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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| A generations-old defective American foreign policy |
| 2026-06-08 |
| [IsraelNationalNews] "The negotiations are going along well; actually, very well... I have a good relationship with Iran". President Donald Trump, June 3, 2026, regarding talks with Iran, and hours after he admitted reprimanding Benjamin Netanyahu quite harshly for Israel’s refusal to accept an end to the war. Someone is being fooled here. It must be the president of the United States. Because it certainly is not the Islamic Republic of Iran. And Israel will end up paying the price. It was almost forty years ago - during a discussion about the American role in the Middle East - that an important question was posed. It was not rhetorical. The question was rather simple - as was the answer that followed. But - because it was a confession that few wished to be associated with, it has remained unspoken for those same forty years. The question. Why - in the conflict in the Middle East, between Israel and its neighbors - has American foreign policy, certainly as espoused by its US State Department, almost invariably adopted a position that is more critical of Israel than its Arab and Muslim neighbors, most who are outwardly belligerent towards the Jewish State? Forty years ago, the answer was given by a rather insignificant State Department Arabist who, axiomatically and by definition, would be sitting on the Arab/Muslim side of the fence. The answer was short, and honest. But it upset his superiors in the State Department as well as some of the elite decision-makers who orchestrated American foreign policy. Enough - that a directive was issued that the answer which he proffered be "retired" as illegitimate and not to be mentioned again. A quasi-official denial - behind diplomatic circles - seemed to offer the proof that it was indeed both honest and true. The answer then - and yet still true today - even among those who do not share the Arabist "zeitgeist" - was profound in its simplicity. In a nutshell - this was the honest confession of the State Department apparatchik who did not realize the controversy that would follow. The US State Department, he explained, fully understood that the Middle East conflict (as they called it then, to avoid any subjective analysis of who was right and who was wrong) was a conflict between the civilized and the savage. The actual language that the State Department official used - then - was "between the civilized and the less civilized". Given this reality - the American position was predicated on the belief that one could reason with the former, but not the latter - based on the simple human dynamics. That the former would be reasonable - and amenable to compromise - while the latter was not, with a temperament that was neither reasonable nor open to accommodation. The obvious conclusions became the foundation of US State Department protocol for over two generations. Israel could be expected to be agreeable to concessions while its neighbors, falling somewhere between obstinate and barbaric, could not. I've often wondered: What would US imposed ceasefires between Israel and Arab would look like if the US official in charge had to bear personal accountability for their success? |
| Posted by:Grom the Reflective |
| #4 |
| Posted by: mossomo 2026-06-08 13:09 |
| #3 |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2026-06-08 09:22 |
| #2 |
| Posted by: Spats Whereck2759 2026-06-08 09:06 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2026-06-08 09:00 |