Why the U.S. Must Change the Course of the Middle East Conflict

While everyone around the world watches the conflict with Israel and Lebanon with increasing dread, I look out my window and see Americans delightfully going about their Saturday - heading to the beach, reading novels on their balconies, and running off to play tennis. Ironic, since American foreign policy is largely to blame for the current conflict and the level at which it is being engaged.

Israel is empowered by the U.S. and heavily funded by the U.S. This is no secret, just as the Israeli lobbies that quietly seduce U.S. foreign policy is no longer a secret. While Israel's practices and policies towards their neighbors are widely disapproved the world over, the U.S. bounces happily alongside them, pocketing the bribes, er, fruits of their agreement.

Whether the designation of Israel in the last century was a mistake or not, is no longer relevent. Israel is there and has provided a home for many Jews who have been ostracized in every country they have ever lived, for thousands of years. This could have been reasonably negotiated, had their Muslim neighbors not been treated like less than the scum of the earth. I'm talking about civilians here, not governments, and not militants (who are, for the most part, wronged civilians). Now, because militants have destroyed so much innocent life of their own for so many years, everyone on both sides is considered a bad guy.

How do we undo this tangled mess? The U.S. can do it, but won't, especially under this current administration. We've been playing both sides for too long and benefitting largely from it. The U.S.'s support of Israel, and enormous demand for oil, makes us the sketchy cousin who slyly moves from one family member to the next, talking trash and accepting gifts for being "loyal." When, in reality, we started it all and we can stop it. We can put our oil interests on the shelf for once, force Israel to rethink a foreign policy that is obviously not working by cutting off support until they do, and actually sit down and have a conversation with Muslim countries and find out what they want, what they need, and what we can do to change a landscape that breeds terrorism against the west, to a landscape of mutual compassion. But, in order to accomplish these things, we would have to put our own needs entirely on the backburner. Surely the environment and our pocketbooks would thank us for cutting back on oil, and everyone would rather operate an electric car and own a solar-powered home in a world where there is very little threat of terrorism.

The only ones who would suffer under these circumstances are the oil companies. And that's enough for this very possible, but mythical peaceful resolution, to never, ever happen.