Imagine an old acquaintance knocking at your door and saying
he has something important to tell you. He starts: “I was visiting with people
who have known you for a long time, and they told me something you should know
about.” So you ask: “Why do they not tell it to me themselves?” And he snaps
back: “Oh no, they don't know I'm telling you this. They said it to me but they
won't say it to you.” “Okay,” you say, “what's it about?”
He first reminds you that you own a company specialized in
the construction of safety and security structures to protect homes and
neighborhoods. He says that your friends want you to do what's necessary to
make his neighborhood safe and secure. The catch is that the people of the
neighborhood will not pay for the work, so you'll have to do it and expect
nothing in return. As to the friends who made the suggestion, they will not pay
for it either because they don't live in the neighborhood. They happen to live
at the opposite end of town.
You say nothing more to that acquaintance, but while the two
of you are standing at the door of your house, you pull the cell phone from
your pocket and call for an ambulance to come and take someone to the nuthouse.
By analogy, I see in my mind's eye the people in charge of
the American government treating David Pollock in that same manner. The
occasion is an article he wrote under the title: “Mideast Meets Far East” and
the subtitle: “Why the Next U.S. President Can't 'Pivot to Asia .'”
It was published on October 16, 2016 on the website of the Washington Institute
for Near East Policy.
The man says he went to Japan where he saw something that
surprised him. Japan and Saudi Arabia
are close friends, he says. That's because Saudi
Arabia has oil, and Japan needs it. He calls the two
countries “strange bedfellows,” and adds they have something else in common. He
explains: “What also binds [them] together is a common concern that the U.S. may be
trying to shift away from its historic role as protector of international
energy routes.” And so, he recommends: “For the U.S.
to advance its interests, it must maintain its security umbrella over Mideast energy supplies”.
And guess what else is worth lamenting according to David
Pollock. He says that the Arabs, who own the oil, are too weak to protect their
wealth. As well, Japan 's
giant neighbors who are also heavily dependent on oil will not “volunteer to
take over the leading American position in guarding those essential Mideast energy exports.” This leaves America , sucker America ,
foolish America with the
responsibility to do for others what they will not do for themselves … even if America is now
self-sufficient in energy, and they are not. Go figure.
This discussion strikes you as moronic to the extreme, and
you begin to grow suspicious of the author's motive. You rake your brains in
search of a possible motive and recall that the Jews have been exploiting
America for decades with the argument that the superpower must remain in the
Middle East to protect Israel, thus have access to cheap oil. Of course, the
opposite was always true because America
kept supporting Israel 's
criminal activities against the Arabs, and they kept raising the price of oil.
Worse, the nefarious, unintended consequences of these
adventures multiplied. Most of the encounters started as a minor incident that
escalated to become stiff resistance against the American-Israeli axis of
intimidation and armed aggression. And so, David Pollock found another reason
to complain about something new: “Another Mideast
export – terrorism.”
Instead of acknowledging it was America 's
meddling in Arab affairs that led to the dreaded chain reactions, thus call for
a moratorium, the writer predicts that America 's
presence in the Middle East will prevent the
creation of new terrorism. Someone should tell the doctors at the nuthouse this
guy is getting nuttier.
In fact, the Japanese know that too, and he is acknowledging
it with these words: “Some privately blame U.S.
action in Iraq , Syria , or Libya
lately, and in Afghanistan
and Pakistan
long before, for compounding rather than confronting the terrorist challenge”.
Now David Pollock pronounces his final recommendation: “Some
people over there want the U.S.
to help protect the flow of energy resources, reassure them of its commitments
to allies, and deal effectively with terrorist threats … If the U.S. still
wants to be a world leader, it would do well to heed this sage advice”.