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Sunday, May 18, 2008
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 BUSH, HYPOCRISY, IDIOCY AND ISRAEL
Turns out that making a dry drunk leader of the free world wasn't as funny as I had originally hoped. As it happens, the brain damage chronic drinkers are prone to suffer might just disqualify someone from the presidency.
We learned that all too well on Thursday when President Bush adderessed the Israeli Knesset and spoke out in defiance of two hundred years of political tradition, personal decency and common sense. It was a speech that was contrary not just to world history, but the history of his own useless administration.
For most of America's history, its statesmen have abided by the dictum that "politics ends at the water's edge." Political campaigns were not to be waged overseas, and certainly not by sitting presidents. Nixon did not go to China and declare that the Democrats would destroy the world and Ronald Reagan would never have dreamed of doing that. I suspect that the current president's father would rather have resigned his office rather than break that proud tradition.
President Bush didn't do that on Thursday. Instead he broke with even his own disjointed version of history. It was a speech that stood out for it's ignorance, arrogance and short-sightedness. When one considers the incredible damage to America's future foreign policy, it becomes almost mindblowing.
We believe that religious liberty is fundamental to a civilized society. So we condemn anti-Semitism in all forms -- whether by those who openly question Israel's right to exist, or by others who quietly excuse them. We know this because the president of the United States rountinely condems Saudi Arabia and Egypt for making after-school specials based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In Egypt's case that's of particular importance as they receive about $2 billion in American foreign aid each and every year. A more cynical blogger might argue that the American government is actually subsidizing anti-Semitism. Luckily, I'm not at all cynical.
We believe that targeting innocent lives to achieve political objectives is always and everywhere wrong. So we stand together against terror and extremism, and we will never let down our guard or lose our resolve. Unless that terror eminates from Kurdish Iraq. That's different.
And that is why the founding charter of Hamas calls for the "elimination" of Israel. And that is why the followers of Hezbollah chant "Death to Israel, Death to America!" That is why Osama bin Laden teaches that "the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties." And that is why the President of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.
There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century. Here's where the president's intrepretation of history gets interesting.
Firstly, the founding charter of Hamas indeed calls for the elimination of Israel. The first problem is that Hamas hasn't referenced that charter in public for years. Second, both Fatah and the Israeli government knew that Hamas would win election in 2005 and begged the Bush administration to support a postponement of that election, which the president ignored.
The administration then attempted a half-hearted coup against a democratically elected Hamas, which directly led to the forcible takeover of Gaza and further endangered Israeli civilians. President Bush didn't point that out.
If I were a Jew, I would be outraged by Bush's contention that "Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred." From that, one can only assume that the president is referring to Holocaust. While it's true that Americans saw the consequences, only Jews suffered them. The Allies were well aware where the death camps were and what their function was. And they did nothing at all to stop it. Despite having uncontested control of the air by 1943, the Allies wouldn't even destroy the rail links to the camps as a gesture to the victims of places like Auschwitz.
While the Germans perpetrated the Holocaust, each and every Allied government was complicit in it because we did nothing. We may not have been able to stop it, but we didn't even attempt to slow it down. And the Allies had air superiority for almost all of the period that the Final Solution was carried out.
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. That might be the most incredible distorition of the facts to come from a president who has excelled at doing just that.
When Nazi tanks crossed into Poland, the United States was practising a policy of strict neutraily. As a matter of fact, the United States Congress passed, and President Roosevelt signed, no fewer than four Neutrality Acts during Hitler's first four years in power. In fact, the Neutrality Act of 1939 passed two months after Hitler invaded Poland.
When the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were passed, the United States was neutral. Even after Kristallnacht, the United States remained neutral. The Anschluss and invasion of Poland did nothing to change American neutrality, in fact, they strengthed it. Were it not for Hitler's ill-advised declaration of war against the United States after Pearl Harbor, it's an open question as to whether America would have fought in Europe at all.
Neville Chamberlain may have been wrong to negotiate with Hitler, but the United States ignored the threat entirely until the war came to its shores. How fucking dare any American politician claim moral superiority to Chamberlain given that history? Most Americans believe to this day that the Second World War began 26 months later than it actually did.
All of the Western powers are complicit in the Holocaust. We knew it was happening and we did nothing to stop it. Worse, we refused to accept refugees from it and sent them back to the ovens of Poland. Millions of Jews were murdered and we bear that guilt along with Germany because we didn't even try to stop it. It just so happens that the United States bears a special burden because as a neutral, it refused to call Nazi aggression what it was.
But let's look at Bush's position on negotiating with "terrorists and radicals." Since Hamas doesn't have tanks or heavy artillery, one can only assuming that he's speaking of actual states, specifically Iran.
Not only did President Bush's hero, Ronald Reagan, negotiate with the terrorist state of Iran, he sold them weapons. Furthermore, he sold them weapons as a ploy to release American hostages held by Iranian sponsored terrorists. When questioned about it, President Reagan not only lied, he backdated Presidential intelligences findings authorizing the sales, which is clearly an impeachable offense.
Worse still, President Bush himself has negotiated with terrorists, specifically, Muammar al-Gaddafi of Lybia. Gaddafi was directly responsible for the terrorist attack on Pan Am 103 that killed 270 people, including 180 Americans. Bush negotiated with Gaddafi to stop his joke of a nuclear program, most only of the components of which hadn't even been taken out of their shipping crates.
Gaddafi was a major financier of Black September and Carlos the Jackal. He was the prime state sponsor of the PLO during the 1970s and 80s. In 1986, Gaddafi ordered the bombing of a Berlin disco frequented by US servicemen, killing two and wounding another 50. President Reagan responded to this by calling Gaddafi "the mad dog of the Middle East" and bombing his house.
To this very day, Colonel Gaddafi has not renounced terrorism or accepted the right of Isreal to exist. Yet, Bush still lifted American sanctions against Lybia.
That's who President Bush is willing to negotiate with. And let's not forget that his administration was instrumental in electing Hamas in the Palestinean Territories and giving Hezbollah legitimacy in Lebanon, both of which border on Isreal and are an existential threat to Isreali democracy.
America stands with you in breaking up terrorist networks and denying the extremists sanctuary. America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapons would be an unforgivable betrayal for future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Mr. Bush has cited several remarks by the Iranian leadership calling for the destruction of Israel. What he doesn't tell you is that every single Arab country has said the same or worse. In fact, each and every one of those countries have attacked Israel one time or another, and most of them don't recognize Israel's right to exist to this day.
Not only was Iran the second country in the world to recognize Israel, it has never declared war on her. In fact, you would have to go back over 300 years to find an instance of Iran invading anybody. Indeed, the American missles sold to Iran by the Reagan admisistration were routed through Israel. How many countries have the United States aggressively attacked in its history? I happen to live in one of them.
Does Iran have a nuclear weapons program? Yes, they almost certainly do. But one should consider Iran's stragetic position. Iran is in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear Israel, Russia, China, Pakistan and India. Oh, and the United States government that has been screaming for regime change in Iran for the last thirty years now has about 200,000 troops on no fewer than two of Iran's borders.
Can you imagine what the United States would do if it were surrounded by so many aggressive nuclear powers? Saddam Hussein was thought to have WMD that no serious person thought that he could deliver to the American homeland, but that was enough to warrant an invasion. If you don't think of the Iranians as guys in turbans with religious beliefs almost nutty enough to qualify them for a Republican congressional seat, you quickly come to the conclusion that Iran isn't crazy to have a nuclear program, they'd be crazy if they didn't.
How many democratically elected American governments has Iran overthrown? America has overthrown at least one freely elected government in Iran. The United States has nothing to fear from Iran, but Iran has everything to fear from the United States and they have very good historical reasons for them to do so.
That's not to suggest that I'm in favor of Iran having nuclear weapons, but it should be taken as meaning that I'm not against it either. The Bush administration, in its enthusiasm of pre-emtive war, has even given Iran a plausible excuse to attack the Israeli reactor at Dimona.
You know what could kill the Iranian nuclear program tomorrow? A guarantee that the United States won't invade Iran. That's all. I believe that the Iranians would even recognize Israel if it received an American security guarantee. It would cost the United States nothing and go further than anything else in reaching a Middle East peace agreement. Besides, the US extended the same guarantee to Cuba. What did that cost?
Neither Iran or Saudi Arabia recognizes Isreal. But Saudi Arabia has attacked Israel and Iran hasn't. Furthermore, there was no Iranian involvement in 9/11 and there were 15 Saudis on those planes and there were financial transactions that flowed in and out of the Kingdom both before and after the attacks.
The worst thing about President Bush's remarks is that they were aimed at American politicians - almost certainly Barack Obama - from foreign soil.
Not only is that a break with 200 years of American political tradition, it is incredibly damaging to American foreign policy.
Let's assume for a moment that Obama wins the presidency in November. Bush would have already tied his hands in foreign policy and created an ingrained distrust toward the new president with one of Israel's closest allies. No president in American history has ever done that before, and that is just another reason that George W. Bush is a cheap fucking punk.
There would have been all manner of hell to be paid if Bill Clinton did a world wide tour saying that Republican policies would kill everyone just before an American election. Now, I hate President Clinton just as much as I hate President Bush, but there has to be some measure of fairness here. If nothing else, Clinton wouldn't have made those remarks during wartime, like his successor did.
If Bush can't sustain his shithead policies through an election, it seems that he'll damned do it in foreign relations.
I agree with most Republicas that Barack Obama is hopelessly niave regarding foreign policy. But I can't escapre the conclusion that Bush is, too, and he's actually been president for almost eight years. And the worst president since James Buchanan has done much more damage to his country and its relations with the rest of the world than even that closeted cocksucker and his cabinet of traitors ever could have hoped to.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: There is a War By: Leonard Cohen From: New Skin for the Old Ceremony
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Labels: Fun With Politics, The Department of International Relations
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