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| Middle East |
| Clinton butts in, calls for international force... |
| 2002-05-07 |
| An international military force including Americans should be sent to the Middle East to end the conflict in the region, former president Bill Clinton told 2,000 students, faculty, and alumni at Hunter College in New York yesterday. This man is a Rhodes scholar? "If there is going to be anything like a lasting settlement," Clinton said, "I believe it will require international forces – Americans, Europeans, Russians, and others, and I think we should show up and do it." Did he get that from some poll? Where? The Gaza Strip? Clinton urged the students to support his stance. He said Israel would reject an international force that did not include Americans, explaining, "The Israelis believe that America is the only great country that cares whether they live or die... You should be for it. We have to do it." We've already discussed this, and we're pretty much all agreed that it's a marvelously bad idea. In fact, it stinks out loud. You can't have "peacekeepers" when there's no peace. When Israel isn't grinding through Palestinian streets in tanks and APCs, the Palestinians are swarming around Israelis and exploding. That doesn't sound an awful lot like peace. So what's to keep? And even if there was, why use Americans? The PA sees the U.S. as supporting Israel. The Israelis would be just as unhappy seeing Iranians as "peacekeepers." What about Samoa? Vanuatu? Peru? Mongolia? Kyrgyzstan? Estonia? How about Costa Rica? Think at least a little outside the box, |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |