The US, UN & Iraq III

Setanta,
Your original statement made no reference to the Palestinians - only to "real pressure on Israel". I believe giving Israel (and France and the UK) a summary directive, to immediately get their military forces out of Egypt after their sudden attack in 1956, counts as real pressure as do our actions to get the IDF out of Lebanon under Reagan. In the latter the military confrontation was real and the pressure was severe and immediate - my knowledge of it is personal as I was flying air cover from a carrier in the Eastern Med.

You also exaggerate Carter's actions. The real catalyst was Sadat who cast off the Soviet military support, threw his fate in with the West and boldly traveled to Israel - all with no particular help from Jimmy Carter.

This was not up to your usual standard of historical accuracy.

George,

Do you agree with me in that the Suez pressure was the greatest amount of pressure exerted on Isreal by the US?

Well the IDF crossed the Saini and entered Egypt (in French Uniforms, by the way). It was part of an organized UK/France?Israel response to Nasser's announced intent to seize and operate the Suez canal (which Britain stole from Egypt in one of the more interesting financial/political capers of the 19th century.). Eisenhower gave them all just a week to get out (contemporaneously the Soviets were invading Hungary to crush the revolution there.).

I would call that real pressure.

Well, you are correct that i did not qualify my statement about pressure on Israel to come to a settlement on the Palestinian homeland issue--so you have my mea maxima culpa on that. However, for whatever Sadat may have been willing to offer, it required pressure from Carter to get the Israelis to give up the Sainai--i disagree that Sadat deserves the credit and Carter none. But, for sake of your argument, i will posit that this is the case. Reagan's administration still failed to follow up the advantage, and our policy, if it deserves the name, in Lebanon was a distraction from what ought to have been the policy direction of every administration after Eisenhower, and that is to have pressured the Israelis to come to terms with the Palestinian issue. Reagan's intervention in Beirut was a response to Syrian occupation of the Bekkah valley, and i don't accept the argument that his administration had in mind anything regarding Israel, other than to get the Israelis to stop f*****g up his moves against Syria.

I recall very vividly the reaction to the 1967 war in Washington, D.C. (I lived in Virginia, and was frequently in the city for various reaons, most recreational, not a few illegal.) The jokes were predictable ("How do you tell an Egyptian tank?" "It has back-up lights!") and the prevailing mood was jubilation at how the American client state had kicked Arab ass. As a nation, we have only very slowly come to a realization of the profound consequences of an unexamined policy of support for Israel, and i blame very administration from Truman onward for getting us into this bind, or for failing to do anything useful about it. If you don't want to credit Carter for anything here, that's fine with me--i don't have a dog in that fight. It remains the only adminstration in which substantial progress was made toward a resolution of this problem.

If I remember correctly Ike even threatened to let the Soviets bomb Isreal "to kingdom come".

It certainly was real pressure and is my favorite example to people who say the US is always onesided in the mideast.

Setanta,

No mea culpa required. I respect your knowledge and understanding of history and challenge only your assertion that ONLY Jimmy Carter took firm steps to both limit Israel's excesses and contribute to peace with and justice for the Palestinians. I didn't mean to infer that Carter deserves no credit, indeed as you correctly assert he was a key player in the breakthrough peace with Egypt. I do believe the one who put the most at risk was Sadat, and that while the same outcome may have resulted without either Begin or Carter, it would not have occurred without Sadat.

Coming home from work today I heard Ariel Sharon's remarks at the end of the Aqaba Summit. He announced the immediate Israeli withdrawl from certain "illegal" settlements and outposts in the West Bank, and, far more significantly, Israel's commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state "with contiguous borders". This is in keeping with the roadmap Bush has put forward, and represents the most significant Israeli concession since the 1967 war.

Indeed this was the issue that destroyed the Clinton brokered deal between Barak and Arafat. Then the Palestinians were offered less than 45% of the territory of the West Bank, broken up into almost thirty isolated areas each completely surrounded by Israeli territory, and without air or water rights. The deal was cynically and deceptively described as involving 90% of the west Bank territory when in fact that meant 90% of what Israel considered as negotiable. There was no possibility of the development of a coherent economic or social structure in such a Palestinian "state" which more resembled the Bantustands of Aparteit South Africa, and no one should have been surprised that the deal was rejected.

I believe the present breakthrough is a directly traceable result of our decapitation of the Iraqi regime While it is still too early to be sure, this strongly suggests that the Bush administration does indeed have a coherent strategy in mind, one that seriously addresses the core long-standing security and justice issues in a very troubled part of the world and one that ,unresolved, will threaten us all.

Ike did that? Whew! c.i.

Ike did more than that, he sent a fleet and Marines to the Eastern Med, just on the chance that anyone had deluded themselves in to believing that his stance was a bluff.

It is also interesting to note that before Suez, France was Israel's principal ally and the principal - indeed almost the only - supplier of military equipment and tactical aircraft to Israel. Afterwards that slowly changed.

The UK and France reacted differently to Suez. The UK withdrew its military forces east of Suez and aligned its strategic policy more closely with the U.S. France chose the opposite course. A few years later under DeGaulle France withdrew from the NATO military alliance, kicked the NATO headquarters out of Paris and a very large NATO military presence out of France, and developed an independent nuclear deterrent, which they very pointedly refused to coordinate with those of the UK and the U.S. Under Chirac they continued nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere decades after the USSR and the U.S. renounced it.

hasn't sent funding to bin Laden in the past ten years.

American-made: no parts manufactured or assembled outside the fifty states.




Joe

Exactly which American-made cars are totally manufactured and assembled in the US - by American workers? c.i.

Edsel

Hell, you'd have a difficult time finding a Edsel in the US - never mind Saudi Arabia! c.i.

x x x

Um note to self for next time:

Leave out any reference to cars. too distracting.

hoyt clagwell?

hoyt clagwell? Wasn't he a cowboy singer?

My point was, and maybe someone can say differently, there aren't any Arab countries without ties to Al Queda..... Yes/No? So what are we going to do about the Phillipine problem and the Indonesian problem?
and the Sudan and ...... well, you get it?

First find a president with an iq of over 40 .....
I read somewhere that part of a deal cut wih the saudi's was withdrawal of us troops based in saudi to placate ubl and others ......

hoyt suffered a fatal guitar accident in 64 I think.

Joe, that was an interesting article in the Atlantic. Did you read it? His book will be published this month.

This doesn't pass the laugh test. Now that we are in Iraq we don't need Saudi Arabia. Now we can put real heat on them to deal with the contradictions between their wealth and auticracy and their support of Wahabbi fanaticism.

The evidence suggests the president is a good deal smarter and more insightful than most of his critics.