Philip Weiss, who runs a blog called Mondoweiss (War of Ideas in the Middle East) has just posted a remarkable piece entitled “Petraeus Emails Show General Scheming with Journalist to Get out pro-Israel storyline.”
If true, it is a tale of honesty and dishonesty, opportunism, and cowardice. It indicates that Gen. David Petraeus, who just replaced Gen. McChrystal as commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, has frankly assessed that the intimate U.S. relationship with Israel is costing U.S. lives in the Middle East. But he’s concerned that his views may cost him politically and so uses buddies in the media to conceal them.
The people fighting the 94,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan are mainly Pashtun nationalists energized by jihadist Islam. They’re not much interested in Israel-Palestine which is very far away but when they hear about the plight of the Palestinians it probably increases their anger at the invaders. In that sense, the close U.S.-Israeli partnership may indeed threaten their lives. Maybe the troops ought to know that a general who believes that (but doesn’t want to say so out loud) is now leading them.