James Wolcott: The Flaw in Seeing the U.S. and Israel Acting As One

James Wolcott has a post up that I encourage you to read in its entirety regarding Israel, Hezbollah, the crisis in the Middle East, Bush's (mis)handling and more.

Here's a snip:

One of the tragic follies of the age is the unexamined, bedrock consensus of our political and media establishment that the interests of the US and Israel aren't merely conjoined, but identical. That Israel is such an intimate extension of American influence, muscle, and will that they share the same nervous system and optic view. Ray Close, a former CIA analyst waving a warning flag at No Quarter, confronts the prospect of the US being sucked into the bloody vortex while Bush autopilots the same monotonal cliches about terrorism, peace-loving people, and Israel's right to defend itself (which no one disputes--it's the scale of the retaliation that's at issue).

"The interests of my country, the United States, do not coincide with those of Israel in many important respects today," Close writes. "Let me mention just two of those ways. It is very important to the United States that the independence and national sovereignty of a democratic Lebanon be preserved. That means absolutely nothing to the Government of Israel, despite what they may say to the contrary. Israeli actions going back many years, demonstrated most graphically in the 1980’s, clearly prove that point. Current Israeli actions in Lebanon are belligerently challenging the continued viability of the fragile coalition government that is struggling to achieve credibility and legitimacy at a critical period in Lebanon’s history. [my emphasis] Israeli actions are, even more importantly, threatening to revive the deep sectarian divisions and inter-communal tensions that led to fifteen years of tragic civil war from 1975-1980. American national interests will suffer much more than Israel’s if chaos results. Secondly, we Americans have other critical interests to worry about. If we take a position supporting Israel’s demand that Hizballah must be totally defeated and disarmed (a futile objective in any case), and especially if Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the revered spiritual leader of Hizballah, is physically harmed, the Shiite populations of Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East will be inflamed --- greatly undermining American prospects of working cooperatively and constructively with the Shiite religious parties in Iraq that control the overwhelmingly majority of political power in that country.

..."Encouraging and supporting Israel in a bloody confrontation with Hizballah in Lebanon may seem to be a justified and reasonable action in the shortest of terms and from the narrowest of perspectives, but the United States of America is not Israel, and we have regional and global interests and responsibilities that far surpass those of this one small ally. Just for once, let’s think first of what’s best for America."

I agree. I also believe that Bush's current "nah, I don't wanna push Israel to agree to a truce now excuse me while I nap through more important stuff" approach is going to hurt the situation further.