Long suspected before, but blatantly evident today, the United States cannot play the part of the honest broker of peace in the Middle East. The last vestiges of a just and honorable policy have all but evaporated.
In a week that witnessed Israeli troops callously firing at peaceful demonstrators with US-supplied tanks, killing and maiming scores of people, and US helicopters firing missiles at a wedding party in Iraq, duplicating the killing and maiming, one has to have a few screws loose to expect any credibility in the present foreign policies of the United States.
The administration’s words have been of the fight against terror, but its actions have proved dramatically otherwise. In carrying them out, the Bush administration has perhaps become the largest recruitment agent for terrorists in the world. Those who are injured and abused and those who have lost a loved one will not take it lying down. They will fight back with whatever means at their disposal.
The mess in Iraq is an obvious setback to an administration whose publicly stated goal was to free the people from Saddam’s oppression. Only it failed to add that it would replace it with another kind of oppression: An Israeli-American one. They were full-mouthed in their condemnation of Saddam’s brutality. Yet today they scurry about making all sorts of denials or lame excuses when their own forces carry out such brutality.
They raised questions on human rights violations by the countries in the region, failing to perhaps notice that the single largest criminal violation was being carried out by Sharon’s Israel.
This was never about Saddam. It was to safeguard the interests of Israel — to ensure that it remains the dominant military force in the region and to pursue their policies of killing and expansion, protected by US vetoes against any sanctions. Israeli lobbyists long argued for a strike against Iraq.
Ariel Sharon has got Mr. Bush’s number. When he demands, the US is only too willing to comply. US-supplied aircraft and tanks are dispatched to be used as killing machines against the innocent in Palestine. And when peaceful protesters are murdered, the murderous intent of Sharon and his policies of ethnic cleansing are evident to all but the US president, whose only public response was for a call for “all parties to exercise restraint”. For one who usually froths at the mouth whenever Israelis are killed, Mr. Bush’s response was indeed very muted.
At the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last Tuesday, Bush told the AIPAC delegates: “By defending the freedom and prosperity and security of Israel, you’re also serving the cause of America.”
In defending the state terrorism carried out by Israel against the innocent, Mr. Bush has perhaps played out his last hand in this region.
