Lou Dobbs... Mideast Makes U.S. Look Dumb

[Janice]

NEW YORK (CNN) -- We Americans like to think we're a pretty smart people, even when evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. And nowhere is that evidence more overwhelming than in the Middle East. History in the Middle East is everything, and we Americans seem to learn nothing from it.

President Harry Truman took about 20 minutes to recognize the state of Israel when it declared independence in 1948. Since then, more than 58 years of war, terrorism and blood-letting have led to the events of the past week.

Even now, as Katyusha rockets rain down on northern Israel and Israeli fighter jets blast Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, we simultaneously decry radical Islamist terrorism and Israel's lack of restraint in defending itself.

And the U.S. government, which wants no part of a cease-fire until Israel is given every opportunity to rescue its kidnapped soldiers and destroy as many Hezbollah and Hezbollah armaments as possible, urges caution in the interest of preserving a nascent and fragile democratic government in Lebanon. Could we be more conflicted?

While the United States provides about $2.5 billion in military and economic aid to Israel each year, U.S. aid to Lebanon amounts to no more than $40 million. This despite the fact that the per capita GDP of Israel is among the highest in the world at $24,600, nearly four times as high as Lebanon's GDP per capita of $6,200.

Lebanon's lack of wealth is matched by the Palestinians -- three out of every four Palestinians live below the poverty line. Yet the vast majority of our giving in the region flows to Israel. This kind of geopolitical inconsistency and shortsightedness has contributed to the Arab-Israeli conflict that the Western world seems content to allow to perpetuate endlessly.

After a week of escalating violence, around two dozen Israelis and roughly 200 Lebanese have died. That has been sufficient bloodshed for United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to join in the call for an international security force, ignoring the fact that a U.N. force is already in Southern Lebanon, having failed to secure the border against Hezbollah's incursions and attacks and the murder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

As our airwaves fill with images and sounds of exploding Hezbollah rockets and Israeli bombs, this seven-day conflict has completely displaced from our view another war in which 10 Americans and more than 300 Iraqis have died during the same week. And it is a conflict now of more than three years duration that has claimed almost 15,000 lives so far this year alone.

An estimated 50,000 Iraqis and more than 2,500 American troops have been killed since the insurgency began in March of 2003, which by some estimates is more than the number of dead on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict over the past 58 years of wars and intifadas.

Yet we have seen no rescue ships moving up the Euphrates for Iraqis who are dying in their streets, markets and mosques each day. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has not leaped to Baghdad as he did Beirut. And there are no meetings of the Arab League, and no U.S. diplomacy with Egypt, Syria and Jordan directed at ending the Iraqi conflict.

In the Middle East, where is our sense of proportion? Where is our sense of perspective? Where is our sense of decency? And, finally, just how smart are we?

[Pburgh]

I have one word. IDIOT!!!!

[ericinmia]

Israeli's just want to live their lives and be a prosperous people. I see no problem with giving them aid.

Most Palestinian's & Many Labanese don't care to invent the next new thing, add anything to the world, or care for their fellow man. They simply want to KILL anyone who doesn't share their belief.

Who would you all rather give aid to?

There was a muslim Psychologist on Al-Jezeera a couple months back arguing this point. The west and people that think along those lines simply want peace, equality, freedom of thought and speech, etc. However!, the majority of the middle east has a philosophy bread into them that ANYONE who doesn't believe in what they do, needs to be converted or killed. ????? why ????? They have been there for THOUSANDS of years, and haven't progressed. We have been around a few hundred and have lept miles beyond them in thought and physical means. We may not be perfect... but were undeniably better.
-Eric

[NBCintern]

Israeli's just want to live their lives and be a prosperous people. I see no problem with giving them aid.

Most Palestinian's & Many Labanese don't care to invent the next new thing, add anything to the world, or care for their fellow man. They simply want to KILL anyone who doesn't share their belief.

Who would you all rather give aid to?

There was a muslim Psychologist on Al-Jezeera a couple months back arguing this point. The west and people that think along those lines simply want peace, equality, freedom of thought and speech, etc. However!, the majority of the middle east has a philosophy bread into them that ANYONE who doesn't believe in what they do, needs to be converted or killed. ????? why ????? They have been there for THOUSANDS of years, and haven't progressed. We have been around a few hundred and have lept miles beyond them in thought and physical means. We may not be perfect... but were undeniably better.
-Eric

I disagree. Most palestinians want freedom and equality. There are a few that want violence at any means. We have only leaped bounds because we are not threaded with Europe. Remember peole left on boats to come here and made their own idealogies other than Europe's way. This philosphy you speak of goes hundreds of years back. We are better because we don't have the strife that they confront on an everyday basis. We have the same religious split that they battle with, but one exception and that is they battle (violence) for their cause.

[coriolis]

Janice, I hope that entire post was Lou Dobbs and not you.

We could invoke yet another historical perspective that goes back beyond Truman, Mohammed, Christ, even Abraham. And that is that wars have been fought in the middle east since the beginning of recorded history. I've recently been reading about wars between the rival city-states in Sumerian times, and even more recently, between Syrians and Egypt. The Syrians invaded Egypt and ended the age of the middle kingdom around 2000 BC. The Egyptians responded by invading Syria and making it a part of their later empire.

My point is that in human history, peace, equality, freedom, etc, are the exceptions rather than the rule. We are not going to change history, or human nature. Each nation looks out for its own interest, and even the US is doing that, just like all the others who took their turn fighting it out in this area.

All the great cultures, such as the Egyptians, Greeks, Roman, French, English, (and others too), and now the American, entertained art and leisure, peace and (relative) equality at home, while concurrently fighting wars around their frontiers. The cultures flourished when the wars were fought on foreign soil. This part of the middle east is a battleground for the entire world and any peace in this area has been just a pause between wars.

I think that people who get upset about the warring and aspire to a "better world" are neglecting to consider 6000 years of history.

All that rant is not to say that the wars are good, or even OK, but when your'e dealing with humans, thats what you get!

[Janice]

Haha, it was definately not me.... here is the CNN link


http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/18/dobbs. ... index.html

[gtalum]

CNN is no more biased than any other network when it comes to news reporting, despite what certain pundits might like to say. All of the major news outlets are pretty good at reporting the news accurately. Their editorial departments have clear biases, but it's silly to pretend that CNN's editorial bias is any more severe than Fox, for instance. It always looks like one outlet is more biased than another when you share the bias of one of the outlets in question.

[gtalum]

Further, Lou Dobbs has a good point in that we keep doing the same crap over and over again in the Middle East and getting the same result each time. The best solution would be to wean ourselves off of oil, especially foreign oil, and let the Israelis and Arabs kill each other off to their hearts' content.

[stormtruth]

I think Lou Dobbs has a great show. He is also tough on the immigration and outsourcing problems.

[artist]

and when we don't they still come after us...

[gtalum]

and when we don't they still come after us...

Those were Saudis that came after us on 9/11. Why did we choose to counterattack elsewehere if our goal is to stop them from coming after us?