Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

The Palestinians and the Jews have been trying to live peacefully together for a couple thousand years. Sometimes there have been third parties who try to encourage them to get along, like we're doing now. Actually, the vast majority of Palestinians and Jews actually do get along, living and working together very peacefully, sometimes even on a friendly basis. It's primarily the political and religious leaders on both sides who continually agitate and cause problems.

So given the current situation, I have a question. I'm not trying to bait anyone and I recognize that the suggestion made by my question is a very short-term response to what has been a centuries-old problem, but here goes...

The majority of Muslims in the Middle East hate the U.S. There are some that choose to get along with us (like the Saudis) because we buy a lot of their oil, send them boatloads of money and provide them with a lot of weapons. But for the most part the Muslims don't like us, even the peaceful Palestinians who are finding a way to co-exist with the Jews on a day-to-day basis. They probably never will. I know I can't imagine a scenario where our relationship with the Islamic countries will be warm and fuzzy. Our politicians will call some of them "allies" (like we call Pakistan), but any clear-thinking person knows better.

So if that's the case, why don't we just forget about trying to encourage peace and trying to figure out who's right and who's wrong between the Palestinians and the Jews. Why not just throw our lot in with Israel, give them a lot of money and weapons--even the atomic kind--and let the parties sort their problems out themselves. We kind of know who'd win and that would be OK with us, wouldn't it?

What d'ya think?