Progressive World Review

Is it any wonder we’re mired in an endless war in Iraq or why Israel and the Palestinians can’t seem to work out their differences when we have this, an article from The Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl, as an example of serious foreign policy discussion?

Last Tuesday, Israel faced the fallout from a Palestinian family of five perishing in the Gaza Strip during an Israeli strike against militants firing rockets at an Israeli town. On Wednesday, the Bush administration woke to a front-page picture in The Post of a 2-year-old Iraqi boy killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad aimed at Shiite militiamen launching rockets at the city’s Green Zone. The similarity of these tragic and politically costly episodes was anything but a coincidence.

For months now, Israel has been mired in an unwinnable war against Hamas and allied militias in Gaza, who fire missiles at civilians in Israel and then hide among their own women and children, ensuring that retaliatory fire will produce innocent victims for the Middle East’s innumerable satellite television networks. A growing number of the militiamen have been to Iran for training, and some of the missiles they launch are Iranian-made. Their objective is obvious: to exhaust Israelis with an endless war of attrition while making it impossible for Israel’s government to reach a political settlement with the more moderate Palestinian administration in the West Bank. (emphasis added)

Yes, these people are just animals, sub-humans who’d willingly sacrifice innocent women and children for television publicity.  This is the same kind of racism used by General Westmoreland during the Viet Nam war to justify the killing of countless Vietnamese people,

The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.

It’s simply amazing that Diehl can accuse others of having such low regard for human life after we invaded Iraq and killed hundreds-of-thousands of innocent civilians.  I wonder how many of them were women and children?  And it gets even better as Diehl continues his diatribe with this,

It’s not hard to grasp the common strategy at work here or to intuit what interest it serves. The rockets fired from Gaza and from Sadr City are two prongs of an offensive aimed at forcing the United States out of Iraq, putting Israel on the defensive — and leaving Iran as the region’s preeminent power. (emphasis added)

This is just pure denial.  Apparently Diehl forgets that Iran owes their new found power and influence to us for having invaded and neutralized their most formidable opponent, Iraq.  And finally, Diehl, predictably claims that it’s only the Israelis and Americans who are seriously interested in peace,

Both Israelis and Americans are tantalized by the prospect of a political solution. With U.S. encouragement, the Iraqi government is negotiating with both Sadr and Iran; Israel is talking to Hamas through Egypt. Both militias say they would be happy to observe a cease-fire in exchange for political concessions. (Sadr has already announced one, though the rocket launches continue.) But neither will agree to disarm. This is again the model of Hezbollah, which participates in the Lebanese parliament but refuses to give up its weapons, giving it the ability to wage war at any time of its — or Tehran’s — choosing. Hamas will not surrender its option to bleed Israel, nor will the Mahdi Army its means to harry the American enemy.

No, these dark skinned Middle-Easterners aren’t interested in peace only the ever righteous light skinned Europeans are seriously interested in finding peaceful solutions to the conflicts plaguing the region, the same ones who invaded and destroyed a sovereign nation, the same ones who perpetuate the hardship and humiliation in the open-air prison that is Gaza.

–Paul Wilden

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