On Israel Obama will need a secular plan "B" 
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Plan "A" is typically an expression of American 'ideals' and 'power'
as defined by the Washington influence peddlers with the big bucks to
garner support for policies that suit their interests, and a big stick
to wield at the ballot box against  politicians who do not come
re-election.. 

Bush's presidency was defined by the neo-con / Christian evangelical
handle on policy definition and military initiatives for a Greater
Israel within the context of a bold neo-imperial Wolfowitz vision-
America the monopolist superpower defending geo-political interests
against enemies by creating a lily pad of military bases across the
globe, controlling any undesirable development of nuclear weapons by
any means. 

The Wolfowitz policy is straight out of Hitler's Mein Kampf - a
state's role of cutting down the tall poppies (states like Iraq and
Iran) and pulling out the weeds (assassination of anyone defined by
the Zionist-US alliance as an Islamic militant terrorist). 

The EU states didn't buy this vision, and where they have contributed
troops such as Afghanistan it is very much in a non-vanguard role.
Punitive terror campaigns such as the recent Israeli attack on Gaza,
with images supporting claims that Israeli soldiers ordered people out
of their homes and shot their children dead in front of them, leave
the EU nations aghast, and the Islamic world outraged.

Even the more ardent supporters of US policies such as Australia were
last week actively issuing counter images such as Afghanistan action
footage to displace the prima face reality of cold blooded Zionist
terror from Australian TV screens. These images and reports could not
as easily be countered by Israeli Army Media Units who routinely paint
a terrorist behind every dead mother and child. The Australian PM
lambasted a local Islamic guru who in a 5 year old video clip
suggested some light corporal punishment was OK against one's wife if
she misbehaved. 

What words of admonition did the Australian PM have for these cold
blooded Zionist atrocities- none! 

When one lifts the skull caps and examines the ideals of the Christian
fundamentalist conservatives for Greater Israel your find a
dyed-in-the-wool apocalypsnut as fervent for biblical prophesy
emulation as any product of a Pakistani madrassa for some future
Islamic neo-Caliphate. Every atrocity is lost in the surreal haze of
prophecy- of the End times; the Rapture; or the second-coming of
Christ and is welcomed as a sign of immanent salvation not as a
provocation to draw the Islamic nations into conventional wars they
cannot win, and thus a factor in hastening their development of WMD
for defense of sovereignty.

The danger in drawing foreign policy directly out of Mein Kampf is
that one is temping fate- to repeat history not to change it. When
delusional propaganda systems are the basis of action, a nation
becomes ideological locked in the quagmire of plan A. The fascist
propaganda system having created a momentum towards disaster could
only be rectified with the inevitable crash with reality- with 100
million dead and Europe in ruins. 

If the USA cannot find a rational plan B, one ought to factor in 1
billion dead in any future global conflagration. The precedent was
created in the final days of WW2 with the USA's use of nuclear
weapons- WMD are OK if it serves a nation's interest to use them. In
future wars we can add viral and biological agents into the WMD option
mix as well.

Plan A favored by the Bush administration was a road map to nowhere-
to a mythic two state solution to the conflict. The reason this was a
farce was that the borders of Israel were never defined. To qualify
for a peace settlement the Palestinian militants would need to
recognize an ambit vision of Greater Israel, one that would include
Jerusalem and much of the West Bank and thus rob themselves of the
requisite territory necessary for any viable two state solution. With
Israeli settlement along the Jordan River, it would cut off any border
access with Jordan effectively creating a Palestinian state that would
be little more than a landlocked Bantustan-like client territory
surrounded and dominated by its arch enemy- Israel. This client entity
would be in accordance with Bush's biblical vision of the
re-establishment of Israel but far from any western concept of
sovereign state.

Supplying hi-tech military weaponry to militant Zionists who occupy
and expand Israeli settlement while assassinating Islamic resistance
fighters- hardly defines Bush as an even handed broker for peace. Thus
the US plan A is perceived as a farce in every country not dominated
by the apocalypsnuts of the Judeo-Christian Right.

Which bring us to Obama and how dyed-in-the-wool he is for the same
biblical vision as Bush, or how much that vision is merely a cloak of
conventionality masking a pragmatic secularist at heart. Obama's team
of advisers comes out of the old circus school of the Clinton years so
and as they are supporters of the same two state rhetoric there is
little prospect for a alternative voice to be heard. 

One remembers Obama signing a statement in support of Israeli action
in the recent Lebanon war- and presumably support for the bombing of
Lebanon villages with US supplied cluster-bombs in its final days- an
act designed to maximize civilian casualties. The sad truth is that
'on the evidence', Obama was silent about the recent Zionist terror
campaign in Palestine because he must of political necessity support
it, but is cleaver enough to know the damage such admissions would do
to his future prospects in dealing with moderate Muslim states- hence
the tight lip. 

Farce is farce, there is no spin doctoring that Obama can muster to
salvage Plan A - neither to make it more respectable to the world at
large, nor to Muslim moderates in the Arab world and beyond.

The task for Obama, if he is serious about change, is to devise an
alternative secular plan B - a plan that while recognized existing
realities of the permanent Israeli annexation of the West Bank and
Gaza, gives political protection to Israeli Jews while at the same
time giving equal civil and increasing democratic rights to the
Palestinian Muslim population. The question of a two state
partitioning can be put at a referendum in the future, if the
citizenry would actively seek it being incapable of working together
in an integrated Israel-Palestine for a common good. 

The Israel-Palestine parliament would initially be accorded a 60:40
weighting factor in favor of Jewish representation but the ratios
would vary by 2.5% every 5 years with full equality at 50:50 in 20
years but with the constitutional weight of each vote always no
greater than 50:50 irrespective of the changes in demographics in the
following decades. This solves the ticking time bomb for the Zionists-
the realization one day Jews will be a minority in Israel. The right
of return of displaced Palestinians ought to be included in the deal
but again with a resettlement limit of 2.5% every 5 years. This
balances the power equation between a formal split via referendum or
giving a multicultural society a serious go.

Multicultural societies are increasingly the norm in many political
systems but are peaceful places of coexistence only so far as the
ideologues are merely a vociferous minority, held in check by the
interests of the majority who see advantages in cooperation. In a
secular state of Israel-Palestine Muslims would get the advantages of
an improved education and health system, improved employment prospects
with Jewish strengths in the arts and sciences. Jews would get a
competitive economy, with ample labor, and vast opportunities for
expanding tourism, normalized relations with Islamic states and a more
attractive security environment for Jewish immigration to Israel from
abroad.

To date the secular voice of moderation has scarcely been heard above
the rabid Zionists and Christian apocalypsnuts - no plan B has ever
seen the light of day, so lip service for Plan A continues on. 

Rhetoric doesn't make reality. It doesn't rescue American jobs, nor
the global financial system, nor save one from wasting one's precious
time and money on irrational ideals that have zero hope of
realization. 

The real test for Obama, if he is serious about change, is whether he
has the smarts to hear any alternative secular voice, to abandon the
failed concepts and theist rhetoric of the past, to take out a clean
sheet of paper and start anew. Window dressing won't cut it anymore as
a substitute for serious reform. All secularists may do is give him a
few tips along the way, it up to Obama or presidents who follow, to
re-discover a more moderate secular path to international peace and
stability.

Dev Carter