I don’t want to live in fear of others, and I don’t want my country to fight wars. The only way to be certain that you will not be attacked is to reach an agreement with those who you consider to be your enemies. If you will not communicate with them, there is no hope for peace.
The United States is not Israel. I do not want to see Israel “wiped off the map,” and I don’t support Ahmadinejad’s remarks along those lines. But the actions of the Israelis against the Palestinians is going to inflame Arabs in the region. It is not bizarre or incomprehensible to me that an Islamic person in the Middle East could feel as though they would be better off if Israel didn’t exist. I can guarantee you that most Israelis would agree that the Palestinians would be better off if Israel was “wiped off the map.” As an American citizen and a reasonable, moral person, I do not place Israel’s interests above those of the men, women, and children who live in Iran. I am not an Israeli citizen, and in fact, I could never be because I do not share their faith and, as backwards as it sounds, for the most part, you need to adhere to a particular religion to be an Israeli citizen. Yet, our politicians embrace their culture as a perfect model of freedom and democracy, though our own forefathers fought for independence with freedom of religion as one of their primary foundational principles.
There is more to be gained by engaging Iran than there is in going to war with them. It would also make Israel safer.
We presently proceed under the assumption that Israel is 100% right at all times, but this is certainly not the case. When nobody will listen to your side of the story, it makes you really mad, doesn’t it? It’s doubly infuriating when you honestly know that you are right. This is the situation in the Middle East, and Jimmy Carter knows this is true, even as Obama distances himself from the former president. If Carter was Secretary of State oil prices would plummet and you would have peace and no reason for terrorism. McCain and Bush do not want peace in the Middle East.
When McCain insists that we have to have enemies, he loses me completely. That type of defeatist cynicism is antithetical to a healthy national psyche. We have to have peace as our goal, not “victory.” Peace equals victory. Killing equals failure.
I am moved to tears every time I think about the holocaust. I have gained extraordinary spiritual insight through the study of Kabbalah. I really know very little about Islam. I respect Jewish people and I realize that most Jews in America are politically progressive. I do not, however, feel as though the state of Israel is always right, and I implore all of my fellow Americans, especially Jews, to be fair in their assessment of the situation in the Middle East. If the Jewish lobby was fair and balanced, it would make everyone on the planet safer. It is the single biggest shift that we can make toward global peace and stability.
At present, as Bush demonstrated this week, an Obama discussion with the elected head of the nation-state of Iran is tantamount to “appeasing Hitler.” We will all live in fear until we are allowed to discuss the situation in the Middle East openly with the anti-semitism card removed from the deck. Israel has violated dozens of U.N. resolutions. If we continue to allow them a lawless existence with our full and unqualified support, nobody will be truly safe and all political discourse is worthless, because the root cause of our problems can never be addressed.
Filed under: 1, Ahmadinejad, Ahmenijihad, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iraq, Obama, Politics, Ron Paul, culture, john Mccain, news, religion
Very well put.
Sadly, there is a huge Dichotomy in who we can talk to without knowing and who we must support without questioning.
Speaking out against the US Israeli lobby’s de facto “we can do no wrong, don’t question our actions” brands you a Nazi sympathesier. The atrocities of the past are never far from the perceptions of the present and the “right” to offer objective dissent or tempered criticism is treated as an attack on their very existence.
Advocating communication with the “enemy” Iran, where a majority of the people themselves love the principle of America & who also held vigils in the streets of Tehran mourning the atrocities of 9-11, where the Iranian government held out a hand in support to hunt down Osama bin Laden and rid Afghanistan of the true terrorists, al-queda, but had the outstretched hand of reconciliation sliced off in the slammed shut door of ideology courtesy of George Bush & his administration.
This is the atrocity of US-Isreali & US-Iranian relations. One is do as I say and you have no right to question, the other is listen to what I know even though I have nothing to base my “knowledge” on!
As one is reminded ad nausea of the past & hardships of the Jewish people via movie, text & speech, there is no information available to either prove or disprove that the “enemy” is in fact an enemy. I would encourage all who have not already done so to either read the book Persopolis or see the movie Ignorance and blind following is not the answer.
[...] Isreal, Iran & US Relations Posted on May 17, 2008 by borealdreams in response to a well thought out post by Gary Patrick Garry at Obama and Dialogue With “Enemies” [...]