[HCCN] fw: Helen Thomas on Telling the Truth

[Judith Robbins]



Published on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Albany Times Union
Accepting Various Truths

by Helen Thomas
No one in the Obama administration is going to acknowledge that our  
foreign policy in the Middle East has alienated many Arabs.

The U.S. pro-Israel policy and our shocking neglect of the  
beleaguered Palestinians underlie almost every initiative or tactical  
tilt that comes out of Washington.
President Obama and his predecessors in the White House have scored  
domestic political points by embracing this world view. This is one  
vantage point that is truly bipartisan, to the point where no one  
discusses it.
Michael Scheuer, a former CIA specialist on the al-Qaida terrorists,  
complained on C-SPAN recently that any debate about American support  
for Israel is "normally squelched."
"For anyone to say our support for Israel doesn't hurt us is to just  
defy reality," he added.
Another former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, says the 9/11 Commission  
report noted that Khalid Sheikh -- the mastermind of the 9/11  
terrorist attacks -- cited his violent disagreement with U.S. support  
for Israel as the motivating dynamic behind the attacks.
Obama knows enough about the Middle East that tightening airport  
security is not the whole answer to fighting terrorism. He should try  
a more even-handed policy in the region.
Grievances of the Arab man on the street include bitter criticism of  
the U.S. for supporting harsh authoritarian regimes in the Arab world  
and the failure of those U.S.-backed regimes to help the Palestinians  
in Gaza.
Surely after several years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can  
dispense with the obfuscation and evasion that flood forth from  
official U.S. megaphones.
Terrorism spawned in the Middle East is not the only threat we face.
As the American economy digs out from the debris of the Great  
Recession triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble, we should  
think about what could happen about another bubble that invisibly  
chugs through the American economy.
I refer to our bloated defense spending.
The United States spends more for its arsenal than any other 10  
countries combined. According to the Stockholm International Peace  
Research Institute, the U.S. accounts for more than 40 percent of the  
world's total military spending. China is in second place, at a  
relatively puny 5.8 percent.
If the U.S. defense spending bubble were ever to deflate, domestic  
job losses would be catastrophic, a stunning fact that raises the  
question of whether we can ever afford peace.
The American people have long shown they can handle the truth. When  
it comes to the Middle East and to threats to our economy, so should  
our leaders.
© 2010 Albany Times Union
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail:  
helent at hearstdc.com .  Among other books she is the author of Front  
Row at The White House: My Life and Times .



Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/19-1
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