Center of the Earth
columnist: DigitalBob

Topic: Foreign Policy
Rice's Extremism

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Criticism of Secretary Rice's commitment to fighting "Extremism" at United Jewish Communities conference

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by DigitalBob
(Libertarian)
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Have you ever had that experience where you have to rub your eyes and scratch your head after reading something in the news?  I came across this headline at Reuters.com: "U.S.'s Rice Accuses Iran of Spreading Extremism".  Reading on, I see that Secretary Rice is arguing that the Palestinians could be our allies in the War on Terror.  A peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians will somehow keep Iran from spreading "violent extremism". I'm skeptical.

I don’t see how making friends with an unstable country, such as Palestine, is in our best interest.  Ever.  Something didn’t sound right, so I did a little research. 

By what I can tell, part of Palestine exists as Occupied Territories along the Mediterranean Sea called the Gaza Strip, bordering Israel and Egypt, and is ruled by Hamas (friends of Iran).  Palestinians also occupy parts of the West Bank of the Jordan river, and is governed partly by the Palestine (National) Authority.  The PA was created as part of the Oslo accords in 1993, as a settlement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.  The PLO at one time was considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.  Hamas was elected by the Palestinians in Gaza, but had to fight the Fatahs, who disagreed with the outcome of the elections.  The Fatahs now run the PA in the West Bank.  Hamas is listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, by the U.S. State department (http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/37191.htm).  And because of that, the U.S. doesn’t recognize the winner of a democratic election.    

If that sounds twisted to you, try explaining it slowly to someone who’s never heard of Fatah or Gaza. I bet dollars to donuts, you will get some incredulous looks.

Americans don’t understand Jihad or religious wars.   We don’t understand the history of the Middle East.  For most Americans, it’s just not part of daily life.  We’ve got other things coming up this month.

We celebrate Thanksgiving Day on the fourth Thursday each November to remember a group of religious refugees, who survived their first winter in a new country, with the help of people who spoke a different language and had different religious beliefs.  They got lucky. 

To celebrate, we eat turkey, yams, stuffing, corn,  and cranberry sauce that still has the shape of the tin can it was in.  We travel great distances to be with family, so we can thank God for all our blessings.  In fact, many Americans will be in the airports on the busiest weekend of the year.  Grandma gets patted down by TSA for all her weapons.  What fun!

But the best part of being an American is that we try really hard to get along.  It is hard.  And we screw up.  And then we try again.  We forgive, we learn and we move on.  Somehow, we have to pray for justice without being consumed with revenge.

There was a rash of church burnings in 1996 by vandals who did it because of the thrill of it.  Since then, the National Coalition for Burned Churches and Community Empowerment (http://www.ncfbc.org/) have recorded 2,500 arsons that were church-related in a ten-year period.  It’s the sick individuals in this country that I’m more worried about—more so than the Extremist 10,000 miles away.

I  believe our saving grace is the First Amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

In any medium-sized U.S. city, you can pick up the Yellow Pages and find under "Churches" a list of a dozen different churches, including those catering to Islam and Judaism.  Even small towns may have three or four different brands of Christian churches.  Most of the time, we tolerate people of different faiths.  I like that.

To people in a different part of the world, these are Extreme ideas.  Israel is proud to be known as a Jewish state, according to their Declaration of Independence of 1948.  Iran officially identifies itself as the "Islamic Republic of Iran", and says so throughout its constitution.  Most of the time, it doesn’t affect me.  They can have any government they want.  But there is nothing that says that we have to guarantee the existence of another country, at the expense of our own.

Our Declaration of Independence says that the king should leave us alone so that we can make our own country.  The Constitution says that our government should let us run our own lives.  Maybe it’s time to extend those same courtesies to other countries, and let them figure it out on their own?  Or is that an "extreme" idea?  It wasn’t always so.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns.

The advise given us by George Washington in his Farewell Address about Europe might be applicable today in the Middle East, as well as the rest of the world.

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2007 DigitalBob, all rights reserved.
Published: Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Last modified: Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The views expressed in this article are those of DigitalBob only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. DigitalBob is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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