Articles
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2004, pages 59-61
Other People’s Mail
Some letters by or to other people are as informative for our readers as anything we might write ourselves.
Constitutional War
To the San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 2004.Because we’re proposing constitutional amendments, I’d like to suggest one preventing the U.S. military from ever again being ordered by a president to invade a sovereign state unless a formal declaration of war is first acquired from Congress. Not a resolution euphemistically “authorizing force,” not a murmured allocation of the money necessary to fund an undeclared war, but an unambiguous declaration of war.
Such an amendment would, far more than any other constitutional amendments being proposed, do much to codify and protect America’s highest ideals and values.
Lord knows we need to do something to restore the honor and integrity America has lost over the past three years.
Riley B. VanDyke, San Francisco, CA
Ill-Planned Occupation Leads To Carnage in Iraq
To the Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2004.Re “Death Toll in Twin Strikes on Iraqi Shiites Rises to 143,” March 3: Isn’t it ironic? Hundreds of our fine military people have been killed and thousands maimed since our misleaders sent them to invade Iraq to save the world from Saddam Hussain. The result? More people will be killed and maimed than Hussain could have brought about. And the cheap oil is less safe than it was before. Aren’t we proud?
Margaret Lawrence, San Diego, CA
Iraq Brewing Up Disaster for Kurds
To The Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2004.Re “The U.S. Is Brewing Up a Disaster for the Kurds,” Feb. 29: A federal system based on ethnicity or religious sect will only destabilize and divide Iraq into three regions: Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite. The present administrative structure of Iraq should be upheld, under which it is divided into 18 units. Elected representatives in a national Iraqi government should represent each unit.
Rashad Aldabbagh, Anaheim, CA
Bush and Kerry’s Vietnam Days
To Newsweek, March 8, 2004.If President Bush had fought in Vietnam the way Senator Kerry did, I don’t believe Bush would have chosen to take America into war in Iraq so readily. Starting a war would be the last option for someone who had experienced the horrors of live battle. If I were the parent of a child in the military, I would want a commander in chief who would put our troops in harm’s way only as a last resort. But, even better, I prefer one who goes the second mile and beyond in waging peace.
Paul L. Whiteley Sr., Louisville, KY
Deaths Underreported
To Lexington Herald, Feb. 18, 2004.A popular, pervasive president, as hard to rein in as a wild Texas mustang, overrode all opposition and began on the road to Baghdad with a handpicked “coalition of the willing.”
Thanks to embedded reporters, we followed the action as our troops fought their way into the capital of Iraq. Statues of Saddam Hussain were toppled; Iraqis danced in the streets. In a hastily procured flight suit, President Bush flew to an aircraft carrier to proclaim victory.
That premature proclamation left us still in the middle of a bloody war, with no end in sight. More than 525 young soldiers have lost their lives, with thousands more wounded.
It bothers me that those soldiers gave their lives believing the false, misleading premise that America was in imminent danger from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
But where are the reporters when a plane arrives home with another load of flag-draped coffins? Why no embedded reporters covering military hospitals where our maimed lie in pain, many of them without limbs, because of this war? Why the secrecy?
Could it be that the sight of our dead and wounded soldiers, the horrors of war might disturb us, stir up the same kind of dissent that brought about the end of the Vietnam War?
We have all been strangely silent for far too long.
Mary Byrd, Nicholasville, KY
Bush’s Hunt for Bin Laden
To The Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2004.Apparently the U.S. is intensifying the hunt for Osama bin Laden in order to try to capture him before the election. I have one question: Why was an intense hunt not started immediately after 9/11, instead of completely devastating two countries, killing over 540 of our troops, injuring thousands more and killing many thousands of people, mainly children, in these countries? Or was the move into Afghanistan purely to enable the oil pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan—and the detour into Iraq to benefit Halliburton, etc., and to grab the oil?
Bin Laden seems to have been on the back burner until the prospect of the re-election arose. What happened to the honor and integrity that our “fearless” leader was going to restore to our country?
Walter Maloney, Los Angeles, CA
Afghan Job Unfinished
To the Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2004.Re “Afghan Villages Locked in Grip of Taliban Forces,” March 5: Why are we in Iraq without having completed our invasion of Afghanistan? The Taliban has regrouped and is terrorizing the people into submission once again. I think President Bush suffers from attention deficit disorder and is incapable of completing any project. One day he is going to Mars and the next threatening to invade Syria or North Korea.
Mr. President, these are not children’s games, they are lethal confrontations that kill thousands of people and could ultimately destroy our country.
I think you need a long “time out.”
Sara Bell Drescher, Los Angeles, CA
Readers See Both Sides of 9/11 Issue
To the San Francisco Chronicle, March 6, 2004.It is sickeningly typical of our president that he is exploiting the tragedy of Sept. 11 for his own political ends in his new ad campaign. Bush’s cynical attempt to manipulate American voters using images of the burned out World Trade Center is all the more distasteful when viewed in light of his unwillingness to fully cooperate with the 9/11 commission, the independent body that was set up (in spite of Bush’s initial objection) to determine what went wrong with our national-security apparatus in the lead-up to the attacks.
But Bush’s ad campaign should come as no surprise to anyone. For almost 212 years Bush has been exploiting Sept. 11 in order to forward the political agenda the right-wing ideologues in his administration developed well before the attacks: the doctrine of pre-emptive war, reduced civil liberties, the funneling of our resources from social programs and into an increasingly privatized military, to cite only a few examples. I only hope that the people of the United States wake up to Bush’s hypocrisy!
Nancy Colman, Brisbane, CA
Consequences of U.S. Policies
To The Christian Science Monitor, March 8, 2004.Your March 3 article “Is the U.S. safer now?” holds many crucial questions. Besides the much discussed dangers of materials that could be used for weapons coming across our borders, we must look at our policies that may stir antagonism toward our nation, and thus incite terrorism.
Muslim terrorists attacked us on 9/11 and took more than 3,000 lives. Our wars on two Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, have taken more than 10,000 lives; destroyed much of their infrastructure; provoked bedlam in Iraq; and left Afghanistan in a sorry state with warlords rising, drugs returning, and many women still oppressed.
Are our latest wars going to win friends for us and make us safer? Already, U.S. soldiers are attacked routinely in Iraq, and Iraqi citizens are targeted because they are trying to work with our coalition forces. Because of the Bush administration’s policies, the Middle East has seen disaster and increased terrorism, and we are hardly safer.
Jackie Taylor Wattenburg, Melrose, MA
Careless Talk
To The Financial Times, Feb. 1, 2004.You wrongly quoted Dr. David Kay about the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to Syria (News, Jan. 25). On Monday he told The New York Times: “There was no conclusive evidence that Iraq had moved unconventional weapons to Syria. There had been persistent reports from Iraqis saying they or someone they knew had seen cargo being moved across the border, but there is no proof that such movements involved weapons materials.”
Mrs. W. Issa, Press Section, Embassy of the Syrian Arab Republic, London, UK
Calling Doctor Dean
To Gov. Howard Dean, M.D., Feb. 20, 2004.I am very glad that you have pledged to continue to work to dethrone George W. Bush and win support for essential changes in both our domestic and foreign policy. In regard to the latter I have a suggestion—no, it is a plea: Stress, amplify, and promote your statement, made early in the debates, that the United States must have an evenhanded policy in regard to Israel and Palestine.
Except for Kucinich, who had his own stance, most of the other Democratic candidates took up your anti-war position and used it to help them win in the primaries and caucuses. It was you who injected the necessary marrow into the bones of these candidates and of the Democratic Party.
However, more marrow is needed. There are undercurrents of resentment against the United States for 50 years of unevenhandedness in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, which may well become a tidal wave of resentment. You may be ideally suited to speak out on this subject because your wife, who is full of grace, humility and devotion to family and patients, is Jewish. You can hardly be accused by Zionists of anti-Semitism.
Continue to help us “get our country back” and change our foreign policy in order to restore America to its position as an honored leader of the free world. You injected the marrow into those bones once. Please, do it again.
Virginia Hilmy, Silver Spring, MD
Silence Over Deaths
To the San Francisco Chronicle, March 9, 2004.Some 14 Palestinians, including four children, were killed in the Gaza Strip this weekend and neither President Bush nor Democratic candidate John Kerry has uttered a single condemnation of the killing of Palestinian children. It is precisely this Republican and Democratic indifference to the loss of Palestinian life that inspires me and other Arab Americans in this country to get out and vote for independent Ralph Nader in November.
As a Palestinian American, I cannot and will not vote for anyone who continues to look the other way as Palestinian children and civilians are killed by the Israeli occupation forces. That is the only thing I have the power to do. As long as the Democratic Party supports injustice and the continued subjugation of the Palestinian nation, I will not support it. I pray that Kerry speaks out against the murder of innocent civilians—at the very least the murder of children.
Seham Fare, Alameda, CA
Fence and Bombers No Recipe for Peace
To the San Francisco Chronicle, March 10, 2004.What is rarely mentioned about Israel’s occupation wall/fence (“Israeli fence puts ”˜cage’ on villagers,” March 9) and its overall treatment of Palestinians is how much it differs with our own approach in Iraq.
Despite continuing debate over the wisdom of invading Iraq, the United States is now spending tens of billions in taxpayers’ dollars and expending American lives to rebuild the country and to improve the lives of Iraqis by sowing the seeds of democracy and prosperity.
By contrast, Israel has expropriated Palestinian land, siphoned water from West Bank aquifers, laid waste to Palestinian cities, withheld tax receipts collected from Palestinian workers and is now fencing off Palestinians while expanding its own illegal settlements.
Why do we persist in condoning Israeli policies that are so inconsistent with our values and so damaging to our own interests?
Khaled Galal, San Francisco, CA
Does Israel’s Barrier Protect or Punish?
To The New York Times, Feb. 24, 2004.Re: "A Wall as a Weapon,’’ by Noam Chomsky (Op-Ed, Feb. 23): The stark reality is that while Israel continues to build its "security fence,’’ at the same time it partakes in covert attempts at geographical expansion. Yet no one cares to read between the lines when Israel claims that its actions are self-defense mechanisms aimed at protecting Israeli citizens.
In the end, as Mr. Chomsky notes, a solution to the Israel-Palestine problem will be achieved only through American determination and resolve. That determination and resolve will not be found in a Bush administration so closely allied with the Christian right. Only a bold and courageous leader who is not afraid to speak the truth will be able to bring peace to the Middle East. Such a bold leader will probably not emerge any time soon.
Shahid Zaman, Charlottesville, VA
Violence Doesn’t Justify Israel’s Wall
To The Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 27, 2004.Although the text of your Feb. 23 article “Bomb gives Israel case for the wall” was fairly well-balanced, the headline was not.
Not even the Palestinians dispute that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has a right to build a protective barrier along its recognized international borders, which in Israel’s case are the 1967 borders.
The bomb referred to, however, is not relevant to whether or not Israel has a right to build the planned wall that would appreciably deviate from the 1967 border, and in the process would confiscate approximately one-seventh of occupied West Bank territory.
Donald J. Fritz, Tacoma, WA
Israel’s Definition of Citizen
To The New York Times, Feb. 24, 2004.Re: "A Wall as a Weapon,’’ by Noam Chomsky. Much as I admire Mr. Chomsky’s willingness to note the very real plight of the Palestinians, I wish he would also note the Palestinian refugees’ inalienable right of return.
When Mr. Chomsky says that "few would question Israel’s right to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks,” I cannot help but think of the real problem underlying all else—Israel’s definition of citizen.
All Jews are welcome, but no Palestinians are allowed to return. The few Palestinians remaining in Israel proper are constantly harassed by racist land and marriage laws while their cousins in the illegally occupied territories are harassed by Israeli bullets, bombs and bulldozers.
We should be supporting real justice and democracy with full and equal rights for all—not delusions about security.
Anne Selden Annab, Mechanicsburg, PA
Watered Down Rights
To The Washington Post, Feb. 18, 2004.Yakir Plessner [letters, Feb. 13] said that the Palestinian economy uses less water because it is underdeveloped. The fact that Israel has been occupying the West Bank for 37 years and treating the residents as if they were in an apartheid state may have something to do with that underdevelopment.
Edward Wysocki, Bowie, MD
The New Anti-Semitism
To Tikkun, Jan/Feb. 2004.It would be nice if the collective Jews of the world would finally start a public relations campaign to let everyone know there is a difference between a Jew and an Israeli. How many more innocent Jews must die around the world for causes they do not agree with? Punishing Jews for what Israel does is like blaming Mario Cuomo for something the Pope says. What message is sent by blowing up a target that is not responsible for the problem? Might as well blow up a candy store as a synagogue.
Like a majority of American Jews, I don’t support Israel’s agenda and am constantly frustrated by those, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who assume automatically that I do. I am horrified in having my life put at risk because of my race, which has nothing to do with my beliefs. I am further outraged by my fellow Jews who refuse, out of perhaps guilt or fear, to stand up and speak out on this.
Let the Israelis who support terror be at risk for the violence they promote, not my friends and family. Maybe if the Israelis know how alone they stand (except, of course, for their buddies, the fundamentalist Christians) then perhaps there can be some mending, repairing and transformation.
R. Deutsch, Austin, TX
Israelis Raid Ramallah Banks
To Investor’s Business Daily (As submitted).I was shocked and appalled as I read the article entitled “Israelis raid Ramallah Banks” in your Feb. 26, 2004 paper. Israel has no right to enter Palestine and deplete their banks of funds which they claim were deposited there by “guerrillas” from Iran, Syria and Lebanon. And then the Israelis have the audacity to say that they plan on spending the money on humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.
Give me a break. The Israelis will probably spend the money on additional walls around the Palestinian villages. Since when have the Israelis shown any compassion to the Palestinians?
It seems that all of the countries in the Middle East, according to Israeli standards, are militant nations made up of rebels, guerrillas and terrorists. Something is very wrong here. Has Israel allowed U.N. inspectors in to oversee its nuclear weapons program? No. Nor have they signed the nonproliferation agreement. Is Israel occupying other nations? Yes, it is occupying Syria, Jordan and has occupied Egypt and Lebanon along with the Palestinian territory. Has Israel broken any U.N. Resolutions? Yes, hundreds of them. What about the Geneva Accord? Yes. Has Israel abused its minorities? Yes. There is presently a genocide going on there against humanity that should shame the world.
What then determines if a country is a terrorist nation? I guess any country that doesn’t go along with the will of the U.S. and Israel.
Christopher Green, Washington, DC
Where Is Man?
To The Sacramento Bee, Feb. 25, 2004.I have a one-line rebuttal (more or less) to Thomas L. Friedman’s Jan. 25 column, “Bush team can’t ignore Israel’s hegemony”: A pox on both of your houses.
My father was a rabbi, and when the Holocaust was eventually brought to the world’s attention (and conscience) the question was repeatedly raised of, “Where was God?” My father rejoined with, “Where was man?” Friedman states that American policy toward the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is insane. This is not insanity. This is diplomacy. The United States says, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. And meanwhile, the Palestinian children are dying (yes, Friedman, as fast as they are being born) and Israel has become the tormentor, disgracing the triumph of emerging from the ashes. Where is man?
Leah Zeff, Sacramento, CA
Double Standards in the Mideast
To The New York Times, Feb. 27, 2004In his Feb. 25 column, ”˜’Calling the Kettle Black,’’ Nicholas D. Kristof puts his finger on a key obstacle to peace in the Mideast: the perception in Muslim countries that the United States applies a double standard to Israel and its neighbors.
The security fence is an important piece of that double standard, but nuclear weapons may be more important.
We look the other way when it comes to Israel’s nuclear program (at least in public), while elsewhere in the region we take aggressive military and diplomatic steps to prevent development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
This double standard destabilizes the Middle East and undermines the credibility of our efforts to limit these weapons.
Israel is the dominant conventional military force in the region, except for the United States itself. Retention of its nuclear option serves no legitimate strategic objective.
To achieve peace, we must apply a single standard prohibiting any Mideast state from possessing nuclear weapons, with no exceptions.
James Dabney Miller, Washington, DC
“Passion” Debate
To the San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 27, 2004.I was able to attend the first San Francisco showing of “The Passion of the Christ” at the Galaxy on Ash Wednesday. The movie is justly rated R: It is horribly violent. Don’t miss it: The scourging and the crucifixion of Christ were horribly violent.
The fear that Mel Gibson’s film will foster anti-Semitism is as shallow-brained as the fear that all my friends will now turn anti-Italian because the Romans scourged and crucified Jesus.
Fr. Larry N. Lorenzoni, S.D.B., San Francisco, CA
Recognizing Progress in Tunisia
To The Washington Post, March 2, 2004In his Feb. 16 op-ed column “Our Friend the Autocrat,” Neil Hicks used broad strokes to condemn Tunisian President Zine Abidine Ben Ali.
But when looking at Tunisia, we must balance how we judge that country’s pace toward democracy with the accomplishments under the watch of President Ben Ali. Following on the path set by Habib Bourguiba, the father of Tunisia’s independence, Mr. Ben Ali has made Tunisia the most advanced country in the Arab world in terms of socioeconomic gains, an equal role for women, family planning, free education and medical care, high rates of literacy, a transparent banking system and, now, bringing computer and Internet training to the most remote corners of his country. Unlike most of the Arab and developing world, Tunisia has refrained from wasting resources on arms and its military, preferring to invest in its people.
It is both easy and unfair to judge Tunisia solely on its tight control of the press, reluctance to allow political demonstrations and political standards that indeed do need to be relaxed. For Tunisia to have achieved standards unequaled within the Arab world in a mere 48 years of independence, it has had to compromise in its pace of freedoms.
Jerry Sorkin, Wayne, PA
