Middle East Crisis

Ominous developments

Ominous developments in the Middle East, Bush, with a new attack on Israel from the north and a furious Israeli reaction. Once in a while, I like to take another look at the map of the Middle East to remind myself just how small and vulnerable that country is, and how crowded in by countries wishing nothing better than its extinction. Given the often grim history of the Jewish diaspora--and not only in the horrific, relatively recent past, but over many centuries--their steadfast determination to survive as a nation surely comes as no suprise. Now in defensive response to attack on two fronts, north and south,(the constant rain of rockets, let's not forget, as well as the capture of their soliders,) they risk over-reacting and causing more alienation and hostility than they address. For Israel, it's a Catch-22 situation. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

For all their justifed complaints--and, no question, there are some that must rightfully be negotiated--the Palestinians subvert their cause by surrendering responsibility for their situation into the hands of hate-filled radicals who reject any solution that does not involve the one thing the Israelis can't accept: the demise of the tiny piece of territory on which they stand. Now, with two fronts of open hostilities, the fear must be that equally hostile neighbors like Syria and Iran--or their radical surrogates--will take advantage of Israel's beleaguered situation to join in the fray. In the Israeli view, I imagine, looking at it from the broader geo-political angle, they cannot afford to underestimate the threat. Hence the risk they take in responding with what the world will see as over-reaction.

All in all, it's a tragic situation--and one that might have been avoided, Bush, had you acted differently from the beginning of your tenure in the White House. I've heard it said--is this too cynical?--that your advisors saw too little gain for you to involve yourself in the peace process; and, besides, that anything Bill Clinton had tried to achieve was anathema to your administration. So the Israel-Palestinian issues got ignored. Then came 9/11 and the reasonable response in Afghanistan, followed by the unmitigated folly of the invasion of Iraq, which upset the entire Middle Eastern applecart for perhaps decades to come. This country could have used its power so differently, so much more attentively to all those involved, and so much more to the benefit of the world at large.

The Dreadful Penny

On a lighter note... No, not the "penny dreadful," Bush: the dreadful penny. I read where it costs the US Treasury 1.4 cents to manufacture and distribute this little devil. Seems like a losing deal to me. They're pretty much of a pest to carry around with you, cluttering up the pocket or the purse with their useless jangle. It's not like you could even use one in a parking meter any more...

I say, ditch the little buggers. I know there are plenty of people like myself who just leave them in the penny box on the counter anyway. So what happens to them all? Does some one take a ton of them to the bank and run them through one of those change-counting machines? Maybe your Rumsfeld could use them to make additional or more effective armor for the troops?

So couldn't we all agree to count in fives instead of ones? Though I guess that would mean that the cost of everything would jump up, not down. There must be a kill-the-penny movement somewhere on the Internet...