No presidential candidate is perfect, but of the three leading Democrats, John Edwards may come the closest.
There's still the nagging issue of his support for Israel and his demonization of Iran. But Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama are no better. Clinton has raised millions from AIPAC. And Obama, like Edwards, has called Iran a "genuine threat" to Israel. Like Edwards, he refuses to rule out the "use of force" in Iran.
I call it a nagging issue, but it may well be insurmountable for an anti-war progressive like me. All three candidates, if elected, may well continue the war policies of the Bush Administration in the Middle East, or at least pursue the "muscular" and militarized foreign policy that led us into the Iraq War. In that sense, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the three Democrats and the Republican opposition.
More troubling yet is the reluctance of the three --and the United States-- to acknowledge openly that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The "forthright" Edwards refused to answer a question about Israel's nukes posed by Sam Husseini. Moreover, despite the fact that Israel is
"...the only nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and an array of medium-range missiles that could deliver them,"
the United States never lists Israel as a country possessing weapons of mass destruction, as it does Iran and North Korea.
Joseph Cirincione suggests that it may be time for the the U.S. to put "...muscle behind long-standing U.S. policy of seeking a nuclear-free Middle East region." That includes Israel. Israel, he says, has never been safer from external threats. And what dangers it does face from terrorist attacks won't be solved by the use of nuclear weapons.
It's clear, at least to me, that the U.S. must alter its alliance with Israel to resolve the turmoil in the Middle East. And for that, we need new leadership. Unfortunately, such leadership probably won't come in the persons of Edwards, Obama, or Clinton.
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