Jonathan:

If this is a pop quiz, I'm ready!

Question:
Horror and Chaos in the Middle East: Who's to blame, and is there a remedy?

Answer:
George Bush and yes, with immediate withdrawal of all occupational troops from Iraq AMD Afghanistan, as well as rescinding all illegal, unconstitutional and invasive legislation previously instituted due to fear-mongering by the Bushanistas, which logically will lead to indictments for War Crimes against every member of the Neofascist moovement that led to this quagmire.

Next nude question please!

JLaR, if that really IS your name, how the chëll will that solve problems in the Middle East? Let's be frank: U.S. withdrawal from Iraq will NOT end the civil war there; U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will not result in the Taliban disappearing; domestic surveillance has no impact on Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. In fact, as far as I can tell, your prescriptions will only succeed in winding the clock back to pre-9/11 days, with the additional bonus of chaotic violence in Iraq. Could you clarify, or were you merely trying to engage in some rhetorical Bush-bashing without any sapient point?

I can see some sense to immediately ending both occupations. People who are morally and intellectually incapable of ever doing anything just or merciful serve best by doing less. They could have the very finest plans, drawn up by people who actually know things, and still manage to increase misery, enrich cronies, set up future disasters and shit themselves in outrage over criticism.

With Israel and Palestine and the neighbors, I don't think the problem can be solved by trying to assign blame for specific actions and wars. It's much more useful to look at the structural conflict and to seek ways to resolve it.

As I see it, the problem in Israel is that it is an ethnically based state. Worse yet, it was imposed on a region where its dominant ethnicity was a minority at the country's founding. This is an inflammatory comparison, but it was like apartheid South Africa.

The best hope, I think, has nothing to do with a 2-state solution. It would be a 1-state solution, with Israel accepting full human and civil rights for all those who live there. It's sad that even here in the U.S., which was the first country based on the notion of inalienable rights, this is a controversial view.

I believe such a state would be more stable and healthy not just for Palestinians but for Israelis. The threat of terrorism would be reduced, but more importantly, everyone would be more prosperous. More minds working on problems, less money spent on internal security, more food security for all, and hopefully, if other prosperous but historically torn societies are any gauge (England vs. Ireland?) fewer people feeling the passion of a blood feud. Israel could live up to its moniker of being the only democracy in the Middle East.

There is a reason why there are more Jews in the U.S. than there are in Israel -- it's a more prosperous place. Our prosperity is largely because we have eschewed the 16th-century ideal of being an ethnic homeland (despite some people's efforts).

Many Jews and Zionists think this would betray Israel's mission of being a Jewish homeland. This is bunk. I was born a Jew but if I'm supposed to identify with that homeland, I'll stick to atheism and stay out of shul. The U.S. is the Jewish homeland for now, and I think it will remain that way unless Israel backs off and figures out how to be a functioning part of the modern world, rather than, like its Islamic Republic neighbors, a relic of a more tribal time. As is, it is driving some of us away from the religion without creating any paradise on earth for itself.

(This note will be cross-posted to Rhinocrisy if Blogger ever wakes up from its nap.)

Another interesting debate coming up in New York--curiously enough organized by a publication in UK...

Dennis does not love Osama bin Laden, he just hates America.

hedgehog you're wiping out 100+ years of ethnic housecleaning and exploitation of non-europeans before the USA could become a working alternative to "balance of power." based on that, some kind of one-state solution will come to pass, in the 22nd century (on the most forgiving timeline). one of the really bad things going on is that the good-paying jobs in israel now are well above working class education, unlike the factory work that developed the urban melting pot here, so the class thing is even bigger than it was here.

Apropos uninformed talk about Israel's "Islamic Republic neighbors" (apart from Saudi Arabia, close ally of "the West", the rest don't fit the bill: Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan), following is an interesting excerpt from an even more interesting essay by Slavoj Zizek on another part of the world considered "troubled" in the Western imaginary:

Where, then, did the fundamentalist features--religious intolerance, ethnic violence, fixation upon historical trauma--which the West now associates with 'the Balkan', originate? Clearly, from the West itself. In a neat instance of Hegel's 'reflexive determination', what Western Europeans observe and deplore in the Balkans is what they themselves introduced there; what they combat is their own historical legacy run amok. Let us not forget that the two great ethnic crimes imputed to the Turks in the 20th century--the Armenian genocide and the persecution of the Kurds--were not committed by traditionalist Muslim political forces, but by the military modernizers who sought to cut Turkey loose from its old-world ballast and turn it into a European nation-state.

SK - The Islamic Republic I was referring to was Iran, and you're right, the rest don't fit the bill.

Also, I am uninformed.

Saurabh, if that is really your name:

Please note that I stated 'alleged civil war' meaning I don't buy into the Neocon propaganda. Once the war criminals who caused this insanity are finally held responsible, their sponser Halliburton will be assigned cleaning up the mess made in Iraq for the sole purpose of increasing that company's profit margin, not to mention paying back the billions of dollars stolen from the reconstruction funds. The war criminals Cheney, BushCo, Rumsfield, et.al., will all be held responsible for the mess they made.

Their estates will be righteously and rightfully confiscated to pay Iraqi families whose lives and property were destroyed just to enrich their bank accounts by their heartless, atavistic greed. America will harken back to the days when the Constitution still existed. This entire unfortunate swindle will be used, henceforth, as an example of how deadly serious it was when we lost all of our freedoms due to fear-mongering conspiracy theories used as propaganda to ensure theit fascist takeover by rescinding all of their immoral, illegal and unconstitutional 'laws'.

BOOH!!! Betcha you're scared! If you fell for their bullshit, then the clean-up will really make your hair stand on end! How much did you make from this nasty business anyway, saurabh?