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Baker's Stale Ideas

[Jerusalem Post] Barry Rubin - Reports such as the Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq have a lot more to do with Washington debates than about Middle East realities. The report's section about the Arab-Israeli conflict ignores the experience of the last dozen years, and throws in just about every mistaken cliche on the issue. One would think the conflict remained unresolved simply because the U.S. had not tried hard enough. The report concludes that the Arab-Israeli conflict is inextricably linked to Iraq. Really? I can't think of a single issue it is less linked to. Iraq is about an internal struggle for power and nobody in Iraq even talks much about the Arab-Israeli conflict. What is really needed is a policy that would effectively fight the radicals and help either real moderates or those states whose interests coincide with those of the U.S. and the West. Instead, the report suggests that what is most important is to get everybody talking. The only way this kind of thinking is going to damage the radical forces is if they fall down and hurt themselves from laughing so hard.
2006-12-15 01:00:00
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