The very Jewish organizations that field thousands upon
thousands of mouthpieces to go out day and night, year after year, decade after
decade, and express in speech after speech, interview after interview and article
after article that: “they must do what we tell them because look at all the
money we give them” also say what John Bolton is saying in his January 7, 2014
article titled: “The high price of Obama's Mideast peace push”.
The difference is that the refrain about giving money
concerns Egypt whereas the article about the high price of pursuing an American
policy in the Mideast concerns Israel where the wealth in cash and weapons that
America continues to pour in that miserable place both directly and indirectly
is so astronomical, it is better not to mention it because it sounds so
horrific it would numb the senses of the reader.
An article written in the style of journalism is often based
on a news item which, in reality, turns out to be the excuse that pundits use
like a trampoline from which they jump into the subject that they wish to
articulate. Many such news items were used over the decades by many people, and
Bolton was no exception.
He is now using “the breaking news that al Qaeda has
captured Fallujah and Ramadi” as an excuse to raise false questions about the
peace process that is pursued by the Obama administration because what he and
the Jewish organizations want is encapsulated in what they say: “Give us the
tools and we'll do the job” meaning give us the money and the weapons, and
we'll kill as many of our neighbors as we can.
And so, instead of concluding that the time has come for the
American people to say: “the Israelis must do what we tell them because look at
all the money, the weapons, the dead soldiers, the loss of prestige and so on
and so forth we give them,” he concludes that “there is much to lose by
continuing to follow their [peacemakers] strategy.” In other words, he wants to
turn off the voice of the peacemakers so that the refrain: “Give us the tools
and we'll do the job” may continue to be heard loud and clear.
But what excuse does he have for demanding that the
administration drop the subject and concentrate on something else? It is this:
“Obama has focused on the issue to no avail … the peace process has seen no
significant movement.” Thus, despite the fact that America
has all this leverage with Israel ,
Bolton says this is not good enough to offset
the fact that the peace process is showing no significant movement; therefore
the effort to pursue peace must end here.
And guess what. He has what appears to be a very good
economic argument to back that up. It is something that the “economists call
'opportunity costs' – namely the lost opportunity to concentrate on other
issues where there are better chances for progress.” But where to find better
chances for progress? What? What kind of question is this? Why are you asking
this question? It's unfair; it's unfair; it's unfair.
You need to be sitting, my friend, to read his answer to
that question. Here is his list: Iran's nuclear-weapons program; the failure of
the Arab Spring; the dissolution of Libya; the chaos in Syria; the turmoil in
North Africa; the resurgence of al Qaeda in Iraq; the Chinese territorial
aggrandizement; Russia's hegemony in Ukraine, North Korea's nuclear program.
Is that where America
has more leverage than it has with Israel ? Is that where it has better
chances to make progress?