Part XXV of the “Geopolitics” Series
On February 20, 2022, this column posed President Biden a big and bold challenge. It published an op-ed piece headlined, The Biden Years Can Be “Bold, Brave and Strong” Or Become a “Comedy of Errors”?.
The said 2022 article said: QUOTE. “We choose to go to the Moon,” John F. Kennedy said on September 12, 1962. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
President Biden remembers the words of President Kennedy fully. Will Mr. Biden be as bold, brave, and strong as Mr. Kennedy? How? Because even then, as President Obama’s vice president, he dubbed his clarion call against America’s second deadliest disease as the “Cancer Moonshot.” UNQUOTE.
This column thinks that the world will welcome and work to help in launching, for want of a better term, “The Middle-Eastern Moonshot.” If done together with Mr. Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” and the “Medical Center Moonshot” (that this column has discussed and proposed to be set up in 50 strategically-located countries), it can become the greatest achievement of an American president. No American president since 1948 managed to prevent wars between Israel and her Arab-Muslim neighbors. And wars and bloody conflicts in the Middle East may continue for the next 75 years if no permanent and lasting peace reigns in the region.
Mr. Biden cannot follow in the footsteps of his predecessors. He must stop sending military aid to Israel and many of her Muslim-country opponents. American presidents failed to do it for the past 75 years. The Biden presidency has the best opportunity to end the Israeli-Hamas War and start a moonshot of a peace process for the entire region.
The Biden Administration surely knows that the “M-E Moonshot” will be challenging to achieve. Indeed, it will take more than a decade. But … it can be done. How?
“To paraphrase President Kennedy, a moonshot of a monumental task is not easy, but hard work is needed. President Biden can lay down the conceptual framework of a moonshot-like initiative for the Middle East in 2024.”
It is most respectfully suggested to President Biden and his counterparts in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Republic of France, and other powerful and wealthy countries to take a first step toward stopping military aid to Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and other Islamic nations. They must inform the Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the Middle East that they must proceed to work peacefully together to merit socioeconomic aid, as suggested earlier in this column.
As this column has suggested, the easiest way to end a military conflict (like the Filipino-American War of 1899) is to win the hearts and minds of people. The United States began the process of achieving peace in the 1900s by organizing a public school system, including the Philippines’ first state university. And America’s first foreign medical center in 1902 in the City of Manila. All of the moves garnered the support of an overwhelming majority of the Filipino people.
The United States also sent American teachers, medical instructors, civil servants, and other technocrats to help the Filipinos improve their economy, public works, and other nation-building projects. It also sent talented Filipino high-school graduates to study in American universities, where they earned master’s and even doctorate degrees. After graduation, they returned to the Philippines and joined the Philippine civil service.
To paraphrase President Kennedy, a moonshot of a monumental task is not easy, but hard work is needed. President Biden can lay down the conceptual framework of a moonshot-like initiative for the Middle East in 2024. Then, Mr. Biden has another four years, hopefully, a second term, to raise more human and financial resources from domestic donors and international entities to help the Middle East.
Modern technology and state-of-the-art tools can rebuild the region’s infrastructure and achieve a renaissance. Peace will usher in a golden age of Middle Eastern arts, culture, education, and medical systems. Reforestation can make deserts green, providing ample food supplies and memorial-tree parks.
