Saturday.....War On Terror..... The Best Laid Plans Of.....

If it were only an issue of the Palestinian people, there would have been peace in the Middle East a long time ago. Monies have been expended and more minds that one would need have explored every issue time and time again.  If it were only for Israel's decisions within their own nation and for the people living within it, peace would have come a long time ago for they have shown the ability to compromise and even go beyond. But this isn't the situation. It isn't the reality of the Middle East, for there is a third  major party present that has the ability to crush all peace efforts and they have the bloodthirsty desire to do so. They are called by different names and supported by various nations around the globe who are more than willing to sacrifice Palestinian and Israeli lives and futures for their own ends. Barack Obama has chosen the path of least resistance, or so he so incorrectly believes. By loosening the moorings to Israel he apparently is attempting to force Israel into a peace treaty that would substantially weaken their security, as he has weakened ours. He is courting disaster for two reasons; The terrorist mind wants Israel's death, the death of other Muslims who oppose their rule and much more destruction to America than a mere redistribution of its wealth and power. The second reason concerns Israel. We may have largely forgotten the Holocaust but they have not. This is not a regional dispute, nor even a religious or political one as much as it is a personal hatred of the Jew. They, more than us, realize this and have vowed not to let another Holocaust occur.  Events of the past week are even more discouraging. Syria has allegedly transferred long range scud missiles to Hezbollah.  These missiles could reach any part of Israel.  Israel, in return, warned Syria that if such is the case and Israel is attacked, Syria will be devastated by an Israeli attack on them. Israel should be taken seriously in this warning. In addition to the Scud issue, Jordanian King Abdullah showed signs of intense and immediate concern as he made comments that seemed to positively acknowledge the backing off of the United States support for Israel but warned of violence as early as this summer if Israel did not respond in kind, a response Israel would consider suicidal  Today's BBC headlined an annual poll taken of 28,000 people around the world on how they view (negatively or positively) various nations of the world.  The big news was that public opinion on the United States is going up since Barack Obama became President. The poll is taken by GlobeScan (formerly Environics International). The Program for International Policy Attitudes of the University of Maryland also was involved and their director was quoted as saying After a year, it appears the "Obama effect" is real. This same organization conducted a poll a little over a year ago and found 66%  believed that climate change was very serious. So, the BBC highlights a poll taken by an environmental organization telling us how well liked our President is? I wonder how those polled would feel if they are drawn into a global emergency over our failure, not only of confronting Iran, but letting this situation get out of hand and essentially emboldening madmen with the will and the means to cause havoc? Israel was only viewed positively by 19%, so one might reasonably expect that they would be the culprit in any situation. It should be said that anti-Americanism was not unanimous prior to President Obama. Jean-Francois Revel was a French intellectual who bucked the trends of other intellectuals in Europe and wrote of those who forget that the United States, acting in her own self-interest, is also acting in the interest of us Europeans and in the interest of many other countries, threatened, or already subverted or ruined, by terrorism. The back of Revel's book of 2002 Anti-Americanism commented on the unlikelihood of the book changing the minds of those without an open mind and quoted Jonathon Swift in it is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.