WHY BUSH DANCES TO SHARON'S TUNE
By ERIC MARGOLIS, The Toronto Sun, 4/14/2002
canoe.com
Who really is running America's Mideast policy? Last week, the astounded
world saw the grotesque spectacle of President George W. Bush pleading in
vain with Ariel Sharon, leader of a nation of only 6.3 million people which
receives almost $5 billion in annual U.S. aid, to cease laying waste the
Occupied West Bank...
President Bush and senior aides Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell were left
looking weak, indecisive, and inept. Bush clearly is a political soulmate
of ultra-hawk Sharon; they share a mutual detestation for Yasser Arafat
and, it would seem, for Arabs in general...
In an act of sheer farce, Powell was sent on a slow boat to Israel, via
Madrid and Morocco. Before Powell even arrived, former Israeli PM Benjamin
Netanyahu summoned fawning U.S. senators and arrogantly informed them
Powell's mission would fail.
While the rest of the world condemned Israel's invasion and destruction of
the Palestinian ghettos, not a peep was heard from the White House,
Congress or America's media about Israel's violation of U.S. law in using
U.S.-supplied armour and warplanes against civilians. Nor about Israel's
violation of the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. There
were no protests when Israel's Shimon Peres described massacres of
Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers...
To be sure, there is deep and justified sympathy in the U.S. for the
frightful suffering Israel has endured at the hands of suicide bombers, and
its need for self-defence.
Still, why was America alone in defending Israel's ruthless punishment of
the Palestinians?
How could Bush, only a few weeks ago, still bathing in the bogus glory of a
military "triumph" against a few thousand medieval tribesman in
Afghanistan, be so suddenly made to look foolish and impotent by events in
the Mideast?
Simply put, Sharon's right-wing Likud party has come to dominate U.S.
Mideast policy through its powerful American lobby, which "guides" Congress.
Under pressure from the Israel lobby, 89 out of 100 senators and at least
280 congressmen recently demanded Bush give Sharon carte blanche to crush
Palestine. As the Israeli writer Uri Avnery wryly noted, if the Israel
lobby gave orders to repeal the Ten Commandments, Congress would vote in
favour.
America's media is strongly pro-Israel and averse to dissenting views. A
coterie of hawkish, Israel-first neo-conservatives dominates media
opinion-making and the Pentagon, leading the charge for a war against Iraq,
Iran, and Syria. One even helped to write Bush's foolish "axis of evil"
speech... |
