Tom Friedman's Sunday NYT Column. It's OK to admit Oil is part of our reason for doing things, we just have to be unselfish about it. Sounds familiar.
Yup, every other sentence TF agrees that America must project power, in between he wags his finger and tells us we better be nice about it. Um, Tom, first thing first. If we are projecting power, sometimes we may have to be nasty. We can afford to be nice after we have projected power. Before then, niceness only reads as weakness. Let's be nice only to our friends.
Just got my copy of FA and read Doran's excellent article. He points out that Palestine functions as a symbolic trump card in the Arab world, where the radicals tell the powers-that-be "Ha! you call yourself REAL Arabs? If you're real Arabs, then what are you doing about Palestine?! Not only are you not doing anything, you're in bed with America and the Zionist conspiracy!". This leads to an 'arms race' in anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric between the radicals and the elite. Neither of whom cares a fig for the actual welfare of the Palestinians, of course.
Doran also points out that Palestine works best as a symbol when Palestine is burning, and the radicals certainly would not welcome a settlement:
Radical Islamists are by nature revolutionaries, enemies of the prevailing orders and enemies of the West. A practical solution to the Palestine question would solidy the status quo and further legitimate the presence of the United States in the region. Far from welcoming such developments, radical Islamists would consider them a catastrophe.
For this reason, Doran says that those who say we must solve the Israeli conflict before dealing with Iraq and Al Qaeda are deeply mistaken; the road to Jerusalem does go through Baghdad. |
