Monday 5 January 2009

Gaza and Bush's Nod

One can do no more than note that the Israeli action into Gaza is being done in the dying days of the Bush regime in the United States. He is giving them the nod, as he and Blair did with the pointless and counter-productive action in Lebanon some years ago.

We all know that taking out a political and military leadership in a situation of oppression simply grows another political and military leadership. They will still get their rockets and they will still fire them. All the Israelis will do is add to the ghetto reality of the overpopulated thin strip of land.

Bombing and destroying infrastructure, attacking in crowded centres, achieves nothing in the long term than destruction itself and living closer to the edge. The only way to improve security is to ease the grounds for extremism in the first place.

On this, I don't expect Obama to be much better, but he may (with Hillary Clinton) make a longer term and credible effort towards settlement of a Palestinian state. The Israelis might like to deliver a headache to him. All the present days illustrate is just what a disaster George W. Bush has been: ignorant, blinkered, pathetic and someone in power who leaves a trail of direct and surrogate death and destruction.

1 comment:

June Butler said...

We think very much alike, Adrian. Bush is pathetic all right, but he and his cohorts have done such great damage within the US and outside its boundaries, that pathetic seems not quite the right word.

I agree that Obama's policies toward Israel will not differ greatly from Bush's.