Submitted by Maury Leon, Mar 13, 2007 08:05

The U.S. should play a passive role resolving problems in the Middle East. What happens everywhere in the world is of concern to the American people. The post-World War II shrinking of the world mandates that. Oceans no longer protect the U.S. from foreign influence. Modernity makes Israel and Saudi Arabia, India and China, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Europe our next-door neighbors.

America's basic mission is defending itself against aggressors and helping like-minded countries defend themselves against aggressors. We can help by resolve conflicts by proposing fair and reasonable suggestions only. We should not impose solutions. Resolution of international problems must be fair and balanced by abstract and real standards, appropriate to conditions here and now. History is a framework on which settlement can be hinged, but realism is the only solution.

Americans are also evangelical. We seek to export OUR social and political system – Open Society – to the rest of the world. We should not make the mistake of attempting to impose representative government, free speech, and other aspects of an Open Society on Closed Societies, which are ruled from above. Closed Societies dominate much of the world beyond the West. We can show the way but cannot impose our views.

People who act against their own interests must be accountable for their actions. There could have been a peaceful resolution to the ‘Palestinian problem' in 1948, had the Jews and Arabs made peace. Inst4ead, the Arabs attacked the Jews intending to drive them from their part of Palestine. The rest is history. The Arab-Palestinians who left their homes in what is now Israel at the behest of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1948 with the promise of the Jewish ‘spoils' of Arab victory suffer the consequence of their own action.

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