The people who today claim that Israel must make 'sacrifices' for peace are the same people who always demanded Israel make 'sacrifices' for 'peace'.
By GARY L. BAUERGary Bauer(photo credit: Courtesy)
President Bush began his second term in January of 2005, by telling the people of the world that "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." He said "the best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." He promised all those who live in tyranny that "The United States will not ignore your oppression, nor excuse your oppressors." He reassured America's allies by reminding us all "Division among free nations is a primary goal of freedom's enemies."
What a difference three years makes! Last week, the President announced that his administration was "reaching out" to the architects of America's "realist" foreign policy school, and not coincidentally the harshest and most biting critics of his freedom doctrine to help "fashion" peace in the Middle East. Gone was any and all reference to freedom in the Arab world.
The people who brought us the 1991 Madrid Conference, which lead to the recognition of the PLO and the resuscitation of terrorist Yassir Arafat, are back. The people who brought us the 2000 Camp David Summit which lead to Arafat's five-year terrorist war against Israel are back. In fact, they are the very same people now being asked to try again, as if their failed vision has not caused enough damage and destroyed enough innocent lives already.
Sixty years of colossal diplomatic failure in the Middle East has not dimmed their faith in their flawed vision. Quite the contrary. It has reinforced it. All evidence and experience notwithstanding, they continue to believe that the "Arab-Israeli conflict" is the equal responsibility of both sides. They simply cannot see that the Arab goal of destroying Israel and the Israeli goal of living in peace and security are not morally equivalent goals worthy of equal status.
They cannot see that engaging in such fantasy only rewards Arab intransigence while dispiriting Israeli resolve. They refuse to see that the Arab war against Israel continues not despite futility, but because of its effectiveness. The war continues not because Arab demands are not being met, but because, gradually, they are being met. The people who today claim that Israel must make "sacrifices" for peace are the same people who always demanded Israel make "sacrifices" for "peace".
So what have the grand wizards, now working with the blessing of the Bush Administration and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice come up with this time? The same thing they came up with the last time and the time before that- a dazzling "peace conference" of course. The objective of this "summit", to be held at the end of November, is exactly what the objectives of all the other peace conferences have been- offer chunks of Israel to the Arab states seeking to destroy Israel.
Knowing that the American people are both too wise and too supportive of Israel to ever accept such blatant appeasement, the wizards of failure are using the same rationale to sell today's snake oil as they did to sell the 1991 International Peace Conference at Madrid.
Then, the first Bush Administration argued it was necessary to placate the Arabs at Israel's expense in order to get them to support American efforts to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The conference, we were assured, would usher in a new era of reconciliation, lubricated by Israeli concessions of land in exchange for promises of possible future Arab concessions of thought. Instead it saw the re- emergence of the PLO, the rise of radical Islamic terrorism and set the stage for a nuclear Iran.
We are being sold on the necessity of this month's summit at Annapolis with the same delusion. We are told that we need to force Israel to allow the immediate creation of a Palestinian state, despite it likely being lead by Hamas, the coalition of Arab states will be so indebted and grateful to America and Israel that they will not complain too loudly if and when the United States and Israel act against Iran's nuclear weapons program.
The Arab despots we now seek to appease at Israel's expense will not be any more "grateful" to the United States for sacrificing its closest ally than they are grateful to the United States for the support our country gives their regimes without which they could not last a day. No, it is not gratitude we will earn, so much as contempt. But earn it we will.
Yet even if such fanciful gibberish did make sense, why does it need such subterfuge and sleight of hand to justify? Even if this so called "Middle East containment policy" actually would deter Iran, why must it be built at Israel's expense?
Gary L. Bauer works in Washington D.C. as president of American Values, a Christian organization dedicated to moral government and family values.Previous Entries:
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