Monthly Archives: July 2008

"The strategy of keeping all options open for a final agreement has proven unwise. A new administration would be wise to understand that an open-ended approach allows both sides to pursue their own interests regardless of the effect on peace-making. That way offers only more violence and oppression."

"An Israel-Syria peace process with heavy American input is more likely to succeed than an Israeli-Palestinian process, and the payoff, the peace dividend, is potentially far greater for the region-at-large and particularly the Iraq and Iran arenas."

"It comes as no surprise, then, that of all the unified commands, CENTCOM is the one in which, in today’s world, the U.S. empire’s rubber meets the road most abrasively. The command’s area of responsibility includes a great part of the world’s known petroleum and natural gas deposits, a preponderance of Israel’s enemies, and the places in which the George W. Bush administration has chosen to focus its so-called Global War on Terror. Of course, the region also includes Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have been fighting for years, and, sandwiched between these two battlefields, Iran, where Dick Cheney and the rest of the neocons ardently desire to extend the fighting at the earliest opportunity."

"Today, there are 250,000 Israeli Jews living illegally in East Jerusalem, and the Israeli government has announced that thousands more apartments are to be built – despite promises to the US government to freeze settlement growth."

"The al Qaeda that threatens the United States is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan or Iraq. The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan merely helps al Qaeda gain support in Pakistan. Thus, the U.S. should withdraw all of its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and concentrate on dealing with al Qaeda in Pakistan."