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The Root Cause of Our Problem in the Middle East and Steps We Might Take to Alleviate It
By William E. Howard III*
Dr. Howard sets forth in this article a wide-ranging, thoughtful, and provocative examination of the increasingly daunting problem the United States faces in Iraq, and indeed, the Middle East. Undoubtedly some readers will disagree with certain segments of his analysis, but this journal believes his points merit attention and consideration. –Ed.
"We lost the war in Vietnam because the North Vietnamese were willing to die in droves to drive out occupiers. . . from their country and our citizens were not willing to escalate a war that could be won only at an unacceptable cost to America. An analogous situation is becoming apparent in the Middle East. . ."
Introduction
The common perception of our American citizenry is that we have been at war since September 11, 2001, against a group of terrorists who threaten us as a nation. We shall explore this perception in more detail and try to find answers to when it started, why it happened, who is involved and how we might be able to extricate our nation from a growing problem, or at least explore how we might alleviate it.
The American psyche was wounded on 9/11, just as it was by the bombing of Pearl Harbor that triggered our entry into World War II. Both events led to a strategy of tit-for-tat, seeking revenge on the perpetrators. While this is a normal human reaction, there are unsettling differences between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor we knew who the enemy nations were and we marshaled our forces to defeat them. After 9/11 we have been faced with several uncertainties, among which are the unusual nature of the enemy (groups of individuals rather than nations), and the tactics they use (small group attacks and acts of suicide rather than traditional means of warfare). In addition, we are faced with uncertainties regarding the means used by their support groups, who they are and how they are financed.
These uncertainties, coupled with vague and undefined fears of our public, have caused us to undertake actions as a nation that are much less focused than the ones we undertook after Pearl Harbor. Estimates vary about the costs to the perpetrators of their 9/11 operations, but it approximates $500 thousand dollars. Our reactions to it, however, are costing much more, with even modest estimates reaching to at least $200 billion dollars. A simple look at those two estimates reveal that we are spending nearly half a million dollars to defend ourselves against future undefined attacks for every dollar the 9/11 hijackers and their supporters spent on planning and conducting the 9/11 attack. Clearly this rate of expenditure cannot continue. For this reason alone, it behooves us to look more closely to see if we can identify the root causes of our new enemy's reasons for attack and explore what steps we might take as to lessen the deepening dilemma that faces us.
Why Did Our Problem Start?
Since we attribute most of the attacks to al Qaeda, it is appropriate to see what their leader, Osama bin Laden has said. Our reason to quote bin Laden is certainly not to sympathize with his statements, nor to empathize with them. Our intention is to understand his position so that we may respond to them more effectively.
Perhaps the most important statement he made was in a statement to the World Islamic Front on 23 February 1998. Bin Laden's statement made before 9/11, but after several attacks on the U. S. presence abroad, lists three reasons for his anger against us. Here is a quote from the translation of his speech:
No one argues today about three facts that are known to everyone; we will list them, in order to remind everyone:
First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation.
So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula. All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries. This was revealed by Imam Bin-Qadamah in "Al- Mughni," Imam al-Kisa'i in "Al-Bada'i," al-Qurtubi in his interpretation, and the shaykh of al-Islam in his books, where he said: "As for the fighting to repulse [an enemy], it is aimed at defending sanctity and religion, and it is a duty as agreed [by the ulema]. Nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy who is attacking religion and life."
Thus spoke Bin Laden in 1998. His first point refers to the continued American presence in Arab Middle East countries - particularly Saudi Arabia—since the first Gulf War. At first he tried to get the Saudis to expel the Americans, but he was rebuffed. He then turned against the Saudis and increased his disdain for America. Bin Laden's second point refers to the casualties incurred by the Iraqis during the first Gulf War and also to our guided missile attacks and our flights in the airspace over Iraq prior to the second Gulf War. His anger only increased after our attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.
Our coalition in the Middle East is viewed by Muslim extremists as occupiers, rather than as liberators. The vast majority of the Muslim world holds us responsible for the local deaths in those countries, as innocent civilians become the unintentional victims of our efforts to keep the peace.
This situation has not only worsened a bad situation for our ground troops, but it has rallied more and more extremist Muslims to a cause that they view increasingly in religious terms. To make matters worse, the Muslim world views America as controlled by political forces here in the US which pressure our politicians on Israel's behalf in ways that not only see to it that Israeli forces do not actively participate in the coalition's operations, but they free Israel to make further encroachments into regions of the Levant that have been historically viewed as Arab territories. Thus, bin Laden's remarks against our powerful alliance with Israel form the principal foundation for the Muslim extremist ire against us.
When Did Our Problem Start?
Many observers point to the Balfour Declaration of November 2nd, 1917 as the starting point of the current conflict in the Levant. In that declaration British government representative Arthur James Balfour stated, in part:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
Actually, between 1917 and the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, the occupants of the Levant got along in relative harmony. Although the Palestinians objected at that time, there was little enmity directed toward the United States, partly because of our initial hesitation about accepting Israel as an independent entity, partly because our involvement with the postwar recoveries of Japan and Germany and the introduction of the Marshall Plan took our attention away from the Middle East, but also because the 1948 boundaries of Israel were thought to be relatively stable by the rest of the world and the US had not yet taken highly visible sides in any disputes.
The history of "terrorist" attacks against the United States had its roots much before 9/11. Prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War the United States maintained a comparatively even-handed policy between the Israelis and the Arab countries in the Levant. In June 1967, however, Israeli forces defeated their Arab neighbors in a six-day war that gained them significant additional territory. The worldwide euphoria for Israel brought to them over $560 million in contributions, much of which came from Israel supporters within the US. From that event onward, the history of US-Israel relations show that our political support for Israel has increased with time, and it accelerated after 9/11.
We have given relatively silent acquiescence to the expansion of Israel's boundaries and relatively passive support when Israel moved its citizens into, and built homes in the captured territories. The overt outpouring of sympathy for Israel by successive American administrations did not go unnoticed by the Palestinians, by the United Nations, by our traditional European allies, and by the rest of the Arab world. In fact, when the United Nations passed resolutions against the Israeli politics of expansion in ensuing years, the America overwhelmingly tended to be against each resolution or we abstained in the vote. Between 1955 and 1992 there have been sixty-six such resolutions against Israel by the UN Security Council.
The beginnings of our own problem with "terrorists" came at the time of their first attack at the 1972 Olympics. Although it was directed toward the Israeli athletes and occurred in an international setting, it engendered much sympathy for Israel, particularly among the supporters of Israel within the United States, further solidifying American support. The "terrorists" achieved a propaganda success in 1972 that encouraged them to broaden their attack to Israel's major supporters and attacks began to be directed toward American forces abroad. Those attacks included the Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979; Beirut, Lebanon Embassy 1983; Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983; Lockerbie, Scotland Pan-Am flight to New York 1988; First New York World Trade Center attack 1993; Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996; Nairobi, Kenya US Embassy 1998; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy 1998; and the Aden, Yemen USS Cole 2000 attack.
These attacks then culminated in those of the New York Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon on 9/11 as the Muslim extremists imported terrorism to our shores.
But Why the Reaction in Afghanistan and Iraq?
An Historical Precendent—Vietnam
Many writers have pointed out parallels with our experience in Vietnam. Looking back with knowledge of the present, history has shown that our involvement in Vietnam was not the right thing to do. Our presence there was not needed to contain communism. We did not need to save the country from communism because communism, with time, tends to implode on itself. Yet, we were the hated occupiers in Vietnam, just as they hated the French before we arrived.
During the Vietnam conflict we had a military draft. This meant that our citizenry was more attuned to how the war was going than it is now because larger and different sets of more vocal draftees and parents were concerned, and they voiced their opposition earlier than if we had had a volunteer force as we do now. The pressures to understand what is happening now are not as acute as they were in the 1970s when those parents saw their drafted sons being killed. Without a draft, it will take the country more time to understand that we are really losing in the Middle East, without a military solution in sight. Vietnam-like pressures to change our policy in the Middle East will arrive later. It has not happened yet.
We lost the war in Vietnam because the Vietnamese were willing to die in droves to drive out occupiers (of any sort) from their country and our citizens were not willing to escalate a war that could be won only at an unacceptable cost to America. An analogous situation is becoming apparent in the Middle East where replaceable numbers of insurgents undertake fanatical attacks and are willing to die for their cause. A Chinese-American once told me that the Vietnamese did not just hate the Americans; they hated any occupiers—first, the French and then us. They would also have resisted the Chinese had they invaded their country. Our citizenry turned against the war when they slowly realized what was happening. History has shown that we made the proper choice, but we lost many soldiers before we realized our leaderships' mistakes in trying to solve a political problem in a military fashion.
Vietnam is now a viable trading partner. The rage of the past is behind us. The solution came about through politics (albeit at some expense to our national pride) and not through the military. These are the major dual lessons of Vietnam:
That troops viewed as occupiers will be strongly resisted as the populace go to great lengths to rid their country of foreign occupation, and that a political solution—not a military one—is the only viable way to extricate the occupier from these types of untenable situations.
The identical thing is now happening to us in Iraq and Afghanistan. In neither place do we now control any significant fraction of the country and the majority of the population does not support our actions. In the fall of 2004, Karzai controlled only the area out to about the Kabul airport, while tribal leaders operated autonomously throughout Afghanistan and the drug trade was rampant. We are now fighting insurgencies in every major city of Iraq and the daily attacks on our troops number tens per day. Nobody likes to be occupied.
Reactions in Spain and France and Changes in National Postures
The extremists struck Spain because they were about to have an election in which the opposition party objected to having Spanish troops in Iraq and significant majorities of the Spanish were against their country's involvement. It was a natural thing for the Muslims to attack Spain, and Spain withdrew as expected. It is an example of a country operating in its own best interest.
France, although it has banned Muslim student headdresses, is not (yet) under attack, partly because they were even-handed in their banning (they also banned crosses worn by the children in school), and partly because of their concern for the safety of their large Muslim population. Perhaps an even more important reason is because they have a more balanced Middle East policy than we do. It is another example of a country whose policies reflect its natural interest.
When the USSR went into Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Muslims became "terrorists" and we supported bin Laden in his fight against the USSR. And look at the longer-term consequences of our support. We trained them, the Russians withdrew, and now the extremists are directing their ire against us, heavily armed with weapons they acquired from us and using tactics that we taught them. The fact that Muslims are involved is not the important issue here. The actions are coming from a people who object to being occupied. Friends can become enemies—and vice versa—inside of a decade.
Further Analysis
The United States began to take sides in the Middle East at about the time of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. The Israelis began a campaign to gain a lot of territory at the expense of their Arab neighbors. The UN has recognized this and has passed over five dozen resolutions against Israel. America, siding with Israel, either voted against those resolutions or has abstained when the majority of the UN passed them. As a result, the Israelis have a deep and vocal disdain for the UN. This attitude has carried over to successive US administrations as our alliance with Israel has grown. Our changing attitude toward the UN has increasingly caused the United States to either ignore or to discount the UN by acting unilaterally when we could not achieve UN agreement for international actions we wanted to undertake.
The influence of our pro-Israeli populace and the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC, formed in the 1950s) on American politics caused us to begin to ignore the very principles upon which the UN was founded.
The US has retreated from the leadership role we played in setting up the UN after World War II. We have transitioned to an attitude of tolerance, if not antipathy and benign neglect. Although statements out of the White House or the State Department object to Israeli territorial incursions, we never put teeth into our objections. Meanwhile, our relations with Israel become more firmly cemented and the Muslims become more upset with us. They express their anger by bombings that started abroad but which have finally culminated in the events of 9/11, thereby importing the Muslim ire onto our shores. It will only worsen unless we change the methods we employ as we react to the situation.
Right now we have a cemented an alliance that many Muslims are referring to as a modern crusade. It is a Judeo-Christian handshake that is growing ever stronger. Moreover, it is supported by a number of vocal, influential US citizens who support Israel and who believe that war against terror rather than a policy change is the only solution. Further, they believe that a type of war-crusade should be adopted by America as it has been pursued in Israel, complete with preemptive strikes. It is strengthened by Christian fundamentalists who believe that the Second Coming is not far off, and that a free Israel is essential for that event. Support for Israel is further cemented by the AIPAC who try to see to it that no Senator or Representative in either party gets elected or reelected if they do not support sending aid, money and political support to Israel.
Spying and Tensions— A "Working Hypothesis"
Despite our close political relationship with Israel, it has not been without tension. An Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard, sent secrets to Israel that gave away critical information on our Navy's submarines. In 1967 Israeli planes and surface vessels attacked the USS Liberty off the coast of Egypt, killing thirty-four American sailors and wounding 172 members of the crew.
The FBI investigation that had apparently been underway in the Pentagon for at least two years surfaced in the US press in the fall of 2004. This may be just the tip of an iceberg when it comes to the sharing of information between the US and Israel involving the Middle East. Sensitive information may have been passed from political appointees in the Pentagon to the AIPAC and hence to Israel. Those same individuals may also have been used as a conduit for Israel using their intelligence service, the Mossad, to pass disinformation into the Pentagon and hence to the upper levels of our administration without going through the CIA.
The Mossad may also have sent disinformation into the British intelligence service. This would explain why the CIA had no proof of Iraq's guilt when questioned by both the vice president and the secretary of state prior to Secretary Powell's presentation to the United Nations. The Mossad might have made the believable claim that they were the only members of the coalition with "eyes on the ground" in Iraq who could collect the intelligence. Moreover, when the British were asked about their source of information, they said only that it came from a "third country's intelligence service." Thus the Israelis may have had a two-way path for intelligence information transfer. A two-way conduit, particularly for incoming disinformation, would have been a very effective tool for convincing our administration of the need to go to war in Iraq.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. in his 2004 book War and the American Presidency, draws attention to a New York Times article on 29 March 2004 in which an Israeli opposition leader, Yossi Sarid, says that Mossad knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction but did not tell the U.S. government because Israel wanted the war to proceed. A retired Israeli intelligence officer, Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom who served in Israeli military intelligence for 25 years charged in December 2003 that Israeli agencies produced a flawed picture of Iraqi weapons capabilities and substantially contributed to mistakes made in U.S. and British pre-war assessments on Iraq.
This "working hypothesis" that the Mossad either passed disinformation into our administration or otherwise misrepresented the situation in Iraq fits the facts, as we know them now.
Personalizing the Issues Is Not the Answer
We are often led to believe that capturing bin Laden will end the war. But there are many historical precedents that prove that statement untrue. In modern history, we searched for the Mexican Pancho Villa for months without success; yet his capture was put on hold by political events surrounding World War I. It took us weeks to capture Manuel Noriega; yet the effects of ensuing politics blunted his capture. We chased Mohammed Aideed in Somalia and never caught him; we left Somalia as a result of a political decision. We captured Saddam Hussein, but the insurgents have only increased their opposition.
If we manage to capture bin Laden, it will give our country only a temporary feeling of euphoria; yet the insurgents will probably redouble their efforts to defeat our forces and their numbers will continue to grow. In virtually all cases in which we are in the midst of a conflict, the death or capture of a few members of their leadership merely prompt the opposition to name others to take their places. As we kill the heads of the hydra, others appear.
Estimating the Size of the Extremist Opposition
There are approximately one billion Muslims in the world, about twenty per cent of the world's population. About sixty countries have a Muslim majority population. Of these, there is a skewed population distribution in which only five countries belong to the high income group (twelve per cent), five are in the upper middle income group (twelve per cent), thirteen are in the lower middle income group (thirty per cent) and twenty are in the low income group (forty-six per cent). Half of the Muslim population is under thirty years old; about half are males and about ten percent are fundamentalists.
A "back of the envelope" estimate of the number of extremist candidates can be made. If we assume that they will be poor Muslim male fundamentalists under the age of thirty, that number of candidates will be about 1 billion times seventy-six percent times one-half times one-half times ten per cent or perhaps twenty million potential radical extremists. Of these, many will be located in places where they will not be able to become actively involved; others will not be sufficiently motivated to become involved. But even if one percent is local or mobile and one percent of those become motivated, we still end up with a few thousand local, dedicated insurgents. Those who are not on-scene may be expected to gravitate to the points of conflict and their numbers could double if women are involved.
It is well known that fewer than a thousand insurgent activists are more than sufficient to cause great damage to an occupying force. In addition, as long as the situation persists, the birth rate is more than sufficient to replace the insurgents who are killed or captured. These seeds of conflict will continue to germinate as long as the cause persists.
These numbers, coupled with the suicidal dedication and replacement potential of our adversaries lead us inexorably to the conclusion that we cannot win militarily. We need to search for a political solution.
How a Solution Might Be Recognized
How will we finally recognize that a political solution is needed? Here are some thoughts. Note that the politics are extremely delicate and complex.
We should not expect a solution to originate from either US political party because political pressures on the parties applied by the AIPAC, our citizen-supporters of Israel, and the Judeo-Christian right are just too strong.
Pressures by the public on the administration will not affect a change either because an administration that is responsible for past decisions may be too committed to them or because they, too, are subject to the same political pressures.
A political solution may result from increasing public pressure on our politicians but this will take a much longer time. Britain has not changed their policy even though a majority of their populace does not support British involvement with the US in the Middle East.
Change might be brought about through elections as new congressmen and representatives are elected who do not feel as acutely bound by the political constraints on their predecessors. Spain changed policy only after an election, even when the majority of the public had turned against their country's involvement before the election.
A change of sentiment among our pro-Israeli citizens or the AIPAC may occur. This might happen when they finally realize, since they live here, that American interests should come before those of Israel or that what may be good for Israel in the short term may not be good for either Israel or America in the long term.
Our populace might bring about change through an expression of unrest after a future incident on our shores—similar to what happened in Spain.
Change might be brought about through the results of investigations by the press, which historically has the license to operate in a relatively politically free environment.
The latter two possibilities are perhaps the most probable.
Steps Toward a Solution in the Middle East
Our national policies in the Middle East are not in accord with our national interests. They are failing us. What is good for Israel is proving to be a disaster for America. Once we see the necessity for a political solution, the United States should seriously consider the following path:
First, we should announce to the world that we intend to balance our Middle East policy. This will initially be viewed with skepticism by other countries because we have stated we already have one. So, further steps are needed to convince the world that we have seriously changed our policy.
The US should request that the United Nations take the lead in turning over the leadership in Iraq to the Iraqis by implementing steps proposed by the UN and agreed upon by the majority of the UN membership. At first this will require substituting UN troops in place of U.S. and coalition troops to keep order. Based on the Iraqi reactions to date, it might be best if the coalition troops totally withdraw and leave the field to troops within other UN, and possibly NATO nations.
At virtually the same time, the US should make the same request, with similar provisos, to the UN regarding Afghanistan.
The United States should urge the United Nations to convene as neutral a group as possible, with a charge to the group to convene and advise the UN on new borders for two nation-states, Israel and Palestine, perhaps by using, as a starting point, the borders just prior to the '67 Arab-Israeli war.
America should volunteer to help the UN to police those borders, and the United States should use its international influence to guarantee the borders of both countries through the United Nations. Such a guarantee will be absolutely necessary because of Israel's contention that the Palestinians want to drive the Israelis into the sea and because of the Palestinian's fear that Israel will not honor their new country's boundaries.
How To Handle Arguments Against Balancing Our Middle East Policy
If Israel opposes this US policy change, we should threaten to withdraw much of our very expensive support for Israel, using all or part of those funds to support the UN instead. Our support for Israel since its formation in 1948 is difficult to determine because it is arguable which components of support to include. Estimates vary, but the level of support that the US has spent on Israel lies somewhere between $135 billion to $3 trillion in the time interval between 1949 and 1997. Our annual subsidy has averaged somewhere between about $3 billion to over $60 billion per year over those forty-eight years. However, the cost of supporting Israel has accelerated twice—once after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and again as a result of our involvement in the Middle East after 9/11. We will therefore use as a current estimate of support, a figure of $30 billion per year. Because the GDP of Israel amounts to about $121 billion per year, the United States has been supporting the country at a level of about a quarter of Israel's GDP. Any threat to withdraw that level of support will certainly get their attention, and it might result in their acquiescence to seek a UN-based solution. Money talks.
There are other pitfalls that would remain, chief among which will be objections from our pro-Israeli citizens, the neoconservatives, the Christian right and lobbying groups like the AIPAC. Therefore, it will be critical how the need for a policy change will be recognized, as well as how it will be presented to the very small, but vocal and influential members of our population who have urged these accelerating levels of support for Israel.
Some Positive Consequences of a U.S. Middle East Policy Change
With these policy changes, the United States will have taken significant steps that will:
Extricate us from an accelerating quagmire in the Middle East.
Lessen the domestic threat to our country over the intermediate to long term.
Bring our very serious budget deficit more into balance.
Reassert our adherence to the role of international law and our desire to adhere to its precepts.
Rebuild our national pride.
Rebuild our international prestige and moral leadership that we have lost since 2002.
Restore our credibility with the United Nations. The US played a very positive, significant role in setting up the UN. Support from nations that adhere to the principles of the UN has proved to be very important to the US since the end of World War II from the Korean War through the first Gulf War. When we work with the UN, it can be a powerful ally for good in the world, but when the United States ignores it, it is rather toothless. A positive change in our attitude about the UN will benefit us. It will change our image as an international pariah. Our foreign policies need to be carried out more by a careful and deliberate State Department and less by our Department of Defense and the National Security Council, based in the White House.
Having instituted this policy change, our nation will have recognized that we cannot change the world in our image. Instead, we will be able to again demonstrate to the rest of the world that we live in a democracy that respects other countries and operates within the sets of moral, political and international constraints that provide the foundation upon which the United Nations was formed.
Some Negative Consequences of Inaction
Without a change in policy we should expect the following situation to arise:
Attacks within our homeland will escalate and require more efforts to reduce their frequency.
Attacks by insurgents abroad will not subside; they will steadily increase and widen in scope.
More US troops will be killed and wounded.
We will lose more traditional allies.
Our growing budget deficit will increase still further; it could lead to a bankruptcy of our national treasury or a serious recession. Our leadership in science, technology, and the arts will suffer as funding becomes unavailable.
Our industry, which is shouldering part of the burden, will become less competitive internationally.
Our standard of living will suffer; and we will lose many of our freedoms.
When we began to stray from the principles of the UN, starting at about the time of the '67 war in the Middle East and culminating in our current war in the Middle East, our world leadership began to erode. The European Union has begun to deny some of our major corporations access to European markets, a situation that could worsen if American policies do not change. The rest of the world will slowly cap our economic expansion, something that has really made America great since the end of World War II. Our stock market will be flat or go down because of these foreign restrictions on the growth of our companies.
We cannot afford to continue to fight Israel's wars for them. Our use of their preemption techniques has gotten us into serious trouble with the rest of the world and has probably caused a big increase in recruitment of extremists who wish to do us harm both abroad and domestically.
Speaking personally, my biggest fear, when the public finally recognizes the root cause of the brand of terrorism directed against us, is that we will experience a wave of anti-Semitism in our country. Such a thing may happen because our public may not be sufficiently sophisticated to understand that one can be against the policies of Israel without being anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, the AIPAC, our pro-Israel citizens, and some members of our religious community equate anti-Israeli sentiment with anti-Semitism. These are entirely different sentiments and should be treated differently.
We need a political solution, not a military one.
October 5, 2004
Endnotes
Note *: The author earned a Ph.D. at Harvard University. Now retired, his career was equally divided between government (including service on a senior level with the CIA) and non-profit organizations, where he was involved in research, teaching, and management. Back