What Israel Means 2

Western efforts in the Middle East has been a triumph of hope over experience. The basic concern for the West--indeed for all the developed world--is stability. True, the motive is the predictability of oil production and the maintenance of cheap power throughout the world, but the policy to achieve that is simple stability. To that end the West--and the rest of the developed world tacitly--has aligned itself with thugs, tinhorn dictators, religious posers and the leader-du-jour to suppress/smooth/inspire the Middle East populous to accept the status quo and, above all, maintain production. With the apparent understanding of this area's importance and fragility and despite the cynical need to maintain the oil flow, the world inserted into this region Israel, a newly minted nation made up of foreigners and infidels, displaced the people who had lived there for two millennium and then watched, amazed, as the region deteriorated. The U.N. peacekeeping troops were meaningless, the posturing ineffective but the hope flowed unstaunched.

We now have a new flag in the Middle East: The Arab Spring. We know it's new because we have never heard of it before but if it's new, it must be good. The West will now hang its stability hat on this new hook. Obama apparently in an effort to inspire this new Arab Spring has change American policy to insist Israel roll its borders back to 1967. What will happen is any one's guess.

What is not a guess is the astonishing mishandling of the world's most important resource site. If treason had been on the minds of the people involved it is doubtful we would be facing a worse problem. The arrogance of the U.S., the British and the U.N. in believing they could control this complex land, in inserting unsuspecting Jews into this cauldron with the belief we could and would always help them, the cynicism of their coddling despotic psychopaths and religious maniacs, their pompous periodic rewriting of policy should serve as a caution for anyone optimistic about our bathetic leadership.