2012, INTERNET HOAX, AL-QUR'AN, STORM WATCH, TSUNAMI, VOODOO and/or Y3K WARNING(S) 2012, INTERNET HOAX, AL-QUR'AN, STORM WATCH, TSUNAMI, VOODOO and/or Y3K WARNING(S)
Taliaferro Think Tank (TTT) and NATIONAL MAD AS HELL DAY.
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25JUN2002 President Bush the Martyr By Sam Bahour and Michael Dahan Last night's long-awaited speech by President Bush was to set the pace for the Palestinians and Israelis to step back from the vicious and bloody cycle of violence that has gripped them for nearly two years. Instead, President Bush and his administration have publicly adopted the Israeli agenda of battering the Palestinians into submission. President Bush's illusion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may be 'talked away' in a series of speeches is not only a poor example of leadership but seriously places U.S. interests in the region at high risk. President Bush's administration has utterly failed to comprehend the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and in particular the Palestinian predicament today which is an Israeli re-occupation of the small parcels of land that were transferred to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Peace Accords. To add insult to injury, President Bush continues to mismanage U.S. policy with unprecedented unaccountability to the U.S. Congress or the world community. Bush's chronological attempts to address the crisis are as follows: ignore the conflict - failed, send Powell to the region - failed, the Mitchell Report - failed, the Tenet Plan - failed, Bush's UN speech - failed, Secretary of State Powell's policy speech in Kentucky - failed, send General Zinni on multiple missions - failed, and the most recent call for an international conference (completely ignored in Bush's latest speech) - failed. If the creativity applied to avoiding real U.S. action were used to put an implementation mechanism in place to end the Israeli occupation the region would be well out of the conflict by now. To a naive audience President Bush's speech may have sounded like a sensible framework for progress, but for anyone with any understanding at all of the Middle East, it was clearly a shallow attempt in diplomacy that amounts to U.S. surrender of its Middle East foreign policy to the ranks of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel's lobby in the U.S. Indeed, the speech was praised by Israel's right, which has rejected Palestinian statehood outright. President Bush continues to be blinded by the events of 9-11 and refuses (or deceitfully avoids) to see the Palestinian issue outside the framework of the yet undefined phenomena of "terrorism". Palestinians were stripped of their national, civil, and human rights decades before the word terrorism became a buzzword. By placing the Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence in a 9-11 mold, the U.S. is only prolonging a solution and feeding the bloodshed, exactly as Israel has been doing for 36 consecutive years now. Today the U.S. is ideally positioned to finally take real action and use its global leverage to end Israeli occupation, instead it has succumb to an extremist Israeli government that views the fate of illegal Israeli settlements the same as it views the fate of Tel Aviv. By reducing the entire conflict in the region to the existence of an individual Palestinian leader, or set of leaders, the Bush Administration has fallen for the red herring that was designed, produced and marketed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. President Bush needs to remember that Former President Carter was part of the international election monitoring team that gave the Palestinian Presidential elections a stamp of approval. Furthermore, the Palestinians are fully aware of the weaknesses in their leadership and have been working to correct it for many years now. Instead of supporting Palestinian reformist the U.S. has chosen to make their efforts more difficult by making them look as if they are aligned to an Israeli strategy of reform before freedom. A U.S. led international campaign to mettle in internal Palestinian politics will only setback the efforts of those Palestinians that have already started making concrete steps for change. To craft U.S. policy in an entire region around new elections for an already expired Palestinian Authority is yet another display of Israeli setting of U.S. policy. More frightening is President Bush's criteria for the new leadership to be "not compromised by terror." We can only assume that this will be translated by way of Jerusalem to mean that only those Palestinians who have not been involved in resistance against occupation would be accepted. This is a clever way to say that no Palestinian is eligible for acceptance into this U.S. policy and thus give Israel more time to destroy Palestinian communities and any hope for co-existence. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon, President Bush's advisors, the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. and the U.S. Congress have clearly provoked President Bush to become a martyr in the name of continued Israeli military occupation of Palestinians. As with most martyrs who fail to see how their emotionally charged act will negatively reflect on the real issues at hand, President Bush stands proud and tall in support of Israel while the U.S. economy, U.S. allies in the region, U.S. homeland security and the U.S. global leadership position all take the brunt of his misaligned and ill advised policy, if it can even be considered "policy". The authors of this article have written throughout the last two years on every one of the issues the President spoke about in his speech. We predicted each failed U.S. step. Every time we have advised the U.S. on the way out of the crisis - to put forth action, not words, in ending the Israeli occupation. We still strongly believe that as long as Israeli occupation is permitted to survive, the U.S. can revisit the issue in 10 days or 10 months or 10 years and would face the same - Palestinians, stripped of their rights, dignity, land and freedom will continue to struggle, with Arafat or without, to end their predicament, and Israelis will continue to suffer. It is time - past time, to use Secretary of State Powell's words - for the U.S. to put actions behind its policies. Until then we await the next speech by President Bush and brace ourselves for the next series of bombings. * Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American businessman living in the besieged Palestinian City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank and can be reached at sbahour@palnet.com. He is co-author of HOMELAND: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994). Dr. Michael Dahan is an Israeli-American political scientist living in Jerusalem and can be reached at mdahan@attglobal.net ********** Ed note: Also in today's e-mail was an article by the "Islamicist" (hater) Dan Pipes. Normally we wouldn't print the whole text of a piece from Sam Bahour or Dan Pipes, but in this instance, and even though they are saying the exact opposite thing, they have both gotten a good handle on the future of George WWIII & Company as a dying breed... and you don't have to look too deeply between the lines to see that Dan Pipes and George WWIII & Company, NOT the likes of Sam Bahour will be the death of Israel, and why and how. ********** Bush is rewarding terrorism by Daniel Pipes National Post http://www.danielpipes.org/article/425 U.S. President George W. Bush has been adamant since Sept. 11 about stopping terrorism, but he took a firm step in the opposite direction in his speech yesterday. He should have told the Palestinians clearly and unequivocally that their 21-month campaign of violence against Israel is unacceptable and must conclude before any discussion of rewards can be started. Instead, the President outlined his vision for a "provisional" Palestinian state and demanded an end to what he called "Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories." Both of these constitute very major benefits to the Palestinians; as such, they represent rewards for suicide bombings, sniper attacks, and the other forms of terrorism. This not only does grave damage to the President's proclaimed war on terrorism but it sends a signal to the Palestinians to expect further rewards for yet more violence. True, there was much in his presentation about the virtues of local elections, independent auditing and market economics, but the only message that will stick is a cruder one: Terrorism pays. Bush's outline for action then went on to make a large number of mistakes about the specifics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Here are some: - Misreading Palestinian opinion: Bush declares that only a small minority of Palestinians subscribe to the means or views of the terrorists. "The hatred of a few holds the hopes of many hostage." But this is false; nearly every opinion survey, political speech, mosque sermon and other indication suggests that a substantial majority of Palestinians enthusiastically support the campaign of violence against Israel. This has the ominous implication that practising democracy, as the President calls for, would lead -- ironically -- to a more aggressive policy toward Israel. - Moral equivalence: Bush implies a basic commonality between the plight of Israelis who suffer terrorism and the Palestinians who inflict it. "It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation." To see the error of this statement, change it to "It is untenable for American citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Afghans to live in squalor and occupation." - Victimology: Palestinians have "been treated as pawns" says the U.S. President. Not so: Since 1967, the Palestinians have had an increasingly autonomous and powerful voice in running their own affairs. Especially since the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, they have been in control of their own destiny. To portray them as victims suggests they would behave differently once they have a formal state. In fact, every sign points to a continuation of the present policies. - Good governance the key: "True reform will require entirely new political and economic institutions based on democracy, market economics and action against terrorism." This is a touching but naive belief in the wonders of decent ruling institution. To be sure, autonomous local leaders, multi-party elections and honest politicians are all to the good, but how might they lead to a reduction of hostilities? This view has things precisely turned around: Democracy, market economics and anti-terrorism will only follow on a far more fundamental change, namely a Palestinian willingness to accept the existence of Israel. A Palestinian state that continues to seek the destruction of the Jewish state by nature cannot be democratic. - Overemphasizing terrorism: "There is simply no way to achieve [Palestinian-Israeli] peace until all parties fight terror." Palestinian terrorism has caused terribly tragedies but it is not the heart of the problem. Terrorism, after all, is but a tactic in the service of a war aim. That war aim -- the destruction of Israel -- is the heart of the problem. For example, it is perfectly possible to imagine a future Palestinian state that does renounce terrorism and instead builds up a conventional force of planes, tanks and ships with which to attack and destroy Israel. Along these lines, it is noteworthy that Bush did not call on the PA to reduce the size of its armed forces. A house cannot be built from a blueprint that gets wrong the terrain, the size and shape of the plot, and the building materials. Likewise, a political program cannot work if it is premised on errors. By rewarding terrorism, the Bush speech sets back the current war effort; by misunderstanding the Palestinian-Israeli war, it is rendered unworkable as a serious effort at conflict resolution. In all, it represents a disappointment and a missed opportunity. 02JUN2002 A certifiable moron occupying the White House? Intelligence Officer for the Southern Oregon Militia says Yes! How would I take such a threat seriously? The very first thing I would do, and I would have done it immediately after 9/11, is to authorize every law enforcement agency operating in the United States to stop and identify anyone who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. All those who prove to be American citizens would be given a special certification to show any other law enforcement officers who stop them that they've already been checked out. All the others, whether here on a valid visa or not, would be shipped home, no if's and's or but's, and NO exceptions. See: A Village Idiot Runs This Asylum Also see: Arafat declares Texas as new Palestinian Homeland |
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