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All McDonald Newspaper Items from Victoria Hospodar Valentine,
researcher and transcriber.
Unless noted, all other Newspaper Items from Judith
Florian, researcher, transcriber, webmaster.
Eisenhower's Plan For Middle East January 1957
From the Charleroi Mail newspaper, Charleroi PA, Jan. 2, 1957, page 4:
Editorials
Eisenhower's Plan For Middle East
AT THIS WRITING, President Eisenhower's plan to have the United States
underwrite the peace and stability of the Middle East has not yet been
officially announced with all the i's dotted and the t's crossed. What
we have been reading about the plan so far has come from anonymous, although
undoubtedly reliable, sources in the White House and the State Department.
But in some respects this idea is not as startling as it is made to seem
when one reads a headline like, Ike to Ask Troop OK", For in a broad
sense the United States has for some time been underwriting the peace and
stability of the whole world. Nobody has been in any doubt at all that
any major conflict anywhere on the globe, particularly one launched by Soviet
Russia, would find the United States directly and immediately involved.
What the President seems to have in mind about the Middle East is a
specific American commitment that would put the world on formal notice of the
willingness of the United States to guarantee the security of the Middle
East as it has already guaranteed, through NATO, the security of Western
Europe.
There is, however, a peculiar condition in the Middle East which does not
exist in Europe. And this is the ancient blood-feud, between Muslim and Jew,
between the Arab ___ and Israel.
This feud has given Communist Russia a continuing opportunity to make
trouble in the Middle East without taking much risk/ And the foolish
action of Britain and France in attacking Egypt over the Suez Canal dispute
has been a real boon to the Soviet meddlers.
We will be interested to learn what President Eisenhower has in mind to
have the U.S. do about the Arab-Israel conflict, specifically whether he
proposes that we in effect step between these two ancient enemies and protect
them from each other.
Also to be spelled out is the manner in which the new U.S. policy is to be
related with United Nations activities. It will need to be clear, it
seems to us, that any actions are always within the spirit and the structure of the
U.N. Charter.
That the United States, the acknowledged leader of world opinion, ought to
use its prestige and press to promote peace and stability wherever that can be
done is surely now beyond argument. The specific arrangements for doing
this in particular areas call for statesmanship and diplomacy of a very high
order.
Webmaster's Editorial: Written less than a month before my
birth, the Charleroi Mail newspaper Editorial still holds true more than 58
years later. The United States of America continues to tout itself was
the world's peacekeeper and arbiter of "ancient" blood-feuds between
warring Middle East Nations.
According to Washington's
Blog, "America Has Been At War 93% of the Time – 222 Out of 239 Years – Since 1776".
Per the chart used in that article, the only years the U.S. has NOT
been involved in any major war or 'conflict' were: 1796, 1797, 1807, 1808, 1809, 1826, 1828, 1829, 1830, 1897,
1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1997, and...2000.
Since and including 1776, the United States --in some way or another--has
engaged in immediate and persistent wars. Since 2001, when the US
entered the "War on Terror in Afghanistan", our country continued
one of the longest, most persistent campaigns 'for' and 'against' ancient
Middle East enemies. The 'Terror in Afghanistan' has extended into Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia,
Yemen, Libya, Syria, and (breathe!), the Ukraine!
Interestingly, what the Editor argued and contemplated in 1957 are the same
ponderings and arguments that go on today. Though the Editor did not use
the word 'terror' in 1957, citizens of the United States clearly felt terror
from its arch-enemy, Soviet Russia. Children born in the late 50s to
parents who lived through World War II, remember the pseudo-terror we felt
under our parents' and schools' protectiveness under the shadow of terror
adults felt. Every home had an inferior "bomb shelter"--the
basement--of which parents absolutely knew would never protect their children
or themselves from Soviet nuclear bombs. While many homes stockpiled food in
their "bomb shelters", as a young child, I sensed we would likely
never eat the food hoarded on shelves--because we would be dead. School
students became very familiar with "Fall Out Drills" where we
huddled under our desks; rising up and uncovering my eyes, a mystified
gratitude filled my chest with seeing the sun still shone outside the
classroom's wall of windows.
The "Fallout Shelter" yellow signs posted on the outside and inside
our school buildings reminded us daily of the ever constant world
threats. Bert
the Turtle "Duck and Cover" cartoons didn't erase the
terror. Through Sci Fi movies and The Twilight Zone and The Outer
Limits, young children of the 1960s knew exactly what a Geiger
counter sounded like.
At school,
the cafeteria served as this sanctuary--though, we often stood gawking out the
windows in the doors, trying to see if the "bomb" came near to
us. Yet, I recall my 'terror' with hearing any 'Emergency Alert
Siren'. I became teary any time I heard even the distinctive rotating
squeal from a fire truck's siren.
In the school cafeteria, I often wondered if the cafeteria ladies would
have enough food to feed us, just in case we were trapped there. In my home, we more often had no Band-Aids in the bathroom--they were
secured in the First Aid kit in our "Bomb Shelter".
These were the 'normal' abnormalities growing up as a child of the
1960s. Adults' attempts at sense-making, in a world that made no sense
at all left children fearing 'terror' itself! Yet, 'terror' was what was
supposed to keep us safe, by knowing what to do when 'terror' struck.
Children born since 2000 know nothing but living under the Shadow of
Terror, but now, Terror comes into our Homeland and through the television
into our homes. We now have no belief in the pseudo-safety of bomb
shelters and food stockpiles, and we know no "duck and cover" drills
will save any of us. Today, Terror falls from the skies via airplanes
(World Trade Center attacks), in Internet videos of beheadings, and
descendants of those ancient warring nations walk among us within the US
borders. For all its fighting to secure and "underwrite the peace and stability of the Middle East"
and to "press to promote peace and stability wherever that can be
done", the United States has failed to negotiate or mediate any lasting
peace -- anywhere.
This page was last edited Friday, July 07, 2023
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