مدونة د. منصور عمر الكيخيا * Dr. Mansour Omar El-Kikhia Blog

Republican pundits and spin-masters never cease to amaze me.

It wasn’t too far back when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency. During that time, Republicans did not stop once to ask the Democrats for input. Shunning bipartisanship, Republican leaders in Congress shamelessly used every nasty trick in the book to eliminate Democrats from all positions of influence and rammed through redistricting policies at the state level, hoping to ensure that the Democratic Party never recovered the seat of power in the United States.

The mess America and the world find themselves in is the direct result of Republican policies, and it is now a fact that the Republican “Contract with America” has proven to be a catastrophic failure.

It is not a coincidence, and Americans must never forget that. GOP policies resulted in the Great Depression; Americans punished the party by denying it a majority in both chambers of Congress for many years. Time to do that again.

I understand what President Barack Obama is trying to do, but I don’t agree with him. The majority of Republicans in Congress are nasty fanatics whose view of the world is extremely narrow and dogmatic. Nothing Obama does will please them because they don’t
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For the second time, the Bush administration has replaced the term “immediate” with “durable and sustainable,” and has done so in support of Israeli military attacks against Arabs.

In both instances, the administration gave Israel a free rein to inflict destruction in Lebanon and Palestine, hoping that Hezbollah and Hamas, two Arab Islamic organizations that refuse to recognize Israel, would be brought to their knees.

The administration’s gamble failed in Lebanon and, based on unfolding events, will meet the same fate in Palestine. Both organizations are more popular and more determined than ever. More important, the United States has, in their view and the view of most Arabs and Muslims, become irrelevant.

Of the many lessons to be derived from Israel’s latest adventure, four have most attracted my attention.

First, embedded logic dictates that the 3,000 rockets lobbed on Israel since 2003 have caused negligible damage to life and property. Yet Israel’s leaders and America’s media continue the tempest in the teacup to justify the murder of Palestinians.

Truth is irrelevant because in the words of Dr. James Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, Israel’s goal is to define the terms of the debate. Hamas was stupid to fire those effete duds becaus
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Drop 100 tons of high explosives on one of the most densely populated slums in the world and what will be the result?

The Israeli Defense Forces provided the answer to that question last week when 60 American-made F-16s laid waste to Gaza. In response to rocket attacks by Palestinians, the initial IDF air strike succeeded in killing hundreds of Palestinians and injuring many more. The final tally is yet to come when the Israelis decide to end their assault on an area a quarter the size of San Antonio, with 1.5 million people living in misery for the past six decades.

Watching the carnage unfold over satellite was simply bewildering. I was shocked by reporters flung in the air like dolls by shock waves of exploding missiles and dismembered bodies lined up in the courtyard of what was once a school.

In Gaza, the Palestinians have been living in a virtual prison for many years. With limited electricity, food and other basics, they sought help from the international community in lifting the Israeli siege, but as usual, beyond soothing words of “we understand and sympathize with your predicament,” no help came. The United Nation

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