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From the Desk of the Editor The Vested Owl was created in order to bring clarity to America's involvement in the Arab world. Most of the rationale given in the media is oversimplified to say the least. While many of us TV watchers here in the U.S. think we are doing a good deed over there, we are perplexed at why world public opinion towards America continues to erode. Simply put, we are not getting the real story if we watch TV alone (click on the picture). It is crucial that we as a society seek to inform and educate ourselves, especially when thousands of human lives are at stake. It is not enough to simply say, "they hate us" and leave it at that. We need to ask why and see what we can do about it. Our image overseas has never been worse and it is safe to say that the amount of hatred towards the U.S. in the days preceding September 11th was far less than it is today. What many Americans don't understand, because it is rarely explained on TV, is that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is what fuels much of this anger. Therefore, we need to get to the bottom of the conflict and determine what it is that America can do to solve this problem. We need to ask us ourselves whether or not we should continue to employ a policy of only using military force in the Middle East to achieve objectives, a method adopted in the past by the Israeli government. In order to answer that question, let's first look at their results: Israel currently uses a multi-billion dollar military to occupy a group of indigenous people and effectively cut them off from the outside world - Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Has this tactic helped the Israeli economy, improved their security or established their image as a model society? Their economy continues to deteriorate despite getting constant in-flows of billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer assistance (read more), and tourism to the Holy Land is at a standstill. Terrorist attacks continue to persist despite constant reprisals by the Israeli military. The Israeli government is routinely cited by the United Nations for violating international law, human rights groups and the State Department have issued reports about widespread abuses, leading some countries to begin boycotting Israeli-made products. Is this the future we want for ourselves? Do we really want to model our foreign policy in the Arab world without consideration for hearts and minds? Let's consider the words of one man who embodied true American patriotism. George Washington said in his Farewell Address of 1796, "a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification." Did the war with Iraq have adequate inducement or justification? Sincerely,
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