Israel Matzav

The war against the west

Melanie Phillips blogs two articles from this weekend's Jerusalem Post, and notes that they "provide graphic and deeply alarming confirmation of the extent to which America appears to have lost the plot in the war to defend the free world."

Khaled Abu Toameh shreds the notion that underpins American (and Israeli) policy towards the Palestinians — that Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah are good while Hamas is bad, and that Abbas is weak and needs to be propped up against Hamas, most notably by the Americans supplying him with a load of guns. As Khaled Abu Toameh observes, however, this is all totally ridiculous. (I think I have pointed out the same thing myself once or twice).

And Caroline Glick notes with alarm that Iranian and Syrian jubilation over the November 7 US election

is well founded in light of the Democratic leadership’s near unanimous calls for the US to withdraw its forces in Iraq; Bush’s firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his appointment of his father’s CIA director Robert Gates to replace him; and Bush’s praise for the Congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group charged with revisiting US strategy in Iraq, which is being co-chaired by his father’s secretary of state James Baker III. Although his committee has yet to formally submit its recommendations, Baker made clear that he will recommend that the administration negotiate a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq with Iran and Syria. That is, he is putting together a strategy not for victory, but for defeat.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:21 AM