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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jcky who wrote (33031)	6/25/2002 8:15:37 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

So much for the theory of the United States acting as a honest and neutral broker for peace in the Middle East There comes a time when any broker must choose between honest and neutral, jcky. If one side keeps the deal and the other breaks it left, right and center, is it "honest" to remain "neutral" between the parties? Arafat has spent many years breaking every solemn commitment and spitting into the face of every American demand. He has been rewarded for doing so (until now) with a thousand "last chances" and empty "or elses". I dearly hope that US policy has cut him loose at last. Do I detect some concerns for US national interests, Nadine? Now and always, jcky. I just happen to believe that our national interests are better served by backing our real allies in the Middle East (Turkey and Israel, and maybe someday Iran again) than by chasing after and appeasing our fake allies, such as Saudi Arabia. The State Department appeased Saudi Arabia for thirty years; the House of Saud owe their lives and thrones to us, quite literally, and what kind of payback and support did we get from them after Sept 11th, for which they didn't even have the grace to act sorry? They have refused us the use of our own bases, and aligned themselves with Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat to try to hinder our policies and protect the Islamists, whom they fund and support via mosques all over the umma. As Colonel Meinertzhagen said so many years ago, “For many years the West has made the error of thinking Arab friendship can be gained by political appeasement with economic and military gifts and loans. This glaring fallacy has been exposed on many occasions but the policy persists... No amount of appeasement will make any Arab State love us; they hate us; but worse, they despise us. We should not mind hatred, but we can make them respect us”. That's as true now as it was fifty years ago. Appeasing fake allies who act like enemies buys us only contempt. Standing firm will buy us grudging respect. They will always hate us, because we are the West and we are strong while they are weak, and it should be the other way around, as it was a thousand years ago. Now, that being said, Bush's public wrangling and flip-flopping and interviews with everybody, managing to raise Arab expectations high before dashing them to the ground, was not a great study in diplomacy. But at least he reached the right answer at the end. Let's hope he sticks with it.