This opinion piece by a former editor of the Toronto Star's editorial page ties it all together nicely - - the bastards can't get away with that shit any more. The writing's on the wall.
Harper looking at obsolete vision of world [Harper is Stephen Harper, the dip-shit Conservative Prime Minister of Canada, elected through a fluke because of financial scandal involving our former Liberal government]
Nov. 30, 2006. 01:00 AM
HAROON SIDDIQUI
As Stephen Harper takes satisfaction in the NATO decision to free up a few more troops for deployment in southern Afghanistan, Canada seems oblivious to a major reassessment underway in Washington and elsewhere away from the military and cultural confrontations with the Muslim world.
The Pope is making amends in Turkey, dropping his long-standing opposition to its entry into the European Union.
George W. Bush is in Jordan to try and find a political way out of Iraq, where the U.S. military engagement has now lasted longer than it did inWorld War II.
His host in Amman, King Abdullah, wants him to help avert a potential civil war in Lebanon, as well as the humanitarian crisis in the Israeli Occupied Territories. The same message was conveyed to Dick Cheney Saturday by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who said the Arab-Israeli dispute is "the core issue" in the Middle East.
On all three fronts, Washington needs the help of Syria and Iran — something the Iraqi government already understands. Baghdad has just normalized relations with Damascus after a 24-year break, and has been paying heed to Tehran.
All this is the exact opposite of what the Bush neo-cons had in mind in launching their war of choice on Iraq. A major oil producer and developed Arab state would be in American hands.
Arabs, Palestinians in particular, would be more amenable to American and Israeli dictates, as would Iran and Syria, the patrons of Hezbollah, Hamas and other anti-Israel militias.
Lebanon, too, now represents the opposite of what Israel had envisaged in invading and pulverizing it last summer. The pro-Western Siniora government is teetering, pushed by the pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which is also said to be training Shiite militias in Iraq.
It is these failed American-Israeli policies that Harper has committed Canada to. While he took pride in boarding Bush's sinking ship, the president is being counselled to bail out, and quickly.
A bipartisan Congressional commission, co-chaired by Jim Baker, the veteran diplomat and Republican troubleshooter, is likely to recommend that Bush enlist regional help in managing the crises roiling the Middle East.
Jimmy Carter has already called for the same.
In interviews for his latest book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, the former president is also rejecting the accepted wisdom (endorsed by Harper as well as the main Liberal leadership candidates) that it's the Palestinians — Hamas, in particular — who are to blame for the lack of progress.
"There hasn't been one day of substantive peace negotiations in the last six years," Carter said in one interview. "You can't say the election of Hamas interferes with the peace efforts, because no peace effort has been going on."
He noted that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestine interlocutor favoured by both Israel and the U.S., was not called upon to negotiate when he was prime minister nor has he been since being elected president.
"The oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories is horrendous," Carter said. "It is one of the worst cases of oppression that I know of now in the world.
"The Palestinians' land has been taken away from them. They now have an encapsulating or an imprisonment wall being built around what's left of the little tiny part of the holy land that is in the West Bank. Gaza is surrounded by a high wall. There's only two openings in it, one into Israel, which is mostly closed, the other into Egypt. The people there are encapsulated. And the deprivation of basic human rights among the Palestinians is really horrendous."
In another interview, Carter said:
"A minority of Israelis are perpetrating apartheid on the Palestinian people. It's not based on race. It's not a racist inclination. It is a desire for Palestinian land. Contrary to the United Nations resolutions, contrary to the official policy of the U.S., contrary to the Quartet's so-called road map, contrary to a majority of Israeli people's opinion, this occupation and confiscation and colonization of land in the West Bank is the prime cause of the continuation of violence."
Meanwhile, the United Church of Canada is urging Harper to condemn the killing of almost 500 Palestinian civilians since July, and to call for an end to the siege of Gaza. And Italy, Spain and France last week urged a ceasefire and the resumption of Arab-Israeli talks.
The ceasefire has since come about and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has wisely signalled his willingness to negotiate.
To summarize: A consensus is emerging that:
The Israelis cannot beat the Palestinians into abject surrender, nor stop the Iranians and Syrians from aiding Hamas and others.
The U.S. does not have enough troops to fix Iraq, and that even if it did, the time is well past a military solution.
NATO cannot defeat the Taliban by force alone, as the United Nations top official in Afghanistan said recently and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf had concluded earlier.
The fragile nature of Lebanon requires a regional consensus.
The only way forward to a new world order is to abandon the recklessness of the last five years, which has caused much havoc and harmed Israeli and American interests. Harper, and hence Canada, would be ill-served by an ideological loyalty to a vision of the world that may already be obsolete.
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Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiq@thestar.ca.
