Mitt Romney has just announced that Israeli state has enjoyed success stating:
“And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the “hand of providence.”
And he will do well with this statement as racist as it is because he was pandering to several rich patrons who share this limited view. Of course this view will do nothing to help quell the anger in the impoverished Gaza Strip or other areas where Arab Palestinians live in the impoverished shadow of Israel's glory Announcements like this only fuel the fire that America does not understand or respect the Arab world.
The Arab world is right in this regard. America's arrogance is unabashed. We went into Iraq promising to make it a democracy and free. We proclaimed that her people would welcome us as liberators, we were found to be conquerors and an occupying enemy instead. We wanted to plant democracy, but were unprepared for the anti-American sentiment of the people and hence a democracy that we could not trust.
We destabilized the control that we had created over Iran and now face growing concern in all corners of the Arab world. Wherever former dictators, who have largely been secular, have been replaced with popular governments, we find that those governments are increasingly Islamist and radically anti western in their bent. Rather than forging an alliance for the future our last ten years of influence in the middle east have resulted in a rising new order that is more than ever opposed to Western values. We have planted democracy but at the same time ensured that confrontation of value systems will escalate.
Candidate Romney may gather voter and financial support from his saber rattling in the Middle East, but whoever wins the White House will inherit a more hostile world. The chances for peace diminish in a climate of aggressive display, sooner or later someone will decide to stand their ground and the dominoes will fall.
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