 |
Stan Goodenough is an experienced journalist who has written about politics in South Africa and the Middle East for such organizations as The Daily Dispatch of East London, South Africa, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Post, and the Virtual HolyLand website. He has been a South African gentile resident in Israel for 12 years. Stan is editor of and .
|
|
|
|
By Stan Goodenough
October 31, 2006
President George W. Bush is "personally committed" to helping create a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza because he believes that Israel's survival depends on it.
The American leader spelled out to newspaper columnists invited to the Oval Office last Wednesday why he is "a two-state solution person" when it comes to the Arab-- Israeli conflict.
"I don't see how Israel can possibly survive in the long term unless there is a democracy on her border. I don't see how she retains her Jewish state if there is not a place for Palestinians to go to," he said.
Bush made these statements against the backdrop of an extended explanation of his overall strategic approach to helping bring peace to the world including, of course, to the Middle East.
A closer look at this explanation may help answer some of the questions Christian Zionists are asking about the president's policy on Israel.
Bush said that he had called for the get-together with these influential writers in order to provide them with a clearer understanding of "what the guy's thinking."
"You either like it or don't like it but at least it gives you a sense of where I am strategizing," he said.
Bush said he believes "it is conceivable that 20 or 30 years from now the world will see a Middle East in which ? extreme forms of Islam compete for power, moderate governments will be toppled, oil will be used to extract concessions, and Iran will have a nuclear weapon, and writers such as yourself would say, what happened to them?
"How come they couldn't see the great conflict taking place in front of their very eyes? Why did they lose their nerve? Why did they not support moderate people who yearn for something better than the vision of the extremists?"
"And my answer to it is," he said, is that "I see the threat, and will use American power to protect ourselves, and at the same time, try to create the first victory in this ideological -- the first victories -- in the ideological war of the 21st century."
Bush described how he sees the world, where he believes it is headed, where it could head if helped in the right direction, and what he's doing to help head it that way.
He believes, he said, that the 21st Century world is caught up in "a great conflict ? between moderate people and ? ideologues that are totalitarian and kill to achieve their objective without conscience."
"Much of the thinking and the decision making that I do now is based on my belief that we are in this great ideological struggle."
Iran, together with all the extremists who identify with the goals of that Islamic state, stands on one side of this conflict.
America leads those on the other, moderate side.
When it comes to the Middle East, Bush sees the Israelis as among the moderates.
Notably he does not, however, count the Palestinian Arabs per se -- or the general Arab populations in the region ? as among the extremists.
On the contrary, in his understanding -- and this was borne out in an interview columnist Cal Thomas had with Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, on the same day the Oval Office meeting was taking place -- the majority of all Arabs are moderates.
It is only the relatively "few" among them, like the Hamas and the Hizb'allah, that are in the extreme fringe and bound together with Iran and others "by a common desire to spread their vision"
Most Arabs want to live in peace, he said, also with Israel.
What America had to do, he believes, was continue to lead the "moderates" that oppose that extremist and violent vision.
And when it comes to the Middle East, the goal of the Bush administration is to plant and nurture democratic societies -- including a democratic Palestine -- that will see the extremists marginalized and, ultimately disappear.
"I'm a two-state-solution person. I don't see how Israel can possibly survive in the long term unless there is a democracy on her border. I don't see how she retains her Jewish state if there is not a place for Palestinians to go to."
For the leader of the free world, then, the Middle East conflict is part of a struggle between ideologues and moderates. And it can be best resolved by ensuring that the moderates win over the ideologues.
What Bush apparently does not see at all, is that this is a conflict involving God and His Word on the one side against Satan and his determined effort to thwart that Word and its Author on the other.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
