Posted on 04/04/2002 5:09:33 AM PST by Pokey78
On 19 September, when everyone was making Pearl Harbor comparisons, I stood at Ground Zero and thought instead of August 1914, and the Archdukes assassination another terrorist act by a non-state actor, as they say, that wound up shattering four of the great empires. On the edge of that strange dustscape in Lower Manhattan, I wondered what this latest thread of history would unravel.
Were about to find out. The first stage of the war Afghanistan was easy. But, en route to stage two, Washington got tripped up, and tangled in a cross-thread of unfinished business from the Great War: the failure of post-Ottoman Arabia and the settlement of the Palestine Mandate.
The other week Dick Cheney was released from his secure location and dispatched to Araby to shore up support for toppling Saddam from our friends in the region. As it happens, the axis of evil Iraq, Iran is causing far less trouble at the moment than the axis of pals Saudi Arabia, Egypt but such are the mysterious ways of the Orient and, indeed, of Washington that it was deemed a priority to kiss up to the good bad guys and attempt to bring them onside. Saddam had nothing to do with 11 September; the House of Saud had everything to do with it. But for some reason the administration thought it would appeal to that famous Saudi sense of humour (see Ambassador Algosaibis droll letter in these pages two weeks ago) if the old Butcher of Baghdad got stiffed for their mess. In order to establish his bona fides with these moderate regimes, President Bush slapped Israel around a little, declaring military action against Palestinian terrorists not helpful, while the vice-president talked up Saudi Crown Prince Abdullahs peace plan for the region and made sympathetic murmurings about the desperation of the suicide bombers.
You can see why the Bush crowd are wary of interventionist diplomacy. The moderates told Cheney to get lost, and went off to the Arab League summit to shower the Iraqi delegation in more kisses than Halle Berry got on Oscar night. Prince Abdullah himself planted a smacker on the lips of the Iraqi vice-president, the first tongue sarnie between the two parties since the Gulf war. Speaking of which, Baghdad promised not to invade Kuwait for the foreseeable future. And the League as a whole signed on to some Natoesque collective security deal, declaring that an attack on Iraq would be regarded as an attack on them all.
Meanwhile, Ariel Sharon did as he was told, exercised restraint and put away his stick, and the carrot of a meeting with Cheney was dangled in front of Chairman Arafat, Israels eternal partner for peace. The upshot was an explosion of multiple suicide bombings culminating in the Passover massacre in a ballroom in Netanya. If this is interventionist diplomacy, the sooner they take Cheney back to his secure location and throw away the key, the better.
Aside from the grim body-count, the whole period was a deranged exercise in unrealpolitik, with all parties negotiating fictions. The vice-president wanted Saudi Arabia to pretend to be his friend, the Arab League to pretend that the peace plan is for real, Ariel Sharon to pretend that Yasser Arafat is cracking down on terrorism, and Arafat to pretend that he wants to crack down on terrorism. Why? Whats the point? Wheres it get you? The only consolation is that Saddams rapprochements with his neighbours are also illusory. The Arab armies make Belgium look butch: when the Marines go into Iraq, they wont be running into any Egyptian or Syrian units. Nor is it worth fretting over Saddams call to use the oil supply as a weapon: right now, those guys need to sell the stuff more than the West needs to buy it. On the other hand, if the old monsters wheeze was to postpone the US invasion by whipping up the West Bank into full-scale war, everythings going to plan.
The only useful contribution in recent days has been made by Brigadier Sultan Abul-Aynayn, Arafats head honcho in Lebanon, whos now threatening to extend his differences with the Zionists to the Great Satan itself. If one hair on the head of Arafat is harmed, the US had better protect its interests around the world. I mean what I am saying, he said. We are not like Osama bin Laden, but we have our own style of response. No doubt. The Brigadier reminds us that, if youve declared war on terrorism, you cant pick and choose. A suicide bomber detonating himself in a restaurant and a suicide pilot detonating his plane in a skyscraper are differences merely of degree. Bush cant claim the right to root out the perpetrators of anti-American terrorism in a lawless Taleban state like Afghanistan and deny others the right to root out the perpetrators of anti-Israeli terrorism in a lawless Arafat statelet.
Just to emphasise the point, heres some of the things the Israelis have found in Arafats compound since the tanks rolled in last Friday: 40 pistols, 19 sniper rifles, 200 MK 47 Kalashnikovs....
Well, so far, nothing unusual. If I cleared out my basement in New Hampshire, I could probably muster a similar tally. But thats not all they turned up: 43 RPG missiles, four pipe bombs, an unspecified number of empty suicide-bomber belts, hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Israeli bills in denominations of 50, 100 and 200 shekels, printing plates for counterfeiting millions more, $100,000 in counterfeit US bills....
Hmm. Under the terms of that Oslo peace process that the EUs so keen on, the Palestinian Authority is meant to be not the West Bank mob concession but an internally autonomous embryo state. The Chairman is supposed to be busy with health, education, employment, international trade, public works ...oh, and tourism, if youre interested in a weekend break in Ramallah. He has more responsibilities than the first minister of Scotland or the governor of Texas, or the early prime ministers of Canada and Australia. Alas, the Chairman has no interest in governing and, by governing, I dont mean in, say, the Al Gore sense but in the Robert Mugabe sense: all Arafat had to do was meet the minimal standards of the reformed-terrorist category of world leader. Instead, barely had the ink dried on those Oslo peace accords than the ink was drying on the first of those 50-shekel bills.
So, after almost a decade under his administration, the big career opportunities in the Palestinian Authority lie in strapping on one of those Yasser souvenir belts, filling it with Semtex, wandering into a shopping mall and blowing the legs off Jews. Thats the way to set your family up for life, especially now that Saddam has upped the martyr jackpot to 25,000 bucks per successful self-detonation. The plight of the Palestinian people is that, after a quarter-century of living under Israeli occupation, they were transferred to living under Arafat occupation, and he wasnt up to the job.
Thats not how the rest of the world sees it, of course, no matter how many suicide-bomber belts and printing plates in assorted currencies are stacked in the counterfeit kings corridors of power. The UN has long treated Arafat as the leader of a sovereign nation, as if to underline his inevitability: hes already a head of state; all he needs is for those intransigent Israelis to give him a state to be head of. The Australians and Canadians still deplore the violence on both sides, but the EU has pretty much given up on Israel: the famously shitty little country is more trouble than its worth. Even in America, the airwaves are clogged with experts urging a withdrawal by Israel, as that will encourage Arafat to get Oslo back on track, not to mention Tenet and Mitchell, as if this Beltway-speak means anything when youre all wired up and ready to blow.
Its very difficult to negotiate a two-state solution when one side sees the two-state solution as an intermediate stage to a one-state solution: ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is a tactical prelude to ending the Israeli occupation of Israel. The divide among the Palestinians isnt between those who want to make peace with Israel and those who want to destroy her, but between those who want to destroy Israel one suicide bomb at a time and those who want to destroy her through artful peace processes. Ayat Mohammed al-Akhras, the straight-A high-school student who blew herself up in a supermarket last week, devoted her farewell video to castigating the Arab League big shots for pussying around with peace plans and leaving the real work to Palestinian schoolgirl bombers. Her view would appear, from the polls, to be the opinion of the overwhelming majority. Its useless to pretend theres anything to negotiate.
Miss al-Akhras, in her incendiary finale, underlined one curious aspect of this war. On 11 September, commentators warned us of the explosive nature of the Arab street. Why? Because the collapse of the twin towers was greeted by delirious joy and dancing in the streets of ...Ramallah! The only thing the average American knows about Ramallah is that its where Muslims celebrated the murder of thousands of New Yorkers. Otherwise, the Arab street is as sleepy as a cul-de-sac in Pinner on a weekday afternoon. The patrons of terror Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran have figured out that the only block of the Arab street thats rousable is in the West Bank, and theyre pouring their resources in accordingly.
Thats why America needs to be equally focused. The stability junkies in the EU, UN and elsewhere have, as usual, missed the point. The Middle East is too stable. In Africa and Latin America and Eastern Europe, rare is the dictator who dies in harness. But, in the Arab world, they get to pass their fetid crowns on to their designated heirs: old Assad bequeathed Syria to his son, Saddam hopes to do the same with Iraq. There has been stability for three decades, longer than anywhere else in the non-democratic world. Yet, when a dysfunctional regime stays in power, thats not stability, but a cesspit. Yasser Arafat and his PLO were anointed the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in 1974, and after 28 years hes anything but legit: hes printing up foreign currency in the basement.
So if you were Washington and you wanted to destabilise the Middle East, where would you choose? Wheres your Ramallah? Read Neil Clarks love letter to Saddam in last weeks Speccie. Most of Neils analysis was spot-on, apart from the canard that Western sanctions are responsible for the deaths of a gazillion Iraqi moppets. Saddam has a personal fortune of $7 billion, which seems a mite excessive for a man whos spent his entire life in selfless public service, and the $25,000 he ponies up to families of suicide bombers suggests that the Iraqi treasury can find the dough when it wants to. But, aside from that, Neil was right: the Iraqi people are secular, tolerant, literate, the antithesis of those wacky fundamentalists in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The only problem is that their leader is a Kurd-gassing, Scud-lobbing, terror-funding nutjob. So, if you had to pick only one regime to topple, why not Iraq? Once youve got rid of the ruling gang, its the Wests best shot at incubating a reasonably non-insane polity. In Iraq and Iran, theres a sporting chance that regime change would bring about improvement. In Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, its far more problematic. The best way to destabilise the Islamist regimes is by destabilising the non-Islamist one first. Sorry, Saddam. Thems the breaks.
In the end, the Middle East has to be fixed. A few more synagogue burnings in France and Belgium might wake up even the Europeans, though I doubt it. At best, the large unassimilated Muslim populations will paralyse the Continent, at worst destabilise it. As for the Palestinians, theyre a wrecked people. Its tragic, and, if you want to argue about whos to blame, we can bat dates around back to the Great War. But it doesnt matter. It doesnt even matter whether you regard, as the Europeans appear to, the Palestinians descent into depravity as confirmation of their victim status: as Palestinian Authority spokesman Hasan Abdul Rahman said on CNN after a new pile of Jewish corpses, its the fault of Israel for turning our children into suicide bombers. Might be true, might be rubbish. Makes no difference. They cant be allowed to succeed, because otherwise the next generation of suicide bombers will be in Bloomingdales and Macys. Thats why Arafat will never be president of a Palestinian state, and has begun his countdown to oblivion. The unravelling of the Middle East has just begun.
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From a prior Mark Steyn article - well worth repeating.............
Just as revealing was the reaction from the European media. In the American press, you read things like: "An observer to the bomb-blast scene described a dead young girl, perhaps 10 or 12, lying on the ground with her eyes open, looking as if she was surprised." For Europe, on the other hand, the main significance of this development was that it was "unhelpful" to the "peace process". Before I'm accused of being more upset about dead Jewish than dead Muslim kids, let me say that I take people at their own estimation: in the Palestinian Authority schools, they teach their children about the glories of martyrdom; indeed, the careers guidance counsellor appears to have little information on alternative employment prospects; at social events, the moppets are dressed up as junior jihadi, with toy detonators and play bombs. It's not that I place less value on Palestinian lives, but that Chairman Arafat and his chums in Hamas do. So does Saddam Hussein, whose government (the subject of an admiring article in this week's Spectator) gives $25,000 to the family of each Palestinian suicide bomber. So does the Arab League, which at last year's summit passed a resolution hailing the "spirit of sacrifice" of the Palestinian "martyrs" and thus licensed Wednesday's massacre. As for the "peace process", those Europeans who, just a few months ago, were urging the Americans to cease operations for Ramadan evidently feel no compunction to demand from Chairman Arafat and his dark subsidiaries any similar "bombing pause" for Passover.
In the days after September 11, we were told that Muslims had great respect for their fellow "people of the book" - ie, Jews and Christians. This ought to be so: after all, the dramatis personae of the Koran include Abraham, Moses, David, John the Baptist, Jesus and the Virgin Mary. It's one thing to believe that the Israelis are occupiers and oppressors and that the Zionist state should not exist. But no Muslim with any understanding of his shared heritage could in good conscience blow up a Passover Seder. It marks a new low in the Palestinians' descent into nihilism - though, as usual, the silence of the imams is deafening. As for the nonchalance of the Europeans, that too should not surprise us: in my experience, the Continent's Christians, practising and nominal, find the ceremonies of Jewish life faintly creepy, notwithstanding that these were also the rituals by which their own Saviour lived.
But this year, when the Christians' solar calendar and the Jews' lunar calendar have coincided and Easter and Passover fall together, it's a safe bet that George W Bush will make the connection. The first time I ever heard him speak, he spoke openly about his faith and about Christ in a way that would be unimaginable for a British politician. He will know all the details - "the baby tried to crawl away, but it died, too".......................
Before I'm accused of being more upset about dead Jewish than dead Muslim kids, let me say that I take people at their own estimation: in the Palestinian Authority schools, they teach their children about the glories of martyrdom; indeed, the careers guidance counsellor appears to have little information on alternative employment prospects; at social events, the moppets are dressed up as junior jihadi, with toy detonators and play bombs.
But thats not all they turned up: 43 RPG missiles, four pipe bombs, an unspecified number of empty suicide-bomber belts, hundreds of thousands of counterfeit Israeli bills in denominations of 50, 100 and 200 shekels, printing plates for counterfeiting millions more, $100,000 in counterfeit US bills....
In case anybody missed this in the article.
PINGING FOR GREAT JUSTICE!If you want on or off me Israel/MidEast ping list please let me know.............
You might also be interested in this thread, in which Bill Clinton last summer put the blame for the failure of the peace process squarely on Arafat.
It occurred to me, reading this, that this is the kind of column Maureen Dowd has been trying to write, again and again. Funny, irreverent, slangy, but informed with penetrating political wisdom and sharp analysis. The problem with Dowd is that liberalism no longer has any wisdom left. In addition, liberals long ago checked their humor at the door.
It's not just a matter of left and right, liberal and conservative, what you prefer a writer's politics to be. Mark Steyn is a great read, whereas Maureen Dowd's turgid nonsense has no style and nary a laugh in a bushel. I've heard many liberals confess that they can't stand reading Anthony Lewis or Frank Rich, though they'll never admit it in public. Even for those who agree with their views, liberal columnists just aren't worth reading. There's no pleasure in it, no humor, no style, and no intellectual return.
This is just stunningly insightful, even for Steyn, for whom "insightful" is commonplace. He takes myriad elements of history and current events and wraps them into a great summary and excellent suggestion of where this should go.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Freeping in front of the tube, the contrast is stark between Steyn's hawk-eye and the media's myopic and onanistic fixation on the peace-loving Pals as they flee and hide from the murderous and out-of-control Israelis (sarcasm alert).
Thanks for posting this, Pokey.
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