Even though I'm not willing
Even though I'm not willing to trek with him to the land of the Eternal Straight European, Pat Buchanan occasionally sums a position up succintly:
"While Israel is indeed our ally in the war on terror, its annexations of Arab land, its dispossession of the Palestinian people, and its denial of their right to a homeland and state of their own on land their fathers farmed for a thousand years are a principal cause of this war and a primary reason why America's reputation has been ravaged in the Arab world."
This is written in the context of a refutation of moralist William Bennett's stalwart defense of Israel, which is based upon the idea that, because America and Israel are "both democracies," our fates our "intertwined."
For a long time, I was of the opinion that Israel, with its avowed purpose as an ethnic state, and its legal privileges and rights given expressly to Jews alone, didn't quite deserve the name "democracy." In the course of defending America's own ethical evolution, however, I belatedly realized that (of course!) America, too, had a stage of growth in which a portion of its citizens weren't accorded full benefit and protection of the law and the rights laid out in the documents of our founding. With great effort and struggle, we moved on, and we continue to struggle with the moral legacy of our less-than-illustrious past. We had the luxury of doing so on a vast continent, with few agressors along our borders. We were lucky.
Israel is not so lucky. There is dynamic and impassioned debate within that country about every aspect of its existence: its Orthodoxy, its secularism, its wars, its peace...everything. We here on our large and comfortable continent hear little of this debate, which is unfortunate. It has often been remarked, in fact, that were it not for the constant pressure of outside aggression, the nascent state would have dissolved into the chaos of civil war long ago.
Imagine, then, if America had been beset on all sides by violent aggressors in the mid 19th century. How likely is it that our great universalist reforms would have come to pass when they did?
When we observe the Middle East, we are looking at history on the hoof. A great failing of the American psyche is our impatience with the pace of history, perhaps best exemplified by Bill Clinton's last-ditch Middle Eastern diplomatic efforts in the final months of his presidency. As a nation we have grown so much, so fast, that we reel from the speed of the changes, and think that our social, cultural, and political vertigo is the normal state of being in the world. This affects our outlook on the rest of the world. We demand that Israel reach the point of universal respect for all peoples, immediately. We demand that the Palestinians learn lessons of democracy that took Europe centuries to learn, and which we here in America are still studying. We forget that, at the beginning of this century, the Middle Eastern "nations" weren't even lines on a map.
So no, Mr. Will, Arafat most likely isn't going to preside over a "placid little democracy." And Israel really doesn't have the time or the space to deal with the niceties of universalism that we are privileged to be able to deal with here in America. The reason that the conflict seems so intractable, senseless, and endless is because it is the American way to expect the proper changes to be implemented immediately and, once that is done, we strive to believe that the problem is solved. Then, we're surprised and outraged when--for example--a coalition of African Americans sues a bunch of corporations and demands reparations for a practice that ended almost a century and a half ago.
It would be nice if, rather than demand that everyone simply "get it," we could focus our efforts--and our use of force--on creating conditions that would make such "getting" possible. But that's vague and impractical at best. Too many people are dying.
So--as usual--I am left simply shaking my head at all of the angry screaming monkeys, flinging their feces at one another as they fight over their scrap of jungle.
One way or another, history will provide the solution. It is highly unlikely that it will be a pleasant one.
