Spring Break
Thanks for the memories; now get out
Bryan Rockstroh, Daily Plus Columnist
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They toppled Saddam Hussein, with relatively few American and British casualties, and effectively freed the Iraqi people from a murdering, low-brow dictator, who had it coming.
On the other hand, America still has an image problem in the Middle East, and Iraqis, like most Arabs, want us out of their country.
This goes to show you that the name of the game is, and always has been, Palestine.
Not Iraq. Not Iran. Not Syria, nor Saudi Arabia.
Not Osama bin Laden.
Palestine, period.
It's time for that next step in the war.
Simply freeing the Iraqis was never going to be enough, and democracy is not going to take root unless you show them something else. What the Arabs think of when they think of democracy is the United States, and Israel, and when they think of Israel, they think of how they would like nothing better than to blow it up.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of everything in the Middle East, and if real pressure is not brought to bear, if real gestures are not made, and if a solid step toward peace is not taken at once, then all we have done in Iraq is perpetuate the cycle of an eye for an eye, blood for blood, and all you have at the end of that cycle is more death and bombs and tears.
And if that happens, we are not going to like it when Iraqis start voting for their new Shiite leaders.
They have Shiite leaders in Iran, and we don't like it.
Israel needs a stable homeland, and the Palestinians must have independence.
This is why we have terrorism in the first place. The lunatics in al-Qaida and Hezbollah can rant all they want about the evils they would like everyone to see in American culture, but if you really want to win the war on terror then cut the Palestinian cause out from under them and watch their supporters disappear.
Everyone is going to have to give a little. The Israelis are going to have to stop building settlements in the occupied territories, and the Syrians will need to stop crying over the Golan Heights. The Palestinians will need to stop teaching their children that Israeli blood is at its best when it is spilled on the sand. The ineffectual Yasser Arafat will need to put his people ahead of his pride and step down, and the reflexive hardliner Ariel Sharon will need to soften his stance.
America has the power to force these compromises, so long as she is willing to lean harder on her rebellious little sister, Israel. If you want to
shock and awe the Middle East into a progressive, democratic region, you will have to force it by giving the Israelis and the Palestinians the same sort of message we gave Saddam Hussein: We will accept nothing less than total victory.
Sometimes you need a war. But that time, hopefully, has passed. Now I want to see real American power, and I want to see my president measure up. He must bring peace to the holy lands. That is the true measure of a man -- not how many bombs he can drop, but how much harmony he can sow.
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