ARAB SPRING - Worries 9/2011

"Tumult of Arab Spring Prompts Worries in Washington" by STEVEN LEE MYERS, New York Times 9/17/2011

Excerpt

While the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring created new opportunities for American diplomacy, the tumult has also presented the United States with challenges — and worst-case scenarios — that would have once been almost unimaginable.

What if the Palestinians’ quest for recognition of a state at the United Nations, despite American pleas otherwise, lands Israel in the International Criminal Court, fuels deeper resentment of the United States, or touches off a new convulsion of violence in the West Bank and Gaza?

Or if Egypt, emerging from decades of autocratic rule under President Hosni Mubarak, responds to anti-Israeli sentiments on the street and abrogates the Camp David peace treaty, a bulwark of Arab-Israeli stability for three decades?

“We’re facing an Arab awakening that nobody could have imagined and few predicted just a few years ago,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a recent interview with reporters and editors of The New York Times. “And it’s sweeping aside a lot of the old preconceptions.”

It may also sweep aside, or at least diminish, American influence in the region.

"That would have once been almost unimaginable." Now that's an understatement.

As to, "It may also sweep aside, or at least diminish, American influence in the region," it MAY be about time.

All the years an effort we (the U.S.) have put into this problem, all to not, it could be a good idea to step aside and let the actual people involved tackle the problem. Make Israel and Palestine take the full responsibility and consequences.

My opinion on our diplomatic relationship with Israel is what I call a "Friends don't let friends drive drunk" approach. If we are TRUE friends of Israel we should NOT be supporting their "drunk-driving" policies toward Palestine. The policies that aggravate the war (and it is a war) between Israel and Palestine. Both sides ARE at fault, but our special relationship with Israel, as a friend, has special standing. True friendship requires NOT supporting bad behavior.