more difficult then for the United States to win the ‘war on terrorism’, spread as it is around the whole globe?
If ever there was a case for diplomacy, surely it is here.
Bush’s other glaring error, though politically motivated to raise the testosterone levels of the Israeli Knesset, is his reference to Iran as a ‘terrorist state’. While many terrorists originate from Middle Eastern countries and wage their ideological struggle against the West, there is another power-struggle in the region that bears more appraisal with the Nazi efforts at European domination in the 1930’s-40’s. This is the battle for control of the Middle East.
It’s a war fought on a number of fronts, but is predominantly between the United States/Israel, and Iran/Syria. It’s a war over land and national control. The heart of the conflict lies presently in Iraq, but the real power to be tamed by America/Israel is Iran. An American victory in Iraq will be enormously advantageous in achieving this goal. It will allow the US to consolidate its military position in the heart of the Middle East, right on the Iranian/Syrian borders, and geographically splitting those nations apart.
Contrary to US aggression, Iran has made no militaristic moves to control the area. Even if the threat of weapons-grade plutonium for a bomb becomes reality, given one atomic power (Israel) already in the region, Iran’s demand for a defensive requirement is perfectly logical.
The Bush administration’s forced argument that Iran is supplying “terrorists” in Iraq with weapons and killing American soldiers – thereby becoming terrorists themselves – is pure propaganda. Iran is acting perfectly correctly, given the threat to itself if the US ever manages to subdue Iraqi resistance sufficient to control the country.
Iran does not have the military power to confront America head on (though it’s military is vastly superior to that of Saddam’s) so wages a war of resistance with its neighbor against a joint enemy.
Bush’s concern, and that of his Jewish masters in Washington, is that future diplomatic relations with Iran might well bear fruit, lessen American power in the region, and thus put more pressure on Israel to curb its further expansion into the Palestinian territories.
It was to bolster the US/Israeli alliance and provide a grand display of unity to the Arab world, that was the true reason for Bush’s visit to the Jewish state this week. Any suggestion of encouraging a non-existent peace process was merely decoration for the American public.
It’s becoming much harder to differentiate between terrorists in the 21st century. Al Qaeda continues to terrorize with suicide bombings and assassinations; Israel regularly flattens Palestinian towns and villages, murdering innocent women and children and terrorizing the inhabitants; America bombs civilians in Iraq, uses drones to assassinate those it considers ‘fair targets’ with no recourse to justice, tortures, imprisons without trial, and shows so little concern for slaughtered innocents it labels them simply as ‘collateral damage’.
Western nations, once proud of their honorable status, have sunk to the level of those they label ‘terrorists’, and by so doing have become terror states themselves. Between them, George W Bush, Tony Blair, and Ehud Olmert have taken an ideological struggle and elevated it to a world war status, where military might becomes the only relevant factor and accommodation of, and respect for, other’s beliefs no longer holds relevance.
There is only one solution to the threat of Islamic terrorism, and that is to return the Middle East to its rightful owners – the Arabs – and pressurize Israel to return the land it captured in 1967, so the Palestinians can form their own state. To do so would require America to give up its empire-building crusade throughout the region and adopt a much stronger stance against Israeli aggression.
This will never occur until the vast influence of AIPAC on US political life is curbed. The Jewish lobby-group is purported to have 100,000 members, or less than 0.04% of the US population, yet it probably holds more sway over events in the Middle East than any other body and controls much of political decision-making in Washington, both by Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.
In short, America has been hijacked by fanatical Israel supporters using the threat of “antisemitism” as a weapon to manipulate US political leaders of all parties.
“Lord, if someone could only have talked to George W Bush, all this might have been avoided.”
Filed under: Bush’s war