1. Ari said:

Exactly, and this shows the idiocy and naivete of Bush, Rice and Co. I'm really, seriously starting to think that Bush, Rice, Cheney and the neocons like Wolfowitz and Feith harbor, deep in their heart of hearts, a profound hatred for Israel and a desire for Israel's destruction.

How else to explain the fiasco they've created in Iraq-- a Shiite-dominated, fundamentalist regime that's basically a lackey of Iran, Israel's most dangerous enemy? Now, Iran's not only been strengthened enough to become the regional potentate-- now, Iran also has all the resources and population of Shiite Iraq at its disposal. And rather than challenging the brutal Iranians, rather than standing up to and launching raids against the terrorist Badr Brigades, rather than challenging the anti-Israel Shiite fundamentalists now running Iraq, the Bush Administration kisses up to Sistani-- who's as anti-Israel as Khomeini ever was-- and props up the fundamentalist Shiite government. Idiots!

Let it be recorded that Bush and his sycophant Condi Rice are members of the most anti-Israeli administration in US history, responsible for greatly magnifying the threat to Israel's survival. They both deserve all the resentment and opprobrium that the US public can muster against them.

2. Bill Narvey said:

Ari, your comments that Bush and his administration are anti-Israel are too over the top for me to agree.

I am however inclined to agree with you regarding the Bush administration demanding less and expecting even less or nothing from the Palestinians, yet continuing to make demands on Israel and expecting Israel to comply.

The Bush administration's desire to be the one to bring peace to the Palestinians and Israelis in accord with the Bush road map and its efforts made in that regard, seem to be increasing inversely to the time left before Bush's term is out.

In the result the U.S. policy of supporting Israel seems to have gone off the rails and no one seems to have noticed or if they have, they do not know how to get it back on the rails. That is very worrisome and all the more reason to press the Bush administration to bring reality back into their views and get their support for Israel back on the rails.

While I concur with Mr. Hugh Fitzgerald's comments and views, I depart from his views in one fundamental respect. I believe Mr. Fitzgerald's view is as my own, that the West's goal must be the utter defeat of radical Islam in such way as to ensure Islam will not be an ongoing threat. Where I disagree with Mr. Fitzgerald is on the means to achieve that.

The Bush administration knew full from the get go that radical Islam is a formidable force in the Middle East and the Muslim world generally and accordingly is a formidable intractable foe of the West and America in particular.

Bush was loathe to call a spade a spade as it were and coined the expression, "War on Terror". Even though recently specifically identifying America's enemy as radical Islam, he and his administration continue to speak about Islam as a religion of peace, tolerance and harmony. Clearly this politically correct stance is designed not to anger radical Islam even more and not to anger those Muslim fence sitters who might get angry enough to join the Islamic Jihad against America and the West.

Radical Islam is not the least impressed with America’s honesty, morality, values and altruism even when it is other Muslims that benefit from America’s kindness.

That we can find by reading passages from the Koran plenty of dictates calling for the hatred, killing and subjugation of non-Muslims, Christians and Jews in particular through holy Jihad should make believers of any reasonable person that those words mean exactly what they say in the Koran and that all radical Islam is doing, as it claims, is carrying out their Islamic religious duty by holy Jihad against the West and Israel.

The Bush administration knew long ago and it knows now that you cannot persuade radical Islam that the Western ways and values are superior to Islam or at least the values they should accept in order to work with the West to make the world a peaceful tolerant place and you therefore cannot negotiate and deal with radical Islamists.

The Americans, Republican and Democrats alike saw the faulty intelligence, did not recognize it was faulty, concluded Saddam Hussein had WMDs, was a threat to Israel and to the stability of the Middle East, thereby jeopardizing American interests and they all concluded America should go in and remove Hussein and his Baathist regime.

It was my view then and all the moreso now that America made a fundamental error in thinking that it had a moral duty to rebuild Iraq, let alone at its own cost or that there was even a necessity to do that to improve the chances that the new regime would be more friendly to America and the west and thereby it would be a regime America could deal with and advance its own interests.

America had the power and the resources to take out Saddam Hussein on its own.

America should have left Iraq, let it have its civil war and let the Iraqis find or be taken over by their new leaders. Any regime that replaced Saddam Hussein which might be as hateful of the West, America and Israel as Hussein was, would have to be crazy not to think more than just twice about doing anything to anger the Americans, for they would know if they tried it, the same fate would await them as it did Saddam Hussein.

This would serve as a very real object lesson for any other Islamic regimes in the Middle East that think they can with impunity continue to support terrorism and Islamic terrorists and incite such terrorism by daily spewing their anti-west, anti-American and anti-Israel and anti-Semitic venom.

America however has already suffered huge losses at the hands of their Islamic enemies, quite apart from the loss of their own people. Apart from the cost of rebuilding Iraq has been enormous, so too is the cost of the OPEC nations ripping off America and the West for trillions of dollars in oil profits and costing America and the West trillions of dollars in increased security costs.

If OPEC holds the mortgage on America and owns a big chunk of America, If America sees the Saudis have been their enemies all along and have been making or supporting the radical Islamic war on America for the last 30 years or so, America should have the option to seize all OPEC assets in America for itself to reimburse Americans the huge financial cost America has incurred and in respect of which all Americans have suffered dearly.

Such American policy could also be employed with the Palestinians and their Arab supporters. First and foremost Israel’s borders must be as secure and defensible as possible. If there is any land left over, the Palestinians can have it with the warning and caveat that if they start up with Israel, Americans and Israel will ensure that they lose that too.. The Arab nations that have used the Palestinians as their proxy and political football in their ongoing war with Israel will be forced to come to grips with that the Americans have brought to an end the usefulness of the Palestinians in the Arab war against Israel and will be forced to take their Palestinian brethren back.