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

To: GST who wrote (110345)	8/7/2003 3:59:48 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Certainly Israel is a magnet for Palestinian terrorism. A terrorism that is supported by Arab powers as a proxy war and to keep the Arab street's attention concentrated elsewhere, instead of on the fact of their own society's failures and lack of freedom and progress. Overall, however, from everything I have read from people in the region, Arabs don't really give two shits about Palestinians. Osama bin Laden only belatedly discovered Palestine, after US bombs started falling on his cave. Even Arafat said so. And you're quite right. We have sat on our hands and maintained a "benevolent detachment" in the Gulf because of the need for oil supply stability, and for the Realist's desire for "stability" in the international system. But this would have probably been so even if the Arab sheikhdoms were liberal democracies. We can't take the blame for Arab autocracy - which is the root of Islamic extremism. We can take the blame for not having seen the writing on the wall, and done something. Well, we're doing something about it NOW. But the root cause of terrorism isn't US policy, it is the object of US policy - Arab regimes. For decades we followed a policy I would think you would approve of - non-interference. That, in hindsight, was a mistake. We probably should have meddled more, not less. Derek