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On a recent
Sunday morning, NBC’s Meet-the-Press host Tim Russert,
CBS veteran newsman Dan Rather and retired ABC Nightline
host Ted Koppel mused about the stormy debate over the
Bush administration’s policy of spying on U.S. citizens.
Koppel declared
that the debate will end the instant America suffers
another 9/11, and he added, “as it certainly will.” He
implied, of course, that Congress would then swiftly
give the president all the latitude in spying that he
wants; neither Russert nor Rather dissented.
Our present
policies make another 9/11 inevitable. Our acts of war
have strengthened, not weakened, the insurgency in Iraq
and elsewhere. The recent CIA bombing in Pakistan
caused bitter protest. Al-Qaeda operatives now enjoy
rising public approval in both, Iraq and Pakistan, but
still no change in U.S. policies.
Our government
should explore every avenue of diplomatic settlement,
but when Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden proposed a
truce with the Bush administration, the White House
contemptuously said no. At the least, our officials
should ask privately for truce details but, more
importantly, for details on Arab grievances against
America.
These grievances
are soaring, but the U.S. administration has done
nothing to try to identify them, much less redress them.
In Iraq, our forces try to kill insurgents who mainly
want our forces to leave. In Israel and Palestine, our
government, in effect, helps Israel destroy Arab
insurgents whose main grievances are U.S. complicity in
Israel’s occupation of Arab land and its daily violation
of Arab human rights.
President Bush
must wake up to reality. Acts of war are ineffective in
both Iraq and Israel/Palestine. The problems in both
places are intertwined, as they arise substantially from
the same phenomenon, America’s pro-Israel bias. Our
bias is wrong—morally, legally and politically.
Arab fury over
this bias was the main reason for 9/11. Months ago, bin
Laden informed the world that the deadly assault was
payback for U.S. complicity in Israel’s lawlessness,
principally the U.S. role in Israel’s 1982 slaughter of
more than 18,000 innocent Arabs in Beirut.
Our government
can prevent another 9/11 without firing a shot or
spending more billions on a futile attempt to encase
America in a protective cocoon. All it needs to do is
take a firm stand for justice by halting acts of war in
Iraq and suspending all aid until Israel ends its
illegal occupation of Arab land.
These decisions
would elicit pro-American rejoicing worldwide and reduce
if not eliminate the insurgency in Iraq. They would
restore luster to the name America, a country now
reviled for starting wars, incarcerating insurgents
without due process, routinely torturing detainees in
secret prisons, and allowing corrupt practices to
flourish at home and abroad.
Why doesn’t
Washington end the bias? From long personal experience,
I can provide the answer: almost all U.S. politicians
regard any criticism of Israel as the sure exit to
oblivion.
Fear reaches far
beyond Washington. The voices capable of moral outrage
in newspapers, on television, from pulpits, and in the
halls of academia are as silent as the politicians. Is
everyone afraid that calling Israel to account will lead
to false but painful charges of anti-Semitism? Is that
why no one—not Russert, Koppel or Rather, not a single
journalist of prominence in the nation - is willing to
speak or write about the folly of this bias? Are we
fated to suffer more wars, more dead soldiers and
marines, more blighted families here and abroad, more
billions of public debt and hostility worldwide, simply
because America’s national leadership, almost to the
last person, quakes before Israel’s political power in
this country?
President Bush could swiftly transform the clouds of war
into the bright promise of peace. All he needs to
do is sheath his sword and take a firm stand for
justice. But will he?
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