Alienating Allies

Isn't that the way it is? You take your family, your friends, those who see eye to eye with you, share your values, click into your goals because they're theirs too, kind of for granted. They're there, after all, beside you in thought and intent. So that you rely on the fact that their support is there, and there's no need to go out of your way to acknowledge it unduly. You neglect to value their status in the larger sphere of what matters. It's the human way. We look outside of ourselves toward those who have little in common with us, and make attempts to draw them into our inner circle.

Not all of us, certainly not most of society. We're talking here about governments. Governments representing, by and large, the best interests of their own singular/political longevity, their countries' interests, and what the voting public of their nation largely insists upon. More or less. And here's the thing: since President Barack Obama entered the White House and declared a new day dawning for the United States, the world's sole superpower upon whom much depends (while contestants are breathing hot and heavy behind) has seen fir to abandon friends and woo adversaries.

And has it worked? Major placatory addresses to the Muslim world, assuring them that Islam is respected in the West - and no one holds any Muslim government to account for the intolerable actions of a few demented fanatical jihadists, and certainly not Islam itself - has failed to serve the purpose of appeasement. There was a little blip, but it has fizzled out. America is still a very bad place because its citizens hold Islam responsible for 9-11, and its irreverent press often say very bad things like "Islamist terror", and "suicide jihadists", things like that.

Friendships aren't exactly expendable, but they're hugely flexible; they can be laid aside when they are inconvenient, and then just picked up again when it becomes, once again, convenient. Anything that doesn't fit into the very direct schedule of advancing the interests of the United States in a part of the world where terror has been exported to vulnerably-civilized countries of the world, and specifically the United States, can be shunted aside. Great Britain has been side-lined, so has India, as has been Israel, and even little Honduras.

While Syria has been approached, and Saudi Arabia stroked, Pakistan brought on board, and even yet everything seems to be kind of falling apart. Let's take Israel, historically dependent on the patient arbitration and support, both mentoring and economic, political and military-technological of the United States. Since the inception of the Jewish State one U.S. president after the other has made an attempt to broker peace between Israel and the Muslim world. Complicated by oil interests and moral imperatives.

A very vibrant dunce cap was lately placed on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's head, as he was made to sit in a corner without dinner, although President Barack Obama did inform the Jewish leader that "I'm still around. Let me know if there is anything new." Left to stew over the dozen+ demands (to 'restore confidence') placed in his hand for his mute consideration and eventual acceptance, sans dinner, or a shared news conference, clearly persona-non-grata. Not a generally popular move by President Obama within his own government; certainly not appreciated in Israel.

Imperial displeasure at the saucy display of independence from a satrapy-state whose customary measure is one of obeisance to the orders of its superior. Mr. Obama was accused by representatives within his country of the Jewish community who voted hugely for him to attain the White House (roughly 78%) of abandoning Israel, of treating its leader like a Third World dictator in bad odour. Wrong: Third World dictators have been treated with courtesy by this administration; allies whom the administration fears acts in a manner that threatens American interests are treated like Third World dictators.

And, pragmatically, can any American administration be faulted for insisting that its allies toe the line respecting American interests? Hardly. Is it questionable for an American president to tell a foreign counterpart that it is incumbent on him to make sacrifices to aid the fortunes of a country that has always aided it? Well, perspective is interesting. The kinds of sacrifices being forced on Israel, to respect a Saudi-led initiative to bring about a state of peace between Israel and the Palestinians could lead to Israel's demise. The U.S. faces nothing quite so dire.

"Bit by bit, Israel is becoming less of a strategic asset for America." Meir Dagan, Mossad chief.

So, there it is. One's own interests must always trump the interests of others. A simple fact of life, of politics, reflecting a nation's self-interests. And in this instance the United States, and most particularly this Obama administration has fallen into the trap of believing, as the Arab countries wish him to, that without a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, there can be no stopping of the Islamist trend to violent jihad; that one causes the other. While nothing could be further from reality.

The Arab world constructed the situation between the Jewish State and the Palestinians. Neither Jordan nor Lebanon nor Egypt, nor any other Arab country that accepted Palestinian refugees would agree to integrating the refugees into their countries, accepting them as citizens with full rights as such. Maintaining them as refugees whose well-being was paid for through international funding through the UN's UNRWA was the point, a festering sore of humiliated and neglected people, thrown off land rightfully theirs.

A workable peace leading to a two-state solution could have been achieved long ago. The PLO was urged to reject any such deal, despite a shared Nobel Prize, and Yasser Arafat went on to foment the first Intifada, and matters progressed downward from there. Palestinian terrorists struck at Israel, at its population, at Jews outside Israel with impunity; they were terrorists, not government agencies. The mastermind behind the Munich Olympics massacre that caused the death of 11 Israeli athletes, Abu Dauod, has just died of natural causes, age 73.

He lived long after the deaths of eleven Israelis competing at the Olympic Games in 1972, never brought to justice, although most of the active terrorists who took part in the Munch massacre, did see rough justice matching the violence they visited upon Israeli citizens abroad. What is notable here, is that the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has now publicly eulogized this terror-mastermind. "He is missed. He was one of the leading figures of Fatah and spent his life in resistance and sincere work as well as physical sacrifice for his people's just causes."

What is equally notable is that on a very recent trip to Washington where Mahmoud Abbas addressed American Jewish leaders, he vowed he would work to halt the incitement of violence against Jews. Dauod had revealed that it was Abbas himself who had provided the funding to Black September to carry out the Munich massacre. And while Black September claimed to have received its orders from Fatah, Fatah strenuously denies involvement. Daoud along with one other member of the assassins survived. And four years before his death he stated he had no regrets: "You can only dream that I would apologize."

The Arab Muslim states, and the Persian Muslim state in the Middle East have always been fractious, inter-tribal warfare has prevailed, denunciations, accusations, threats, assaults have always existed. In Middle Eastern countries ruled by dictators, theocratic totalitarians, oil sheikdoms, and royal heads of state where the population has been exploited and human rights a wild dream of the oppressed, resistance against the rulers by clandestine and violent groups has arisen.

Osama bin Laden began his career in violent opposition to the House of Saud. The Muslim Brotherhood remains a real and direct threat to the current order in the Middle East. They assassinated Anwar Al-Sadat for signing a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. As much as they all detest Israel, they hate one another virulently. If peace resulted finally between Israel and the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs, there would be no guarantee that violent unrest would not continue, and that the breeding and recruitment of vicious jihadis would not continue their predatory terror against democratic countries of the West.

Sunni and Shia Muslims would continue to exercise their historical violent antipathy toward one another. Tribal and sectarian violent spasms of mass murder would continue. States would go on encouraging, arming, supporting and training terror groups with the intention of threatening other states in the Middle East. It is a delusion to think otherwise. Israel is a relatively minor irritant, although it represents one that brings the dissidents together in a harmony of vicious assent.

It's back to the drawing board for President Barack Obama. He and his administration need to re-assess their assumptions and associative thoughts. Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will do nothing to solve the sources of Muslim extremism. Answers to that ongoing dilemma lie in Koranic interpretations by the mullahs, imams, ayatollahs and academics in the world of Islam; in the mode of authoritarian-to-dictatorial governance, in the lack of hope of the people.

And these issues are not those readily solvable by any government outside the Middle East.