Wow, Dave, you gave me so many points to answer that it's difficult to catch up and respond to them !

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Originally posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:

The Arab neighbors have made very clear in the last 50 years, four wars and relentless terrorism that their true goal is the annihilation of Israel, not peace with Israel in ANY form.
If this were not so, then Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and a large bloc of the Egyptian people, if not the Egyptian government, would not all be actively funding, or otherwise endorsing/enabling terrorism against Israel.





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Originally posted by Dave:

How does the recent Arab League proposal sponsored by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia fit into that theory?

You acknowledge that the Egyptian (and the Jordanian and Turkish governments) have very normal relations with Israel. How does this fit into your theory?




I think what the Saudi government offers is crap. I've forgotten everything the king offered, but they were basically promises of diplomatic recognition for Israel's statehood and other diplomatic pleasantries, but nothing that guaranteed Israel's security. It seemed to me it was an offer of a little, in expectation of huge concessions from Israel, and the Saudis knew damned well that Israel would politely tell them to go jump in the lake with it.

And it was a doubly false offer of peace, because right about the time the Saudis offered this, they had their telethon for suicide bomber families, which to me is the same as endorsing Palestinian terrorism. And of course, Islamic leaders were offering the usual holy war on Israeli pigs and infidels rhetoric during the telethon.
If Saudis wanted peace with Israel, and disapproved of Muslim terrorism in general, they would take a much harder line against such rhetoric within their own country. Saudi Arabia is the center of the rhetoric that is breeding fundamentalist/terrorist splinter groups throughout the Muslim world, terrorism that is also spreading outside the Muslim world, in places such as the Phillipines, Chechnya, and the World Trade Center.

The U.S. needs Saudi intelligence and cooperation, but the Saudis simultaneously do a lot to undermine the war on terror with Saudi inaction and implicit support of such hardline fundamentalist/extremist rhetoric. If they were truly allies and wanted an end to Palestinian extremism, and other Muslim extremism that makes the war on terrorism necessary, then they would be arresting these Muslim leaders, or at the very least criticising these Muslim leaders. They are an enemy of the U.S. clothed as a friend, and our government knows it, but cooperates for the vital minimal support the Saudis give us.

And I think that Egypt as well would jump ship and turn on Israel and the U.S. as well, if it was not sure it would lose another war. Certainly, the Egyptian people hate the U.S. and Israel, and have expressed their desire to wage war on the side of the Palestinians, as the Bill Moyers report I mentioned points out.

As well as an article I posted to another of these Israel/Palestine topics, about how 30-50% of the population in Muslim countries are boycotting American goods.
Only the certainty that they would lose prevents Israel's Arab neighbors from engaging in another war. And particularly in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, if they lost their military arsenals in another war with Israel, they would likely be weak enough to be overthrown in popular uprisings, and be replaced with radical Islamic governments.
It's out of self-preservation, not lack of hatred for Israel, that Arab nations are cooperating to some degree, but never discouraging Palestinian terrorism. More to the point, negotiating peace until a time when they're able to destroy Israel.


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Originally posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:

As I said prior, Palestine's statehood is just a stepping stone, on the path toward further terrorism toward Israel, and Israel's eventual destruction. I've yet to see any evidence of goodwill by the PLO or any surrounding Arab nations, beyond lip service to peace.




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Originally posted by Dave:

Do you honestly mean to say, then that you do not think there should be a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank?




There's an implicit condescending tone in the way you ask the question, but hell yes that's what I'm saying.

If giving Palestine its freedom opens up Israel to further terrorism, wars and destruction by the vulnerability it creates, then I would say absolutely NOT to an independent Palestine. Which I think is the case here.
It just buys Israel a few months or years, while Arabs consolidate for a devastating war on Israel.


(As I said: when that territory was previously under Arab control until 1967, it was very coincidentally used for multiple wars on Israel, and again, very coincidentally, Jordan opted out of participation in the 1973 war on Israel, after that territory was seized from Jordan. I'd say the loss of land in the 1967 war, and the mountainous buffer it created, discouraged Jordan from further aggression. Take away the West Bank secured zone, and war with Israel is much more likely. )



Quote:

posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:


Quote:

posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:

I think that's rather the point, counter to the point you were making, T-Dave:
The Arabs are extremely hostile to the existence of Israel, in any shape or form.




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Originally posted by Dave:

And world opinion is not something the US has ever been bothered by, anyway


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Originally posted by Dave:
As in, the US is increasingly prone to doing as it will, unilaterally, without paying heed to consensus. So if it decided to go and do a Judge Judy, it could.



On the Bill Moyers program I mentioned earlier, there was a panel of scholars, many who favored the Arab and European perspective of Israel (i.e., pro-Palestinian ), and repeatedly condemned U.S. support of Israel, and other U.S. foreign policy as "simplistic", to which Charles Krauthhammer finally responded that U.S. "simplicity" had bailed out European sophistication three times in the last century (referring to U.S. action in WW I, WW II and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc between 1989-1991.


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Originally posted by Dave:

A glib, ludicrous answer from Krauthammer. US simplicity consisted of incredible reluctance to be involved in opposing tyranny until well after the event had started. It consisted of the long standing school of thought that it should not be part of Europe's wars, and that the rest of the world should be left to its own problems.

The fact that the US had the resources to stem or swing the tide is something else entirely from its policies.




To some extent I agree that it was a rather sweeping statement. But for me to explain the subtleties, of where the line is drawn, is far more time than Krauthhammer had in the alloted time given him.
The U.S. was isolationist up until 1941, that's true.

In 1914, the U.S. had citizens from all the major players in WW I, and was reluctant to take sides. It was less clear who the good guys and bad guys were in that war.
The U.S. only became involved when repeated ships carrying American civilians were sunk by German submarines, and Germany's revealed aggression toward the U.S. in a secret pact with Mexico, for Mexico to invade the U.S., that finally pushed the U.S. to enter the war in 1917.
But even before, we were still aiding the British with military supplies in WW I (which was partly the reason the Germans were sinking ships with Americans aboard, they may have been used for military supplies as well as passengers).

And even before WW I was over, it was President Woodrow Wilson who proposed a 14 Point Plan for peace, and a League of Nations to diplomatically resolve disputes, that was rejected and abandoned by other imperial powers.
Of the 14 Points, the "right of self determination" proposed by Wilson, for people who consider themselves of a particular nationality that was not part of the empire they were ruled by, resulted in new nations of Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Chechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary and Yugoslavia, and in this alone vastly changed the landscape and freedom of Europe.
So even in 1918, the U.S. did its best to establish peace and stability in Europe, despite its population's desire for isolationism.

It was the insistence of Britain and France that Germany be held liable for the entire debt of WW I and pay huge war reparations, and dividing East Prussia from the rest of Germany, and France's seizure of the German Rhineland industrial region, deliberately humiliating Germany and causing hyperinflation and near starvation in Germany, that inevitably bred the anger in Germany that led to Hitler's rise, and a second World War.

And again, even in the early years of World War II, before the U.S. officially entered the war in December 1941, the U.S. was again suppying Britain with war materials and otherwise assisting the British Navy by reporting location of German ships (and often firing on them), and the Lend-Lease Act, which allowed huge military supplies on credit to Britain and the Soviet Union. So as much as Franklin D. Roosevelt could participate in the war without being thrown out of office by an isolationist uprising, the U.S. participated in doing what it knew was necessary.

So if you want to nitpick about details, you could say that what Krauthhammer said is incorrect because of U.S. entry into WW I and WW II after both parties began.
But as I've just said, the U.S. government did pretty much everything it could to pursue both war and lasting peace, even before it entered both wars, despite widespread isolationist opinion of U.S. voters.
The U.S. didn't just have the resources to "stem or swing the tide", it USED them. At first a bit clandestinely, to circumvent popular opinion.

I think by the end of WW I, most of those in government saw the necessity of U.S. diplomatic involvement in Europe. By 1939-1941, the necessity of this became apparent to the American people as well.
It really wasn't until about 1900 that the U.S. really had the military and naval might to intervene in Europe anyway.
U.S. policy evolved as its ability and necessity were made manifest.

As compared to Europe's treatment of Germany that led to the war. After being so hard on Germany in total disarmament and war reparations and other induced hardship, Britain and France surprisingly did nothing to stop acts of increasing German aggression:
allowing German re-militarization of the Rhineland in 1936, doing nothing to stop Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, Britain and France's contracting Czechoslavokia's sovereignty over in late 1938 to Germany (without even consulting the Czech government), and allowing Germany's participation in in the Spanish Civil war in 1939, bombing Spanish civilians (which was essentially a dress rehearsal for the invasion of Poland later that year).

Unlike Britain and France, the U.S. did act before the German Blitzkrieg was at its doorstep, as much as they were able to, with a U.S. population resistant to European intervention.


Quote:

Originally posted by Dave:

U.S. simplicity consisted of incredible reluctance to be involved in opposing tyranny until well after the event had started



While Europe in the 1930's was seeing all sides and attempting to negotiate a deal with Hitler that would appease him, the U.S. came into both wars committed to end the conflict and create a lasting workable peace.
I find your statement a bit unfair, when you review Britain and France's record for the same period.
I think the U.S.'s lack of reluctance was far less than that of Britain and France in both wars, even before we were officially involved.

And that same lack of reluctance to put out flames before they become forest fires is what we're vilified for in various actions over the last 50 years.
Once again, damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Quote:

Originally posted by Dave:

I'm gratified that there is now a proclitivity towards international proactive conduct. Heads out of the sand, and a realisation that the globe is smaller. Sept 11th should have taught Americans that, if nothing else



I'm not sure what your point is here, Dave.

The U.S. is vilified for action in virtually all the countries it has done police actions over the last 5 decades.

If the U.S. "has its head in the sand", then what are we to assume about Britain, France and other nations with militaries large enough to do police actions, that do nothing before the U.S., and then criticize the U.S. for the action that IT takes.
Actually the British government seems to be the one exception to this (but definitely not the British press !)

Oddly, Britain is the best friend the U.S. has in the world, but you wouldn't know it from what so many British citizens have said on this and other message boards.
Why do so many British citizens feel hostility toward U.S. policy?

Dave, you seem to on one hand acknowledge the wisdom of various U.S. interventions, and then damn the U.S. for specifics of its operations.

Even as a patriotic American, I recognize that the U.S., even as a superpower, has limited resources, and that Afghanistan is not the last stop on the Anti-Terrorism tour, when the head of the beast is in Iraq and Iran, that we can't exhaust our resources to occupy one Muslim country the size of Texas.

And if we enter a larger force in Afghanistan, the Muslim world will just spin it as aggression/permanent occupation/further imperialism/imposing Western values and culture on a Muslim country, or whatever.

Even if we're building schools and businesses and handing out food.

I really believe that with so many terrorists just across the border in Pakistan or hidden among the Afghan population, a heavy American presence would be like Vietnam, with Americans out daily on the equivalent of "search and destroy" missions, waiting to get shot at by an unseen enemy.
Or what happened to the Russians in the 1981-1989 Russia/Afghan War (which Russians have called their own Vietnam).
For all the liberal press whining, the U.S. military knows what it's doing.

Hindsight is perfect, the U.S. has made many mistakes.

But it infuriates me that my country has tried to do something good in Afghanistan, and this, like so many things about the U.S., are spun into something negative.



The U.S. has more than enough problems to legitimately criticize (prevalence of drugs, teenage pregnancy, unnecessary cynicism that is corroding a new generation's outlook of its future, in a place where we should be grateful for what we have and the rare opportunities here, the near collapse of our healthcare system, the widening gap between rich and poor, the stranglehold of campaign contributions and lobbies that motivate government laws toward Big Money interests over those of the American people, Enron/Worldcom and the accompanying corporate investment crisis, etc.)

Even if the U.S. is making some mistakes in the Afghan situation, at least acknowledge some respect for the good that is being done as well.

None of us are on the battlefield, we're all making judgements from what we've seen or read from news sources, that ALL have a particular view of their own that enters their portrayal of the news.