Us non-supporters of Israel often want to tear our hair out about the near-untouchable status it enjoys in this country-our media, our political class, and the majority of our population all accept on faith the pro-Israeli position-never mind the truth. (This is part one of a nine-part documentary-the other 8 parts should be in the related videos box). For over 60 years, the people of Palestine have had to deal with stuff like this.
Israel's sacred cow status in this country is harmful to our interests-much of our bad image in the Middle East comes from our unquestioning support for that country. If the United States hadn't been so obsequious to Israel, people like Bin Laden would have a much harder time gaining a following.
Plus, our other allies start getting the idea they're entitled to the same treatment.
From BBC
...Mr Obama held open the prospect that his administration would get involved in sorting out Kashmir and might even send a high profile envoy.
America's latest "strategic ally", however, is not pleased.
India controls the Kashmir Valley and believes it has largely vanquished the armed separatist groups, many of which have had links to Pakistan.
A US special envoy could be seen as throwing into question the Indian claim to Kashmir, and encouraging Kashmiris to campaign against Indian rule.
Ever since a peace accord with Pakistan back in 1972, India has insisted that the future of Kashmir is a bilateral matter.
Its message to the rest of the world's diplomats could be summarised as: "Keep away from Kashmir, it's none of your business."
(snip)
Indeed the veteran American journalist and foreign affairs expert Selig Harrison declared this month that President-elect Obama had "made his first big foreign-policy mistake" even before taking office. The supposed mistake: pledging US intervention in the Kashmir dispute.
"By questioning Indian control of the Kashmir Valley," wrote Harrison in the Washington Times, "the United States would strengthen jihadi forces in both Islamabad and Srinagar, the capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. More importantly, it would undermine improving US-India relations."
The rest of the article is more optimistic, citing quotes from the new administration suggesting it will make solving Kashmir a high priority, despite India's "how dare you question!" tone.
I hope they're serious about it-a solution to the Kashmir conflict would make life much easier for America-it would weaken the Pakistani military, which has long used the threat of India as a justification for its overthrow of successive civilian governments. A comprehensive peace would free up the Pakistani military, obsessed with defending Punjab against an imagined forthcoming Indian invasion, to concentrate on the real invaders, the Taliban who have taken over much of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. A mutually acceptable peace would also undermine fundamentalist South Asian terror groups like the one that perpetrated the Mumbai atrocities, many of which have been (and perhaps still are) supported by elements of the Pakistani intelligence service as weapons against India.
More importantly perhaps, solving the Kashmir crisis is the right thing for America to do. The Kashmir dispute goes back to 1948 (the same year, coincidentally, that the Israeli-Palestinian mess started), and is briefly described here.
This description, however, misses the sheer horror of what has gone on there, something this piece in the Washington Post, written in 1992, describes in moving terms.
Tens of thousands of people have died violently in the Kashmir Valley, a corner of India whose natural beauty has been savaged by a vicious guerrilla war for the past 13 years, a place where fading posters of scenic lakes and mountain crags were long ago eclipsed by news photos of kerchiefed women wailing over corpses.
During numerous visits to Kashmir over the past four years, I have written about dozens of these deaths, always struggling to achieve that fraudulent balance between outrage and impartiality. Sometimes I saw the mutilated bodies of young Kashmiri guerrilla suspects dumped by roadsides, sometimes the charred bodies of young Indian soldiers torn to shreds by grenade blasts.
Always, the killings were fresh fodder for the propaganda war being waged by India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri separatist movement, whose competing claims to the divided border region are rooted in the chaotic, never-clarified partition of Hindu-dominated India that created Muslim Pakistan more than half a century ago.
And, as this report from Human Rights Watch details, much, though certainly not all, of this violence was perpetrated by India, which has oppressed the Muslims of the Kashmir Valley for over 60 years, defying UN resolutions and its own signed agreement to allow the people of Kashmir to democratically vote on whether to be part of India or not. Yet some so-called "experts" insist that anything other than unwavering support for India is support for terrorism.
Kashmir and Israel have similar in many ways. Both occurred in former British colonies, when that country abandoned its former subjects to sort out through violence the contradictory promises it had made them. Both have occurred under the silence-and in the case of Israel, enthusiastic support-of the West. Both have defied repeated attempts to solve them. And for the good of our nation, and much more importantly, the good of humanity-both need a solution.
For too long America has looked to the short term in its foreign policy, blinding itself to the abuses our "strategic partners" and "friends of democracy" have perpetrated. Its time we act like the "force for good" our politicians love to say we are. Just maybe, the rest of the world will thank us for it.