When Even Peace Is Not Worth It (6/25/02)
by Dean Hartwell
President Bush recently told the Palestinians that “peace [in the Middle
East] requires a new and different Palestinian leadership.” Though he did not
name anyone, he clearly indicated his desire for Yasser Arafat to step down as
the leader of Palestine.
Bush has refused to meet Arafat since the former took office in January 2001
and has criticized him for failing to crack down on terrorist attacks. Though
his disagreements with Arafat on a number of issues may be understandable, his
implicit call for the Palestinian leader to leave should prompt this question:
What if foreigners dictated our presidents?
Had any group of people told the United States that it would refuse to sell us
products we need, or buy our goods, or, worse, threatened force against us,
unless we replaced our president with a leader of their choice, our reaction
would be much like the Palestinians’: we would reject it. We might even call it
coercion and put sanctions or use force against the group.
The United States has a long history of imposing its will upon other people. We
persuaded some Columbians to turn against the wishes of their leaders and build
the Panama Canal. We sent military “advisors” to South Vietnam and later
ordered the assassination of the Diem brothers, their leaders. More recently, we
funded a group known as the Contras and equipped them to try to overthrow the
Nicaraguan government.
Each of these actions helped us to achieve goals for our nation, but at the
expense of others. The U.S. gained the rights to the Panama Canal, but earned the
distrust of many in Central America for the way we took it. The U.S. removed
two brothers with whom it had begun to disagree, but the people of South
Vietnam never held a free election after that. And the U.S. finally forced an
election of a friendly leader in Nicaragua with the help of the Contras, but
contributed to the killings of countless people in the process and made enemies
of other nations in the region.
Bush’s goal is peace in the Middle East without Arafat. But if this goal means
people angry at the United States for influencing Palestine’s choice of
leaders, we ought to question whether the goal is worth it.