Progress on Mid-East Peace

"Opinion"

08/30/2010

Paul Munnis


The GOP is trying to downplay the end of the Iraq War as a not so important milestone.

However it is only one milestone of several.

Another milestone is the resumption of peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israeli’s. There have been no such talks since President Clinton left office. Bush tried to cop-out with a roadmap that nobody followed so it was a total failure. Now we are back to the bargaining table and there are issues that of course irritate both sides.

Some remedies for those abrasive matters will be proposed, discussed and hopefully adopted. Step by step progress will be made even if there are grand-stand moments like walk-outs. Doing this just increases the demand to return to the bargaining table and places the blame on the country that quit the talks.

Still another milestone is the bottling up of Iran with sanctions and full UN support for those sanctions.

Sanctions are a noose that gets drawn tighter and tighter each and every month. It isolates Iran, it stops international trade, it freezes money and accounts, it stops tourist travel; sanctions interrupt the flow of goods and services between nations. They act to isolate the nation being sanctioned while weakening the sanctioned government. It is effective and it will be ever so much more effective as the noose tightens. Sanctions are also in effect against North Korea.

My hat is off to Hillary Clinton who has been a tireless Secretary of State and who has worked day and night to put oil on troubled waters of the mid-east. She is starting to get results and that is no small matter.

Good job to Democrats. They are getting the job done.