While awaiting the outcome of Israel's election and the formation of a new government, the optimists (I would like to be one) need to think about the whole picture. Charles Freeman, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a man with strong views and deep knowledge gave a very long speech (said to have been given on March 10, 2014 by Jim Lobe at LobLog, and published on March 10, 2015. Lobe has now corrected the date: speech given March 10, 2015; PHEW!). Here is the link to the published speech. Here is the link to LobLog. They are both the same! Equally long!
Freeman's analysis is sobering. As he says, he does not mince words.
Here is his set-up of the current situation. "It is often said that human beings learn little useful from success but can learn a great deal from defeat. If so, the Middle East now offers a remarkably rich menu of foreign-policy failures for Americans to study.
• Our four-decade-long diplomatic effort to bring peace to the Holy Land sputtered to an ignominious conclusion a year ago.
• Our unconditional political, economic, and military backing of Israel has earned us the enmity of Israel’s enemies even as it has enabled egregiously contemptuous expressions of ingratitude and disrespect for us from Israel itself.
• Our attempts to contain the Iranian revolution have instead empowered it.
• Our military campaigns to pacify the region have destabilized it, dismantled its states, and ignited ferocious wars of religion among its peoples.
Our efforts to democratize Arab societies have helped to produce anarchy, terrorism, dictatorship, or an indecisive juxtaposition of all three.
• In Iraq, Libya, and Syria we have shown that war does not decide who’s right so much as determine who’s left.
• Our campaign against terrorism with global reach has multiplied our enemies and continuously expanded their areas of operation.
• Our opposition to nuclear proliferation did not prevent Israel from clandestinely developing nuclear weapons and related delivery systems and may not preclude Iran and others from following suit.
• At the global level, our policies in the Middle East have damaged our prestige, weakened our alliances, and gained us a reputation for militaristic fecklessness in the conduct of our foreign affairs. They have also distracted us from challenges elsewhere of equal or greater importance to our national interests."
