Monday, November 07, 2011

The problem with US Middle East policy is not Democrats or Republicans


There are fewer than six million Jewish people in Israel. There are about 420 million people in the Greater Middle East, defined as Arab countries plus Iran and Turkey.

The United States has an explicit commitment, that Barack Obama describes as unbreakable, that the small number of Jewish people has an militarily unchallengeable majority state in their region of 420 million people even at the cost of opposing accountability or control of their own government's policies for everyone else.

This is not a Republican issue. Neither George Bush, Newt Gingrich nor Herman Cain is fundamentally worse on the Middle East than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or John Kerry.

A country that wants to overrule 420 million people's assessment of the legitimacy of Israel has to do it in the evil ways we see the United States behaving in the Middle East today. This is where the US invasion of Iraq, sanctions on Iran, air strikes on Libya, support for children going hungry in Gaza and support for a string of 19th century-style colonial dictatorships over Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and others flow from.

It is always silly to see a US Democrat criticize a US Republican regarding Middle East policies. Or vice versa. The problem is not the personality or party of the president. There is, even by American moral standards, a fundamental evil embedded in the US political process.

Either any American would subordinate the interests of 420 million people to those of 6 million people, or that American could not be president of the United States. Democrat or Republican.