Re: ...there has been no credible opposition to the Bush foreign policy since the Iraq war. Democrats have been intimidated either by Mr. Bush or by Mr. Dean....
... or by AIPAC.
Re: The U.S. should beg the U.N. to find an Afghan-style solution for Iraq: expand the Governing Council from 25 to 75 people, bring in all strands and make it the interim government - in return for the U.S. dropping its approach and the Shiites dropping theirs. It is the only way out of this impasse...
Wrong. The only way for the US to settle Iraq passes through Israel/Palestine. There is, to be sure, a common thread to Afghanistan and Iraq: both countries faced the wrath of a powerful bully... In the fall of 2001, Afghanistan was on the brink of a SECOND invasion by Russia. This time around, however, Russian troops wouldn't have done the same tactical blunders as their Soviet predecessors did --they would have emulated the US overkill/carpet bombing before sending in infantry troops... They would have turned Kabul into Grozny (not pretty). Then, as I said, the conflict could have flared out of control as Pakistan would have actively supported the Pashtuns....
Likewise, Iraq was faced with a SECOND Israeli attack (following the Israeli strike on Osiraq in June 1981) and, by the same token as in Afghanistan, the US had to pre-empt the Israeli air strike. Needless to say that an Israeli strike against Iraq would have wreaked havoc all across the Mideast --and beyond. So, President Bush is right and sincere when he claims that the world is safer since the US toppled Saddam's regime --but not because of Iraq's threat to the "free world". The world is safer because the US yielded to Israel's blackmail. I'm afraid, however, that it's gonna be a short-lived safety.
Afghanistan was --and still is-- an easier issue to solve because it doesn't involve any religious or emotive power. Unlike Israel, Afghanistan doesn't come down to a tug-of-love for a holy city like Jerusalem. It's just a matter of carving up the country fairly between Russia's and Pakistan's sphere of influence. And that is precisely what the US has proved unable to achieve in the Mideast so far!
Americans should be very careful: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a remote struggle that can be kept at bay so long as "Arab terrorists" are prevented from sneaking into the US.... You are actually playing the sequel to the French-Algerian war and remember: the terrorists who sought to assassinate General De Gaulle were FRENCH/Pied-Noir --not Arab. It was the OAS, a Pied-Noir terrorist outfit that tried to destabilize metropolitan France by launching a wave of bombings and targeted killings against the supporters of Algerian Independence. The Pied-Noir terrorists were not a bunch of amateurs, of settlers equipped with booby-traps and AK-47s. They were led by the creme de la creme: General Raoul Salan was the most decorated officer of the French military at the time --he was a French Ehud Barak of sorts... and the official head of OAS. Now, do you Yanks get the picture?
Gus |
