WHY ARE WE STILL BOWING?
By: David Harsanyi

Washington Examiner
/columns/Why-are-we-still-bowing_-88262892.html
Ma rch 18 2010

March 17, 2010 Not long after President Barack Obama gave his
conciliatory speeches to the Islamic world, he chose not to meddle in
the sham election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In fact,
he offered not a word of support for the men and women who took to
the streets against that totalitarian regime.

Then, as "man-made disasters" continued to erupt spontaneously
around the world — including at a United States military base —
the administration held steadfast in using non-offensive euphemisms,
lest anyone be slighted by our jingoist need to use words that mean
something.

And when the president was given a chance to fulfill a campaign promise
and acknowledge the genocide of 1.5 million Christian Armenians by
Turks during World War I, he instead did everything he could to block
the resolution.

These days, as Christian farmers are being slaughtered by Muslim
machetes in Nigeria, outrage from the White House is difficult to find
— though it made sure to instruct our Libyan ambassador to apologize
to "Colonel" Moammar Gadhafi after he offered some mildly critical
comments about the dictator’s call for jihad against Switzerland
(true story).

Gadhafi can be forgiven, but there are transgressions that can’t. One
such sin was perpetrated by Israel after the nation’s decision to
allow a new housing project to be built for its citizens in its
capital city, Jerusalem.

The White House became so agitated with the future 1,600-unit housing
project — and the ill-advised timing of the announcement, which came
during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit — that the casual onlooker
might have been led to believe that the Jerusalem neighborhood in
question was part of some unfinished negotiation with Palestinians
or even that it was one of those "settlements." It was neither.

Still, according to The Jerusalem Post, Hillary Clinton telephoned
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who, along with
many other Israeli officials, apologized for the ill timing of the
project’s announcement — to "berate," "rebuke," "warn" and "condemn"
Israel. White House senior adviser David Axelrod used NBC’s "Meet
the Press" to say that the incident was an "affront," an "insult"
and "very, very destructive."

As the administration was manufacturing this anger, the Palestinian
Authority was preparing the newly minted Dalal Mughrabi Square. You
know, just a place for folks to gather and commemorate the 32nd
anniversary of 1978’s Coastal Road Massacre, in which 37 Israelis —
13 of them children — were murdered in a bus hijacking.

An American named Gail Rubin, who happened to be snapping some nature
pictures in the area, also was gunned down.

No worries. No affront taken. That’s not "very, very destructive"
to the process. We are above the fray, above frivolous notions of
"allies" or "friends." History only matters when our enemies deem it
important. We don’t want to tweak the fragile mood of the Arab street.

If the purpose of this manufactured angst is to pressure Israel into
handing parts of Jerusalem over to a corrupt Fatah (we don’t need to
discuss Hamas, which, unlike Fatah, has the decency not to pretend
to recognize Israel’s right to exist), then someone is exhibiting a
profound naivet?. And if the purpose of pursuing a Jewish-free West
Bank is to create good will with the Muslim world, good luck.

It is this administration’s prerogative to change our foreign policy
— and allies. Yet it would be nice if someone reiterated to our new
Muslim friends that the United States has yet to deploy a single
soldier to risk life and limb for the security of Israel. It has,
however — only recently — sent thousands of Americans to perish for,
in part, the cause of Muslim freedom in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

That sacrifice alone should be enough to absolve us from any more
bowing — or kowtowing.

Examiner Columnist David Harsanyl is nationally syndicated by Creators
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