Keenness is Kindness

Biased mediators: The end of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, and how it happened

December 18, 2017
National Interest

Palestine’s titular president recently declared the end of American mediation once and for all because it is “completely biased toward Israel.” President Donald Trump’s provocation to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem clearly forced Palestinians to take bigger stock of America’s exhaustive, if not suffocating, presence as mediator over their fate. Despite never agreeing on much, it seems all Palestinian political factions—at least for now—want to be done with the United States for good. The burden of halting Israeli colonization and enabling Palestinian freedom should now fall to the United Nations and the European Union, which has already begun economic sanctions against Israeli goods made in illegal West Bank settlements. All should join Palestinians in saying “good riddance” to any future American-dominated efforts. The reasons are too many to list here, but the most obvious is owing to the flawed supposition that the United States could in practice succeed in spite of its pro-Israel bias (or as some wrongly believed, because of it).

The scholarly architecture of “biased mediation” was developed in the 1970s by the late Israeli professor Saadia Touval, who argued that mediator bias could be a helpful asset in conflict resolution. The argument is that a party enjoying bias would be prone to take advice from its trusted ally acting as mediator. A biased mediator could also be counted on to offer superior insights into the parties in conflict, who might lack information about each other or suffer from jaundiced eyes. And because the favored party would theoretically try to preserve its special status, it would therefore prove forthcoming. The same would apply for the disfavored party. With three parties in the mix, and a dyadic alliance between biased mediator and its favored party, the isolated and disfavored party will work overtime to be “forthcoming” in hopes it will “drive a wedge” between the two longtime friends—a form of bargaining leverage to generate the compliance of the disfavored, weaker party.

A 2008 obituary for Touval mentioned that his biased mediation theory had influenced Dennis Ross, who led U.S. negotiations on the Arab-Israeli front from 1992 until 2001, and Aaron Miller, who served as Ross’s deputy throughout. Ross would quote from Touval in his 2007 book about “Statecraft” while Miller, taking a more self-critical line, editorialized in 2005 how he felt that Ross and his colleagues (himself included) were less mediator and more “Israel’s lawyer” for their “catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations.”

Numerous independent accounts and scholarly works have autopsied the negative influence of Dennis Ross as well as Martin Indyk, the latter who twice served as U.S. ambassador to Israel, on the overall American peace efforts. Both Ross and Indyk co-founded an AIPAC-spinoff think tank and were counted on by President Bill Clinton to lead an effort to “stop pro-Arab bias” among Foggy Bottom diplomats. In all his career, Dennis Ross would broker a single agreement—the 1997 Hebron accords. This was the disastrous deal that disproportionately divided Jerusalem to favor Israeli settler extremists there with a stranglehold over Palestinian life. Indyk brokered nothing and even had his security clearance suspended, at one point, for among other things allegedly discussing classified national security information in the presence of Israelis. Both Ross and Indyk would also make return appearances under the Obama administration, Ross from 2009–11 (where he meddled in the efforts of Senator Mitchell, a man actually renowned for conflict resolution) and Indyk as lead envoy from 2013–2014 (where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marginalized him, at least partly because of Indyk’s longstanding support for Likud’s rival Labour Party).
#Jerusalem

Following the trajectory of their biased mediation, it is clear a two-state solution was largely snuffed out during their tenures, in no small measure because the sham process they presided over was all procedural process while the stronger Israeli party used the machinations as smokescreen to consolidate facts on the ground through brute force. In the cold light of morning the numbers show how they succeeded: Israeli settlers in the West Bank skyrocketed from 200,000 in 1993 to 600,000 today, despite every U.S. President from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama demanding an end to settlement expansion.

This only goes to demonstrate the perverse fallacy of American political ability to “deliver” Israel—which is supposed to be the key benefit a biased mediator brings to the table. In fact, if anything the Arabs today believe the reverse: that only Israel can deliver the Americans. This explains why Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Arab autocracies today work quietly with Israel and its lobby, in part to get a good scorecard with the U.S. Congress—which remains deeply in capture to any given Israeli prime minister. Israel wields this “high-power” over the future welfare of U.S. politicians via its American lobby cutouts, AIPAC and other extreme iterations, which exploit campaign finance laws to preserve hegemony. Contrary to Touval, Palestinians can never realistically hope to “drive a wedge” between the United States and Israel, particularly in the present anti-Muslim political climate, and so will perpetually be ganged up on by the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Palestinians have only themselves to blame for not ending this abusive relationship. They have long known that political declarations at AIPAC each year—bipartisan oaths that there will never be “daylight” between the United States and Israel—were not just political slogans but a symptom of their toxic relationship.

Neither Ross nor Indyk—or anyone advocating biased U.S. meditation—ever answered how pro-Israel bias added any value toward actual peacemaking since the Oslo process started. Far from providing “superior insights” about Palestinians to the Israelis, from the 1990s until today the Israelis nearly always knew and understood Palestinians far better (and vice versa) than their visiting American mediators from Washington. The desire by Israelis to avoid having Ross or Indyk throw up their pro-Israel “spin” even sometimes resulted in both trying to cut deals behind America’s back. That’s not exactly the kind of outcome Touval had in mind—with the United States being more royal than the king by adopting positions considered by Palestinians as “more Israeli than the Israelis.” Despite the United States committing in the Madrid Conference of 1992 to serve as “honest broker” in the talks, later diplomats would brazenly dismiss that aim. Indyk was quoted several times during his tenure saying “evenhandedness” toward Palestinians is “not even in our lexicon.” Despite years of denying his unfair bias toward Israel, Ross was secretly recorded telling a group of American Jews in 2016 that “We don’t need to be advocates for Palestinians. We need to be advocates for Israel.”

And that’s exactly how Ross and Indyk behaved on several occasions, including at the Camp David summit in 2000, were they even believed Israel’s then Prime Minister Ehud Barak had gone “too far” on issues like Jerusalem and the percentage of territory to be returned to Palestinians. They and other pro-Israeli partisans masquerading as “honest brokers”—Jewish-Americans comprised almost the entire U.S. delegation back then—were instead paralyzed by their own internal soul-searching as Jews whereas the Israelis had far more advanced understanding over what would be needed to end the conflict. Rather than encourage these concessions as a good start, Ross and others were quick to hail Barak as heroic and potentially going too far. They were also self-obsessed in 2000 over Barak’s political countermeasures against their interests should Bill Clinton be seen as pushing Israel too far. Not to forget Hillary Clinton was running for Senate in New York that year and Al Gore was in a tight race with George W. Bush. Both promised to be Israel’s new best friend. Palestinians, with almost no political leverage to equalize American bias, were again made victims by this gross power asymmetry.

Which brings me back to President Trump, and his early appointments of Jared Kushner, David Friedman and Jason Greenblatt to lead U.S. mediation. The Trumpian triumvirates have lifelong supporters for the extreme right wing of Israel, including American charities that send millions to illegal Jewish-only colonies in the West Bank. That much was well documented and even known by Palestinians from the outset. It has recently emerged that Kushner may even be under criminal investigation for violating the Logan Act by trying to scupper the Obama team’s passing of a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements one month before Trump took office. Suffice to say that those willing to violate law (Kushner) and subvert U.S. foreign policy and UN Resolutions (Kushner, Friedman and Greenblatt) by supporting Israeli settlements are not just biased—they are agent provocateurs, or “extremist” mediators.

So why did Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, ever dignify the biased diplomatic charade of Kushner, Friedman and Greenblatt to begin with? Because until now actual American currency was more valuable to Abbas and his U.S.-aid dependent Palestinian Authority than having political currency among his own people. That was until Trump transgressed the mother of all redlines on Jerusalem, not just with Palestinians but the entire Arab and Muslim world. In doing so, Trump has forced Abbas to acknowledge the reality that biased American mediation is the poison enabling continued apartheid and Israeli occupation rather than the antidote to it. And for that, Trump should be thanked.

Irresponsible Foreign Policy: The Republican Establishment, Not Ron Paul

Doug Bandow
12/30/11

Even loyal Republicans are disheartened by their choices this year: the man who flips and flops whenever convenient, the official turned lobbyist who imagines he is Churchill (or maybe Caesar) reincarnated, and the governor with memory problems. But the man the GOP elite most fear is a genial 76-year-old congressman from Texas. He actually believes in something and remembers what it is. And he has been largely right on the big issues.

Of course, Rep. Ron Paul suffers from some self-inflicted problems. But for most of his critics what most matters is his stand on the issues. Especially on foreign policy. If the Republicans ignore him they deserve to lose the 2012 election.

A decade ago President George W. Bush chose arrogance over humility as his foreign policy. Since then virtually every Republican presidential candidates has embraced his philosophy of endless war: in effect, the GOP mantra is "we're all neoconservatives now."

Only Paul (and Gary Johnson, excluded from most of the debates) challenge America's role as a de facto empire. Paul observed that conservatives enjoyed spending money, only "on different things. They like embassies, and they like occupation. They like the empire. They like to be in 135 countries and 700 bases."

All of Paul's establishment GOP opponents support defending a gaggle of prosperous and populous "welfare queens" around the world. Rick Santorum warned: as commander-in-chief Ron Paul "can shut down our bases in Germany. He can shut down the bases in Japan. He can pull our fleets back."

Why would this be bad? The European nations have a larger GDP and population than America. The U.S. faces fiscal crisis: after 66 years, it is time for the Europeans to defend themselves. Japan, long possessing the world's second largest economy, also could take care of itself.

Americans must worry about the transition of power in North Korea primarily because nearly 30,000 U.S. troops remain on station in the South. Yet South Korea has about 40 times the GDP and twice the population of the North. Why, nearly six decades after the end of the Korean War, are Americans still paying for Seoul's defense? Observed Paul: "How long do we have to stay in Korea? We were there since I was in high school."

No less bizarre is the new-found Republican love affair with nation-building. It is widely recognized--outside of neoconservative think tanks and Republican presidential campaigns, anyway--that Iraq was a disaster. The war, fought under false pretenses, killed thousands of Americans, wounded tens of thousands more, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, drove millions more from their homes, and will end up costing Americans trillions of dollars. The chief beneficiary of Bush's foolish misadventure was Iran.

Yet the GOP presidential contenders criticized the Obama administration for not forcing Iraq's elected government from accepting a continued U.S. military presence. For instance, Mitt Romney denounced this "astonishing failure." Left unmentioned was the fact that the year-end departure was negotiated by George W. Bush. Anyway, it would be foolish to keep America forever entangled in Mesopotamia.

Most of the other Republican contenders, except Ambassador Jon Huntsman, have similarly defended Washington's endless nation-building exercise in Afghanistan. Santorum demanded that we achieve "victory," whatever that means. Romney said that he would listen to the counsel of the military commanders--as if that would relieve him of making an independent decision as president.

Most Americans agreed with the original objective of wrecking al-Qaeda and ousting the Taliban but now want out. And rightly so. No "conservative" should sacrifice Americans' lives and wealth in an attempt to create a strong, effective, and honest central government in Afghanistan, something which never before has existed.

As if these wars were not enough, Romney backed the counterproductive intervention in Libya. (To Michele Bachmann's credit, she was opposed.) Newt Gingrich ended up on both sides of that war. Romney and Gingrich also suggested undermining the Syrian government through covert action. Rick Perry advocated imposing a no-fly zone there. Why do they believe America needs another war to fight?

Even more pitiful is the reflexive war-mongering against Iran. "You have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon," declared Gingrich. Romney and Perry pronounced their willingness to use military action. Gingrich and Santorum advocated covert action to kill Iranian scientists and disrupt Iranian activities. Gingrich also demanded that the U.S. pursue "regime replacement." Romney urged indicting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for "genocide." Bachmann charged that talking with Iranian officials was "appeasement." Even the normally measured Huntsman pronounced Iran as "an example of when I would use American force." One imagines the GOP contenders enthusiastically dancing the Maori Haka, as if exuberant shouts and chants were enough to defend America.

Republicans once elected war heroes, like Dwight Eisenhower, who understood the reality of war and sought to avoid it. This year Republican voters seem to favor draft avoiders in the mold of Richard "I had other priorities" Cheney whose desire to wreak death and destruction on other peoples expands as their refusal to serve when their country called grows more distant. When asked why none of his five sons had served, Romney explained that "one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping get me elected." (Perhaps they felt that working for their dad was a bit like serving in Fallujah.)

There are good reasons to try to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran's hands, but the costs of military action likely would be horrendous. Moreover, every additional threat to attack Iran only more clearly demonstrates to Tehran the necessity of developing nuclear weapons.

Paul warned: "I'm afraid what's going on right now is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq." No surprise, none of the establishment Republicans acknowledged that U.S. intelligence agencies failed to confirm the existence of a nuclear weapons program.

Worse, Gingrich apocalyptically claimed that the U.S. "would never, ever be safe" with the current regime in Tehran. Yet America survived decades of Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, and Kim Il-sung's and Kim Jong-il's North Korea. Deterrence worked. America's military power remains overwhelming; any attack on the U.S. would lead to Tehran's destruction. And no Republican has offered evidence that Iran's rulers are suicidal.

On Israel the pandering is fearsome to behold. The leading Republicans uniformly embrace Israel's extreme Likud-dominated government and celebrate Israel's right to treat millions of Palestinians as helots, with neither economic opportunity nor political sovereignty.

Several GOP contenders advocate attacking Iran to defend Israel, even though the latter is a regional superpower possessing a couple hundred nuclear weapons. Romney said his first foreign visit as president would be to Israel. Bachmann promised to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Gingrich said he would consider freeing convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

Perry said God told him what to do about Israel: "as a Christian I have a clear directive to support Israel, so from my perspective it's pretty easy." (Alas, figuring out what that means is not so easy for those who do not share his particular eschatological Biblical views.) Most pathetic, though, is Romney who, after giving a foreign policy speech with the usual formulistic call for American leadership, promised not to act in the Middle East without the approval of Israeli leaders. Such groveling can only inspire contempt in Israel.

Finally, only Paul acknowledges that an interventionist foreign policy encourages terrorism. Seeking an explanation for terrorism obviously does not excuse it. But his opponents appear to be astonished at the argument that killing other people and occupying their lands may cause them to retaliate against America. The Republicans prefer to believe that "they hate us because we are perfect." For instance, Santorum declared that Americans were attacked "because we have a civilization that is antithetical to the civilization of the jihadists. And they want to kill us because of who we are and what we stand for."

Those may be comforting thoughts to people unfamiliar with U.S. foreign policy, but they are profoundly misguided. The U.S. embassy in Tehran was not occupied because the Iranian people were shocked that American women went about life without a veil. Rather, there was deep-seated animosity toward Washington for having help engineer the coup that brought the Shah to power in 1953 and consistently supported his repressive government thereafter.

The U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks were not attacked in Lebanon in 1983 because Islamic extremists were angry about America's First Amendment freedoms. American facilities were attacked because Washington placed U.S. forces in the middle of a civil war. The USS New Jersey sat offshore and bombarded Muslim villages. President Ronald Reagan had the good sense to respond by getting out, rather than launch a full-scale invasion and attempt to remake Lebanon in America's image.

The Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia was not attacked because Islamic fundamentalists were horrified by American MTV. The U.S. stationed troops in the brutally repressive kingdom to support the Saudi monarchy. Even Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz admitted that the U.S. military presence on Saudi soil was a grievance that animated Osama bin Laden.

Today Washington claims the inherent, absolute, and unreviewable right to kill other peoples. When then-UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright was challenged over the human cost of Iraqi sanctions, she answered "We think the price is worth it." Unfortunately, other peoples are prepared to respond in kind, including against American civilians. Any sensible foreign policy must honestly consider costs as well as benefits.

Paul's willingness to rethink U.S. foreign policy means he is the only candidate to propose a realistic military budget, one that supports the "common defense" of America, not the rest of the world. The other GOP candidates decry nonexistent spending cuts. Military outlays under President Obama are higher than under President Bush. Only in Washington is slowing the rate of increased called a "cut."

In real terms U.S. military outlays have doubled over the last decade. America today spends more in real terms than it did during the Cold War, Korean War, or Vietnam War. Washington accounts for roughly half the globe's military outlays, while allied with every major industrialized state other than China and Russia. America's closest competitor is China, yet Washington alone spends several times as much on the military as Beijing, and many U.S. friends in Asia are arming against China.

This isn't all. Most of the GOP contenders--again other than Paul and in this case Huntsman--endorse torture. For all of their talk about American exceptionalism, the Republicans see the U.S. as a beleaguered, virtually helpless giant, which must sacrifice its very being to survive. This depressing picture is unworthy of America. This may be why service members (at least who have contributed to candidates) have overwhelmingly backed Paul, one of only two veterans in the race.

The response to Ron Paul's foreign policy views raises the question: Can the Republican Party any longer be taken seriously on national security issues? Over the last decade the GOP has needlessly sacrificed Americans' lives, wasted Americans' wealth, overextended America's military, violated Americans' liberties, and trashed America's reputation. As a result, we are less prosperous, free, and secure. If the Republican Party refuses to learn from Rep. Paul, it does not deserve the public's trust.

The Causes of Terrorism and What to do about it (draft)

True or False:

1. Terrorism is caused by cultural differences.
2. Terrorism is caused by political unrest.

Answers
1. F
2. T

Cultural differences are not the primary reason terrorists attack. It is not the primary reason their attacks engender sympathy from many around the globe, including some of the 1.2 billion Muslims.

According to the CIA, terrorism is caused by political disputes, such as instability in Afghanistan, unhappiness with Saudi rulers (who we support) and the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is what is causing radical islamist militants to attack, according to the CIA. (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1029-01.htm)

A recent study by the Pakistan Link newspaper showed the reasons for Islamic militancy as a complicated mix of the following: the incompetence and corruption of modernist Muslim leaders from Egypt to Pakistan to Southeast Asia; the widening gap between a crooked elite and the rest of the population; the absence of decent schools, economic opportunities and social welfare programs; and the failure of modernist leaders to douse burning regional conflicts such as Chechnya, Kashmir and Palestine.

Yes, there are cultural differences between the US and most Islamic countries. And some extremist groups use this as an additional reason to engage in international guerrilla attacks.
But the cultural aspect is an add-on. Its the window dressing. Whether its Al-Qaeda, Hamas, the Basques, or the IRA, these groups feel as if their back is against the wall politically, not culturally. But even if they acted for nonsensical reasons, their organizations would wilt and die without public sympathy and support. This public sympathy and support is also definitely caused by the perception of political injustice. The public viewpoints of the majority of people in countries where Islamic militantcy originates is not a secret. All politics are local. International groups and countries that have different opinions than leaders in the US often have le and logical reasons. Leaders in the US would rather portray international groups as crazy lunatics than address the legitimate concerns of international groups. This strategy puts all US citizens as risk by keeping the american public misinformed, misled, and ready for conflict.

Our own blind propaganda and inaccuracies become easy fodder for anti-american groups to recruit new members and blame their problems on the US. Often, however, the US needs no help to become unpopular. A Pakistani Link (newspaper) questionnaires showed that Muslims worldwide viewed Islamophobia in the West as the No. 1 threat they faced; not the number one foreign threat, the number one threat. "Many Muslims told (the newspaper) that the Western media depicts them as terrorists or likens them to Nazis". Such widespread perceptions let extremists argue that Islamis people must defend itself against invading Western governments. Most of the world's Muslims care much more about the 40-year old Israeli-Palestinian occupation-snafu than they did about the Iraq war. The Iraq war had a hint of justice to it, the Palestinians situation does not.

Neocons and others like to explain the motives of international groups and countries falsely for the following reasons:

1. Making false claims about terrorist motives avoids culpability for US involved political instability. Most US Presidents and Congressmen carefully adhere to the status quo for fear of being attacked (by lobbyists, the press, and other politicians; after all there no alternative constituency). To suggest that the US has done something that might have caused an attack is "anti-American", a charge that is rather silly when you think about it; the US constantly has our hands manipulating all sorts of offshore nation's issues, frequently in outlandishly aggressive ways, creating blow back and making people abroad legitimately upset.

2. Making false claims about terrorist motives allows policy makers to scare people into giving them a blank check to engage in fuzzy foreign policy and to disengage from the critical foreign policy issues; in this regard the more confused people are the better.

3. Reasoning that terrorism is caused by cultural differences automatically leads to the conclusion that nothing can be done about it (other than to engage in hot and cold warfare).

Knowing that terrorism is caused by large groups of disenfranchised and politically oppressed persons, and public sympathy towards them, is a starting point to resolving this problem. Although making everyone in the world happy is not an achievable or desirable goal, we have to recognize that the government of the 280-million persons who reside in the US is at odds with the governments of the remaining 6-billion persons on the planet on many issues related to terrorism. On the Israeli-Palestinian issue, for example, there is no other county, other than Israel and a tiny pacific island nation, that sides with us. Not even Britain or Canada share our view that Israel should be allowed to continue their military occupation of the 6-million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza that has lasted for 40 years. This is just one of many foreign policy issues that the US is at odds with the world consensus.

The endurance of representative governments is due to their dynamic, flexible, and changeable nature. This is the reason that the US government is the oldest government in the world (correct me if I'm wrong). Governments that do not reflect the will of the people, that are not representative, will eventually be overthrown or outvoted. The US is a victim of terrorism because we are affecting the internal policies in foreign nations and the people in those counties have zero say on these policies, and it is perceived that our policies are detrimental and imposed. Our policies are unpopular in the countries that we affect, yet the citizens have no say in the policies creation or outcome: Hence, the US is perceived and, in some respect, is a de facto tyrant and corrupt leader in the international countries affected by the US, which is a great number of countries.

We are best friends with the Saudi leaders that are rich on a level with Bill Gates, yet most Saudis are extremely poor. We are helping to keep the Saudi leaders in power. We sell them weapons, we buy their oil. We build their oil processing equipment.

We are best friends with the Israelis. We sell them weapons. We pretend to mediate the Israeli Palestinian conflict, yet the Palestinians have been an a military occupation, a virtual military prison for 40 years. Six million Palestinians live in UN built refugee camps, slums, while the Israelis defy 40-year old UN mandates to end the occupation and return the illegally obtained land to the Palestinians. The US facilitates and supports this violation of international law. The US is to blame for the ongoing tragic plight of 6 million Palestinians that is occurring on a daily basis before the eyes of the globes 6 billion residents who are all appalled and in some way violated.

The list goes on and on. The US seems to have its hands in every Muslim country. The US seems to be manipulating and exploiting these counties resources for its own gain. We have an international PR problem that is creating more problems than our mettling will solve.

The informal authority to govern must be evaluated in each of the counties where we have foreign policy activities. If we partner with host governments in countries where great injustice in occurring, we should assume that we will be attacked by groups that oppose those governments. And, since the US is an open society, we should assume that we will be attacked first because we are an easier target.

Much of the time, terrorism is a protest or defacto attempt at government overthrow with strong to dubious public support (depending on the instance). If a terrorist attack has little or no public support, then the action is deemed a purely criminal act, even within the terrorist group's home nation.

The greater the public support is for a political goal, the greater the legitimacy of the terrorist act is and the easier it is for terrorist to obtain resources. Also, the closer a terrorist actions are linked to fighting for political reform in their home country, the more legitimate their cause is. Many so called "terrorists" are actually persons operating within their own country against an oppressive government. Under this definition of terrorist, all freedom fighters, including the performers of the American revolution, are deemed "terrorists". Foreign terrorists attack the US and our friends and allies because our friends are oppressive governments and we aid them. Again, we are now getting to the causes of terrorism.

Solutions:

-Win the hearts and minds of disenfranchised and politically oppressed groups in these country's; in a sense take away the terrorist's political platform.

- Reduce the US's exposure to and with foreign governments with dubious civil rights practices, especially those with large scale dubious civil rights practices, i.e. Israel.

- Reduce the US's exposure to foreign international conflicts, i.e. stop acting as the worlds policeman. Yes we are still doing this - The Afghanistan conflict is really a proxy war between India and Pakistan (we're fighting on India's side even though India's not doing any fighting).

- Tone down the rhetoric. Suggesting the USA should stomp out terrorism may get US officials elected, it also gets us more terrorism when translated into unwise, uninformed, dogmatic and knee-jerk policies.

- Publish an annual report with a list of how and to what extent the USA is pissing off people in foreign countries due to specific causes. The american public should be aware of the effects of our foreign policy and military initiatives, ex how do drone strikes in Afghanistan effect foreign public opinion? Perhaps drone strike are a good idea. But the public has a right to know who we are pissing off each day.

Historically, the US has almost never practiced politics in a positive way in the Mideast. Our politicians seem to use the soviet era model of continually trashing foreign governments to gain domestic political support; while the foreign population in the past ignorant due to media controls. However, today there are no longer any media blackout sections in the world. When US politicians continually trash foreign governments and groups, their words are heard and have a counter productive effect.

Our policies, however, are at issue, and here too we adhere to a cold war mindset. We use cold war tactics to fight governments we don't like with the rational that these tactics will cause change. But this strategy has a counter effect; the governments in these country's achieve greater pubic support and legitimacy by standing up to the unpopular west. Bottom line; we have a PR problem in the Mideast that is irrefutable and is a root cause for terrorism because it fosters the public sympathy required for terrorists to operate.

Keenness is Kindness

Thursday, November 8, 2007

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Thursday, July 19, 2007

US foriegn policy overextended / The causes of Terrorism

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