by Lou Dobbs of CNN says America doesn’t know what it’s doing in the Middle East. That’s certainly true. The Bush legacy of a democratic Iraq is an effort akin to trying to get 9 pregnant women together with the idea of making a baby in 1 month – it isn’t going to work out. There won’t be a functional republic in Iraq in any sort of reasonable timeframe. The reason for this is obvious: it only takes a handful of bad apples to fuck things up for the rest of us and there are more than a few such in that country.
Every day 50 Iraqi civilians are murdered in the first degree – the US Army can’t stop it – and that isn’t going to end until the bad guys are eliminated. The terrorists have no limits, no constraints on the perversity of their actions. There is nothing they won’t do. These people have indoctrinated themselves in a twisted, quasi-religious belief system that justifies the most heinious behavior. Their beliefs are no more valid than praying to the moon because it’s made of green cheese. If every dead terrorist gets 72 blushing virgins to fornicate with and the human male/female ratio is 50/50, what does that say? But that won’t stop them.
Dobbs limpidly implies that Israel’s creation after WWII is to blame for the present situation:
President Harry Truman took about 20 minutes to recognize the state of Israel when it declared independence in 1948. Since then, more than 58 years of war, terrorism and blood-letting have led to the events of the past week.
The Arab/muslim-led terrorist movement is Harry Truman’s fault? Well, perhaps it is. Jews were a defeated, vanquished people unable or unwilling to assimilate with other cultures. Their nation had disintegrated and they were scattered. Their society had failed. Then came Hitler.
Through that suffering, Israel was born. It exists today as reparations of a sort. But should the Allies have given the Jews the western half of Palestine to govern? It’s easy to think that, as a whole, the world would be a better place today if Truman and the Brits had refrained from that act.
Hardened by WWII and empowered by the only chance they’d ever get, the Jews/Israelis are as determined and dangerous a people as any on Earth. They are every bit as ruthless as the opposition, including the ones who murder dozens of Iraqis every day. But there is a difference between the Jews and the muslim terrorists in Iraq and Lebanon – the Israelis would stop fighting if given a chance. The other side will not.
This, though limply offered, is a reasonable argument, But later Dobbs’ liberalism trips him up:
…the per capita GDP of Israel is among the highest in the world at $24,600, nearly four times as high as Lebanon’s GDP per capita of $6,200.Lebanon’s lack of wealth is matched by the Palestinians — three out of every four Palestinians live below the poverty line. Yet the vast majority of our giving in the region flows to Israel. This kind of geopolitical inconsistency and shortsightedness has contributed to the Arab-Israeli conflict that the Western world seems content to allow to perpetuate endlessly.
To blame the conflict on the Israelis’ wealth is an inane argument. Industry builds GDP, plain and simple, and the Israelis have that in spades. If the Palestinians put down their rifles and picked up books, they’d be much better off. If the scum who torture Iraq on a daily basis disappeared and its people were able to establish a decent government, the Iraqis could surpass Israel economically in a generation, given their plentiful natural resources.
But that is unlikely to happen. Islam, like Communism, can only thrive in a closed system that prevents escape, dissent, disagreement, and growth. All of these are essential to compete in the economic arena. None, if the mullahs and terrorists have their way, will be available to the next generation of muslims. They are doing everything they can to prevent the change that would wash them away from happening.
That, Mr. Dobbs, is the source of the conflict.
