The practice of carrying two passports from two different nations is something that I really can’t wrap my mind around. While I’m sure that it could be convenient to have two different passports in the event you may want to visit a nation that has bad relations with the US, or in case one of your passports is seized or lost, having two different citizenships in two different nations could be a problem. This would be a problem especially if you happened to work for one of the governments of which you hold dual citizenship.
Let’s presume that you work for the United States government, and let’s go a step further and presume that you hold a top-secret security clearance. This could pose a significant risk if you held citizenship in a country that had a significant interest in something that the US was doing or someone or something that the US was investigating. Where would your loyalties lie? If we take this a step even further and imagine that the US was going to deliberately withhold information from your “other” country or even worse, somehow double-cross that country, what would you do? Where would your loyalty to the United States end and the loyalty to that other country begin?
We can even take this further. Let’s say that the “other” country in which you hold citizenship in was not only a country that represented your brethren, people that had your same culture and language, but lets say that this other country you belong to also was based on your religion? Now that’s a whole new ballgame. When you take an oath to your government to get a federal job, you must pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help you God. Now that’s a dilemma that nobody would want to face if the other nation you belong to happens to represent your religion too. The question would probably be answered by how religious you are or aren’t. Those that put God first and their country second would have a real moral dilemma.... http://univercia.blogspot.com/
You are probably wondering where I’m going with this. Well the facts are that we have a host of people that work or have worked with this administration that hold dual citizenship in both the US and Israel. The problem with this is that the Middle-East is the area that the US is currently concerned the most with. Israel of course, also has legitimate security concerns with the area. In fact, some information that crosses American official’s desks could possibly decide whether Israel continues to exist. This is a position that I wouldn’t want to find myself in if I were a citizen of both nations. Believe it or not, this country and Israel aren’t exactly joined at the hip, even though it may seem like that at times. That is no wonder, look at the people that hold this dual citizenship;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjxXX70_R0A
Michael Chertoff; Attorney General on 9/11, Director of Homeland
Security Ari Fliescher; Former Press Secretary to President Bush
Jack Abramoff: Jailed Lobbyist (supposedly entertained Mohammed Atta on his Yacht Days before 9/11)
Mark Grossman: Under Secretary for political affairs (Met with General Mahmoud Amhoud, head of Pakistani ISI on or about 9/11 the supposed financier of the hijackers.
Douglas Fein: Undersecretary of War and former member of PNAC (Project for a new American Century)
Paul Wolfowitz: Fein’s Boss, Former PNAC member, investigated for spying for Israel, resigned in World Bank scandal.
Dov Zakheim: Pentagon Comptroller when 2.3 Trillion Dollars went missing, former CFR member.
Elliot Abrams; Member of PNAC, NSA lied about Iran-Contra scandal plead guilty.
Lewis “Scooter” Libby: Former PNAC member, guilty of lying about outing of Valerie Plame, studied under Paul Wolfowitz. http://univercia.blogspot.com/
Henry Kissinger: Sat on War Policy Board under Perle, first chosen to lead 9/11 Commission...
William Kristol; PNAC Co-founder, strong advocate of Iraq War.
Phillip Zelkow: Advisor to Bush in 2000 campaign, led 9/11 Commission
Larry Silverstien: Owned WTC Complex, made several million dollars off 9/11....
The Department of Homeland Services has awarded a surprising number of sensitive security contracts to Israeli companies.... http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/
That’s quite a list, is it not? Where do these men’s loyalties lie? Don’t you believe that it is in US interests to bar people with dual citizenship from working at the highest levels of the US government? Do you believe that the cozy relationship we have with Israel could have been fostered by any of these men? I wonder how many decisions made were a direct result of their input. Maybe the time is right to stop the practice of dual-citizenship.
"In fact, it is too bad that we don't see many more boycotts in USA by official bodies unpleased with media outlets and journalists -- because a boycott on a journalist is in fact a citation. It means that the journalist is fulfilling its journalistic mission as the public's representative, rather than serving as the representative of the government ministry or corporation it reports on....
The problem, therefore, is not XYZ. The problem lies with the media outlets and journalists that are not boycotted on occasion. Perhaps this means they are not critical or biting enough. Therefore, here is yet another rule of thumb for the benefit of news consumers: Be careful of journalists who are loved by any government...."
Of course, Israel's self-identification with the "West" (i.e. western Europe and the United States) and its Machiavellian power politics toward the "East" (i.e. the Arab and Islamic worlds) have not been conducive to its intellectual and political integration into West Asia and North Africa. But one tends to concur with Jacqueline Rose when she writes in The Question of Zion, that "'Zionism' has always felt itself under threat and often for good reason." The idea of Israel--its foundational myths, its exclusionary tenor, its us-versus-them taxonomy--has been rejected by the region from the outset.
Within such a context, "hard" power politics has been the only way to address Israel's apparent "legitimacy dilemma" vis-a-vis its neighbors. Israeli decision-makers have never made a secret out of this strategy. It is discernable from Ben-Gurion's admission that the early Zionists were far from benevolent toward the Palestinians; Yitzak Shamir's statement that "neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat"; in the language of Berl Katznelson, the major theorist of Labor Zionism, who declared in 1929 that the "Zionist enterprise is an enterprise of conquest" and that "it is by no chance that I use military terms when speaking of settlement"; and the poems of Yosef Brenner (1905): "Hear O Israel! Not an eye for an eye! Two eyes for one, and all their teeth for any kind of humiliation!"
There is no suggestion here that there were no opposing views. But no serious historian of Israel, certainly not critical ones such as Shlomo Zand, Haim Gerber, Avi Shlaim or Ilan Pappe, would deny that systematic violence was instrumental to the consolidation of Israeli power in Palestine between 1947 and 1948 and that it was deemed necessary to sustain the infant Israeli state during recurring periods of crisis thereafter. This violence, which has ruled over the ordering of Palestine, led to seven inter-state wars, numerous acts of terrorism on both sides and caused Jenin and Sabra Shatila,courtesy of Ariel Sharon and CIA black operations... that same violence has been taken over and defied by the "natives", by the people who populate the region into which the idea of Israel has been implanted.
particularly pertinent: international legitimacy, viability and the status of the Kurds of northern Iraq.
First, international legitimacy. The state of Israel enjoys more such legitimacy than most countries in the world. The Balfour Declaration was ratified by the League of Nations; the state itself was created by the United Nations. Very few existing states were brought into being by the reigning world bodies--the acknowledged custodians of international law. Anyone calling for Israel's demise is thus directly violating the very "international legitimacy" that he/she usually claims to be upholding.
Yes, Israel has violated some international laws--as has just about every other country. And yes, the United Nations that created us has at times turned its back on us under the pressure of an automatic anti-Israel majority among its membership. Then too, there are Israelis and Israel supporters who prefer to base Israel's right to exist solely on ancient history, religious writ or the Holocaust--all telling and highly persuasive arguments insofar as we are indeed a much-persecuted people living in its historic native land, but arguments that catalyze weighty counter-arguments on the part of our detractors. And there is the Islamist assertion that the land we dwell on is sacred Muslim land that will not tolerate a non-Muslim sovereignty, no matter what the UN says.
So we can't convince everybody. But we are actually more "legitimate" than most sovereign states. The achievements of the Kurds of northern Iraq are very relevant to the issue of Israel's legitimacy and viability. The Kurdish semi-independent entity in Iraq is the second instance in modern history of a non-Arab people, after generations of persecution and dispersion, asserting its right to national self-determination in its historic homeland in the Middle East heartland with the approval of the international community. The first instance is Israel.
If you can acquiesce in what the Kurds in Iraq have accomplished, you must accept Israel. If you can't, that's okay too as long as you leave us alone. But if you insist on predicting our imminent demise and trying to make it happen, then know that you are swimming against the tide of history, legitimacy and justice. And that we and all the other decent people in the world will stop you... Now to Pakistan...
"Security measures are obviously necessary when one is dealing with irreconcilable elements who want to destroy our very way of life. I don't know see how you can talk with those kinds of people....."
But what about the model we have now been using in Anbar province in Iraq? The Sunnis in the "Sons of Iraq" and the "Awakening Councils" have become our partner in fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. Al Qaeda produced a backlash among the Sunnis and we have seen the benefit of supporting these groups. Is it possible to cultivate a similar realignment in Pakistan? Could the A.N.P. approach be one that we should support in a similar fashion?
One thing is for sure: There has been a change in Pakistan, and it is being driven by those who are emphasizing democratic processes and the rule of law. We should be on the right side of this. What's more, we have little choice. Pakistanis are moving in a direction that we cannot stop but should try to channel. That is common sense and good statecraft.
But as the Pakistanis make their decisions, they should also know that we have interests and stakes and will not be indifferent to what they do. Surely, for their own interests, they don't want those who employ terror and who are responsible for killing Benazir Bhutto to further entrench themselves. Separating the tribal groups from Al Qaeda and the Taliban is a strategy that could work if orchestrated effectively.
To be sure, the new Pakistani leadership might be tempted to cut a deal with Al Qaeda and the Taliban that would see them stop their attacks in Pakistan by permitting them to operate and plan attacks at our expense. We need to prevent that, and we probably can, if we are clear about our interests and needs. We should say that we will help provide financial and other means for their new strategy, assuming it is transparent. We should also repeat what Senator Barack Obama said last summer: If we get actionable intelligence about terror acts being prepared in these provinces of Pakistan and the Pakistanis won't act, we will.
Statecraft involves conditioning attitudes in private even with those who we hope will be our partners. Making clear we will respect Pakistani interests and needs is one part of statecraft; so is making sure there are no illusions about our interests.
The main problem is that this paradox only examines relations between Israel and Syria through the prism of battle and not through a diplomatic prism. Peace with Syria is perceived as a tactical step, and the most important aspect is to avoid any miscalculation. If an alternative means were available, a hotline between Damascus and Jerusalem, for example, then there would be no need for peace. But to withdraw from the Golan Heights for a hotline, that is surely too heavy a price to pay.
The result is that Israel is seeking an appropriate tactical return for peace with Syria. Peace in and of itself is simply not "worth it." Peace with an Arab state that also affects Hezbollah, controls events in Lebanon, has close ties with Iran and close allies like Turkey, is party to the Arab initiative and will announce in advance any military maneuver it plans to carry out, and would invite Israeli observers - peace with such a state is considered by Israel as an empty peace.
Israel first wants a strategic change in the Middle East - that Iran breaks ties with Syria, that the Hamas leadership is evicted from Damascus, and that Hassan Nasrallah converts to Judaism. Only then will it "grant" Syria peace. Peace with Syria according to Israel needs to be a not-very-significant by-product, instead of the means by which strategic change is brought about.
This Israeli dream will not come true. Instead, every Arab or Israeli newspaper could rally a panel of Israeli generals that will make it clear that war with Syria is not going to happen. Nor is peace, God forbid. At most, there will be some kind of miscalculation. After all, as the deputy chief of staff said, we are ready for any eventuality. Except for that of peace. ....
The citizens of Israel draw from their leadership a sense that they will be destroyed by Iranian nuclear weapons, that they will be hit with WMD from Syria and Hezbollah, and that the Palestinian terrorist organizations may attack them with non-conventional weapons they may be given by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Osama bin Laden. The country's political and military leadership does not believe in grading the repertoire of threats hanging over Israel; the enemy is everywhere, and the ultimate horror is due to fall upon us at any moment. Instead of the panicky distribution of gas masks, the issuing of flyers calling on citizens to immediately buy sealants for their windows (a Home Front Command campaign) and preparations for an Iranian atomic attack, it is best to try and reach an agreement with the Palestinians. This is the real problem that needs to be resolved - and a solution is not within reach....because of the USA's hegemonic and catastrophic designs of the PNAC KILLERS and evil murderers....and the Israeli public does not know that, because some of their "leaders" are FORCED to be the front-seat fall guys for the US KILLERS of the POTOMAC assassins....and Israel has chosen to deliberately be dragged in the battle of hegemonic nations...against it's own interests....since the early 1900s...starting with the British killers; who offered the Balfour declaration as a sweetener to ZION....and later with the 1956...war of SUEZ and the ensuing doctrines of Eisenhower.... and the PNAC in the 1990s....with the assassination of RABIN...
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