Bush Opts for War
The Bush Administration has decided to pursue a military rather than a diplomatic path in the Middle East. Cutting off funds to the Palestinian Authority and prohibiting contacts between American officials and the Palestinian Authority is not a pressure tactic, it is an act of war. Diplomatic relations are normally severed prior to the initiation of hostilities. With a president who disregards the constitution, war is no longer declared by Congress, but by fiat of the chief executive. Bush has done just that.
American support for continued illegal Israeli seizure and
occupation of land, support for Israeli’s refusal to hand over $50 million a
month in taxes that it collects are depicted in the western media as pressure
tactics. Warnings by the new Hamas led
Palestinian government that collapse of the Palestinian Authority will result
in a return to the situation before the Oslo Peace Accords, but at a much
higher level of violence are being ignored in the west.
Bush’s policies are designed, in fact, to provoke the
Palestinians into violence. The
Israelis seized the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war because Egypt closed the
Straits of Tiran to Israel shipping, thereby essentially blockading the port of
Elath. Of course, even Moshe Dayan said
it was a causus belli, but reasons matter.
If closing the Straits of Tiran was an act of war, then the economic
attacks on the Palestinian Authority by the Bush Administration, the European
Union, and the Israeli government is no less a declaration of war. They are designed to humiliate the Palestinians
and force them to do desperate acts. It
says that Israel had the right to steal your land and water because EGYPT, not
you, closed the Straits of Tiran. Now,
we can annihilate you economically while Egypt urges you to accept these
humiliating and hypocritical terms from Israel and the United States. Well, no one is going to accept it, because
it is a deal designed to be rejected.
Bush wants war, and he is going to get it.
This war will solve
nothing, it will just be another chapter in the ongoing conflict between the
western invaders of the Middle East and the indigenous population that began in
the mid 19th century and continues today. Over a century of slaughter in an attempt to make the natives
submit has not worked in the past. It
will not work in the future. Only a
fair political settlement will bring peace, justice and prosperity to the
Middle East.
What is needed is a
consummate politician. However, people
like Bush who steal elections rather than win them through political skill have
only one arrow in their quiver, force. That
is why Bush’s solution to every problem is to expand the powers of the presidency:
to incarcerate people without trial forever, to wage war without oversight or
checks and balances, to torture and abduct people…in short, Bush is a gangster,
not the leader of a great democratic nation.
Gangsters don’t negotiate, they attack without warning. Get ready for general war in the Middle
East.