WarSclerotic

Atacking an ally to appease foes – The Trentonian Opinion: Serving Trenton and surrounding communities. (trentonian.com).

By DIANA WEST

Whew. We can breathe easier now that the Obama administration has taken a tough-as-scimitars line with Israel. Its blueprints for new housing, the administration says, pose a dire threat to U.S. troops.

As Vice President Joseph Biden put it, referring to a new housing project in Jerusalem: “This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

In other words, it’s not the Muslim-made IED planted in the roads of Helmand Province that’s the problem; it’s the Jewish-built condo in Jerusalem.

The effects of such babble are as palpable as they are shameful.

The same week the Israeli housing project launched Obama administration diplomatic fireworks, the White House and most media ignored the Palestinian Authority’s commemoration of Dalal Mughrabi — a mass murderess who led an attack killing 38 Israelis in 1978. She now has a public square named in her honor.

In its silence on this calumny, the U.S. government has acquiesced to the jihadist narrative that Jews building homes in Israel’s capital is incitement, while Muslims naming public squares for terrorist mass murderers of Jews is a ho-hum event. On with the “peace process.”

This constant, drip, drip, drip policy of appeasing Islamic extremists has been eroding our national security posture since long before 9/11. It has been reshaping a world perspective that conforms with that of the Islamic world.

This eruption over housing in Jerusalem — an “insult,” an “affront,” said White House adviser David Axelrod — strangely parrots the language of a purportedly “offended” Islam.

Gen. David Petraeus put a military gloss on this same policy in recent testimony before the U.S. Senate.

He spoke of “insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace,” the polite way of alluding to the open-ended jihad against Israel. This, he went on to say, presents “distinct challenges” to America’s interests in the region.

Why? “The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” he said. “Arab anger over the Palestinian question” limits U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the region and “weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world.” Meanwhile, the general said, “al-Qaida and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”

Subtext: If Israel would shrink into nothingness, everything would be beautiful.

Petraeus’ testimony about “Arab anger” echoes his concerns, as reported by Foreign Policy online, about Arab complaints on “the Palestinian issue.” Petraeus, Foreign Policy writes, believes this anger is “jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region.”

Question: Since when is assuaging “Arab anger” the concern of U.S. war planners? Answer: Since U.S. war planners became U.S. counter-insurgency planners — and Petraeus literally helped write the book on counterinsurgency. Playing to Arab demands, to Muslim demands, is the heart of counterinsurgency’s “hearts and minds” doctrine.

The general is employing the classic buzz terms — Arab “anger,” Arab “perception” of the “Palestinian question,” etc. — that are hallmarks of the Arab-ist slant on the jihad against Israel.

This jihad is now picking up a terrifying speed after the Obama administration’s apology to Libya’s dictator Moammar Gadhafi, its “outreach” to Iran’s tyrant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, let us not forget, President Obama’s bow to Saudi King Abdullah..

—Syndicated columnist and author Diana West blogs at dianawest.net.

This entry was posted on March 23, 2010 at 8:02 AM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.