A Response to a Post Blaming Israel for the Iraq Debacle

Background: The original post was by a person arguing that Bus was motivated by oil, esp, by the big companies. Then, there was a counter post claiming that Bush was motivated by suport for Israel. The second poster went on to accuse Israel of being corrupt, illegal, and so on.

I agree that Bush, while naive, illiterate, ill informed, and ill advised id not simply a tool of the big oil companies. I suspect, moreover, that those companies would have been all to happy with a rapprochement with Saddam rather than his deposition.

BUT, you go to an equally absurd extreme by blaming this disaster on us ... the Jews or Zionists .. whatever term you want to use.

First, calling Israel names is bigoted. Israel is a small country, in a tough place, trying hard to survive. Of course it deserves criticism, but calling it criminal, corrupt, etc is just nuts .. espe. when you look at the countries it stands against. If you can find a country more criminal, more corrupt, then Syria I will give you three points but it would take a lot to find good things to say about Saudi Arabia. So, you are correct, the interests of big oil and the interests of Israel do NOT overlap .. other perhaps than in the befuddled mind of our dear leader.

As a Jew, I am frightened of people like you. Israel is a refuge for us, one possible answer to the two millenia of of oppression by Christian and Islamic societies. If it fails, I suspect we will die as a people, Hitler, Torquemad, Pious IX, the KKK, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Iranian President, all these bigots will win and 3000 years of a very special history will have been destroyed.

I say this while also feeling that we have real responsibility for Bush's screw up. The Neocons may have a majority of Jews and certainly we are prominent in the top ranks of those who made this horrid decision.

The challenge to Jewish survival is not just from Islam but from our choices of allies. Israel, for example, made the horrid choice of siding with the apartheid regime of S. Africa. Only a nation faced with obliteration would ever make such a choice and it has yet to be learned whether the reward for that alliance,some say this was the source of Israel's atomic bomb, was worth it. Now e .. or our leaders .. chose to ally themselves with the Bushies .. a group of naive believers in the Chrsitian good of the world. They, the Bushies, believe that their fight is so good, so inevitable that all advice form "experts," military or political could be ignored. They even sent in missionaries with the invading force! We chose to support Bush and that may be a fatal error.

All this said, the challenge is not just to OUR survival. Much of what is said about the danger os Islamo-fascism is quite real. Saudi Arabia is like an overgrown tomato, already rotting. The potential evil of a Wahaabi regime that is more extreme than Iran's Shia regime is very real. Atomic bombs, Shariay, and oil .. are a dangerous mix for the whole world.

IMO, there is only one viable answer. The West/democratic part of the world needs to replace the US as a cop with some new, bigger alliance. Europe, the US, India, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Australia and part sof South America have a great deal of self interest in working with China and even the former Soviet Union in creating a ... new world order. Bush could have led such a movement post 9/11. He could have taken time, pursued confinement vs. invasion as alternatives and built the allinace needed to achieve pacification if invasion were the outcome. he did not do that. he wasted his presidency, huge amount of American wealth, and the possible piece of the world in pursuit of a naive, amateurish view of the world.

Finally, and this is the hardest part, I am NOT convinced Israel can now survive. Our alliance with the Christian right may have doomed Israel. There is, IMO, one barely possible alternative. We .. the Jews ... have a natural affinity for the Muslims. In a choose up between Islam and Christianity, the ease of the true strict monotheisms being allies is clear and historic. We also have another allie. Our times of great success in the world, post exile, have included two enlightenments .. Andalusia and later Europe. While Christianity treated us horrible, the enlightenment .. a child of Christinaity .. has been the time of great growth in our culture.
Islam may be, I emphasize maybe, finally in a time where it can enter the enlightenment. A Muslim enlightenment would be different than Europe's but it might be something we and our semitic brothers could join in together.

Call it a dream.
--
Stephen M Schwartz
SeattleJew.blogspot.com