OUR Mess in the Middle East

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

The Mess WE Made in The Middle East

The Middle East has presented a problem to The United States of America since the time when we participated in establishing a Jewish homeland right in the middle of the enemies of the Jewish people.

While I study history and I understand the idea that many people find that the natural “homeland” of the Jewish people, I cannot help but wonder what the world leaders were thinking. They could not have been thinking that the Israelis would be welcome there. Further, no one could possibly have thought peaceful co-existence would be possible.

So we fast-forward to where the world finds herself today with reference to the Middle East.

Diplomats worked for years to find common ground, of which there was very little, to work with leaders of that entire area. In order to have any chance of influencing them positively, we joined up with some unsavory despots. They really were “the only game in town.”

The strategy worked until our policies became based on our preferred  philosophy rather than realism.

Years were spent either quieting or accommodating many leaders in that area who proved to be “strange bedfellows” to the west or promising Israel everything they might need.

Having said that, many mid-east nations became our “allies” of sorts. We had some chance to influence them; we lowered the voices of hatred; we kept the pot from boiling.

All of this was to our advantage.

All of it was also securing the safety of the State of Israel.

So we negotiated, aided, and I suppose on occasion bribed the leaders of that part of the world: Reza Pahlavi in Iran, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the elder Assad in Syria, Gaddafi in Libya, etc.

Let us not kid ourselves, we did the same thing with the Israelis through “foreign aid,” in the form of money and sophisticated military equipment.

No one asked us to take on the responsibility of protecting Israel while playing nice with the Arab nations. But over time it seems to have become our job.

Then our policy changed.

We decided it was not “pure” for America to offer any help to dictators and despots. This started under President Jimmy Carter. We applied the “American model” to the Middle East.

Not smart from a worldview perspective.

Presidents since then have engaged in very public promotions (some would say arm twisting) seeking peace there. Pictures of Jewish and Arab leaders at The White House or Camp David making nice and shaking hands. It made us feel good. It often got those leaders murdered or ostracized back home.

Never worked.

More recently we supplied arms, air cover, money and encouragement to rebels in many Middle Eastern countries. We did it under the guise of encouraging democracy. We called it the “Arab Spring.”

Didn’t work.

The new leaders were worse than the old one and hated us more vigorously. We did the dirty work for the religious fanatics that would step up and take over after the youthful demonstrators, egged on by democracies, did the heavy lifting of revolution.

Our “need” to interfere in that part of the world has cost us “big time.”  We have lost both human and financial treasure in numbers that are unacceptable to me and hopefully to you.

Let us admit it. We have involved ourselves in nation building.

Our involvement there drove the Muslim people crazy. They responded by attacking us in new and not so subtle ways. Because of the realities in that part of the world the Israeli nation is an armed camp every day, one in which people cannot board buses or go to school or to the grocery without the real possibility they will not return home.

Our Arab “allies” have seen us abandon them, one after another, while we attempt to encourage governments more interested in “democracy.” Accordingly, no nation in the world should assume they could count on us down the road. There is not today any consistency to our foreign policy.

Our commitments are fickle. More often than not they reflect the individual philosophy of the man currently occupying the presidency. We accuse GHW Bush. Then we accuse GW Bush. And now we accuse Barack Obama. Many Americans think each of them had some personal vendetta or desire and that set the policy of America in the Middle East.

When I read about the assassination of our Ambassador in Libya I reached a “point of no return” in my thinking. The next day when I saw we had given $2 billion in aid to Libya and there was no talk of cutting it all off, I went as they say “’round the bend.”

I am only one American but I am taking a stand: we need to get out of The Middle East and let them settle their own problems.

Our aid and our policies have brought only bloodshed, heartache, and no resolution that has made life even marginally safer or better.

If we do not wish to work with despots and dictators and we accept that we gave it a “good try” without success, then lets just move on.

Regretfully, Israel needs to find ways to protect herself if she is to have any long term security. And the Muslim states operating in feverish mode will need to learn how to get along with the rest of the world on their own.

It is not America’s problem.

Readers, if a foreign government in The Middle East made excursions into the elections, governments and the religious philosophies of our nation, we would be beside ourselves with fury.

Therein is the “rub.”

Not one more life should be “given” nor dollar spent trying to “help” people who do not want the help or who wish to kill us. Who ever came up with that idea?

No law of man requires us to provide our enemy with the club they can use to kill us.

President-elect Nixon stated in 1968 that America would benefit from a more evenhanded role in the Middle East. He was right in 1968 but the outcry in our country was so loud he abandoned that as a pillar of his planned foreign policy.

It is now 2012 and it is too late for an evenhanded American policy. No one in the Middle East or in the world would believe us.

It is time our policy was one of benign neglect in the Middle East. Non of our actions through various administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have made any real difference.

We need to mind our own knitting.

It is pretty clear our knitting right here at home is unraveling and requires our immediate and intense concentration.