In the New York Times, early this June 2011, David Brooks wrote about the depraved Middle East. Syria has been a state sponsor of terror for 30 years, with habitual torture techniques (I won’t go into the sordid details). During the past few weeks Hassad has killed more than 1,000 protestors and jailed over 10,000. This is one of the most depraved regimes ever, yet Israel is being asked to negotiate with this regime and compromise, trusting that Syria will observe any peace agreement. These processes towards peace are obtuse, and unwilling to face the true nature of certain governments. The current peace process is doomed because it cannot make distinctions between some countries that are perhaps not nice but at least somewhat normal such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, but others are fundamentally depraved, undermining universal principles of morality.
It’s crazy to get upset about who said what about the 1967 borders, as long as Hamas and Assad are in place. It is necessary to focus on the nature of regimes, not the boundaries between them. To have peace one must get rid of the depraved regimes such as Iraq and Libya, and we all acknowledge that Assad needs to be toppled and that Hamas needs to be marginalized. Obama’s campaign which promoted an engagement strategy failed, and we believe that his current doctrine has improved to be a more cautious regime-change strategy.
7 Comments