I tried to get the following Letter to the Editor published by the NY
Times in 2001, unsuccessfully. But some Times writers picked up on my
Honest Broker opinions themselves some time later... small time
plagiarism, something I've learned one has to deal with. Anyway, 8
years or so later and the point still holds, I think. Look at what';s
going in Gaza, still the same dynamic, and Obama.... I call him an O-
re-O.... it appears he won't do the right thing either....Some
otherwise enlightened folks don't want to credit or admit the
influence of the Zionist Racists and the Israel Lobby on U.S.
politics.... I think they lack... courage... and intellectual
integrity...
nominal9
Letter to the
Editor
December 4, 2001
New York Times
Editor:
The war is over and the U.S. just lost. The moment that G. W. Bush
extended the
umbrella of the "war on terrorism" to cover Ariel Sharon and Israel's
policies against the
Palestinians, any pretense on the part of the U.S. of being an honest
broker and an
innocent victim of terrorism was dashed.
It's the same damned U.S. mistake time and time again. The most
direct parallel
happened in the early 1980's under Ronald Reagan. At that time, Ariel
Sharon and Israel
had invaded Lebanon. The U.S. went to Beirut with an international
peacekeeping force
to, ostensibly, keep the combatant Israelis separated from the
Lebanese and Palestinians.
It went well until the U.S. forces decided to direct bombs and naval
gunfire against
Lebanese positions. Those actions gave some Lebanese the impression
that the U.S. was
not acting as a fair peacekeeper but was rather acting as a combatant
ally of Israel, little
wonder. A Lebanese suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives
into a Beirut
building that was being used as a Marine barracks and killed over 200
U.S. personnel.
Not long afterwards, the U.S. force was withdrawn from Lebanon by
President Reagan. A
similar situation occurred in the early 1990's under President Clinton
in Somalia. Here
again, the U.S. entered Somalia ostensibly on a peacekeeping mission,
to insure the
distribution of food supplies in a war torn and starving nation. All
well and good, until
U.S. forces took sides against one of the local Muslim warlords and
tried to either kill or
capture him by force of arms. The Muslim warlord did not appreciate
being targeted for
bullets instead of food aid, one U.S. helicopter was shot down and
U.S. forces engaged in
a bloody firefight from which they were forced to retreat leaving
behind dead and
suffering other casualties. Once again, shortly afterwards these later
U.S. forces were
withdrawn from Somalia by President Clinton. Clearly, in both cases,
the failure was with
U.S. presidential leadership, not with the soldiers.
Call it "mission creep" or maybe it was just a dearth of "truth in
advertising". The
pattern is fairly obvious. First, the U.S. represents itself either
as 1) a fair and
disinterested third party or 2) as an unjustly aggrieved innocent
bystander to some
situation. Second, the U.S. introduces its military or economic
presence into the fracas
under the pretense of being an honest broker between two parties.
Third, then the U.S.
chooses one side and, in the process, betrays the other. Fourth,
that's when the U.S.
"honest broker" deception is made manifest and there is Hell to pay.
In the present instance, as of a few days ago, President Bush and
the U.S. just
effected the third stage betrayal in the war on terrorism. It's just a
question of time until
the fourth stage comes around. What exactly did President Bush do?
First, President
Bush and the U.S. government represented itself to the world
community, to NATO, to
the U.N., to Muslim countries and to the U.S. electorate as being an
innocent, unjustly
targeted victim of terrorism. The terrorists, consisting of Bin Laden
and his group,
directly attacked the U.S. savagely and without cause. Second,
President Bush convinced
his global audience of this case. President Bush was able to extract a
certain consensus of
opinion and build a coalition of nations to fight this specific
terrorist threat (i.e., Bin
Laden and his group). Third, but now the unjustly targeted victims of
terrorism are no
longer the U.S. hijacked airline passengers plus the Twin Towers and
the Pentagon
victims, alone. Lo and behold, the U.S. has expanded the mission to
fighting Israel's
purported terrorist battle, too. So, the fight was never solely about
Bin Laden's attacks
against the U.S. of September 11, 2001. And, the U.S. was not as
disinterested as it may
have appeared regarding the conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians. Fourth, one can
assume that at least some Muslim members of the "coalition" against
terrorism will not
take kindly to having the label of terrorist extended to Hamas or to
other Muslim
organizations....Lebanon has already balked. Fourth, it may also prove
unlikely that the
U.N. security council or the U.N. in its entirety will allow its
mandates against terrorism
to be applied to Palestinians and to the situation surrounding Israel.
Fourth, Israel is not a
member of NATO, so any treaty obligations which apply to the U.S. do
not extend to
Israel. Fourth, and what do the U.S. families of the victims of the
September 11, 2001
attacks think?
P.S. I require that this opinion letter only be published in its
entirety, word for word, or
not at all. There's nothing nefarious about this request, I just
despise censorship.
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