Andrew Sullivan: Victory for Bush in Iraq will bring peace in Israel

The Sunday Times (U.K.) ^ | 04/14/2002 | Andrew Sullivan

[Pokey78]

Ping for the ASPL.

[RightWingMama]

This made my day!

[Principled]

When the regimes in Tehran and Baghdad are defeated, independence for a free Palestine alongside Israel will be possible. Until then, all the diplomacy in the world is mere window-dressing. And Bush is turning into something of a master decorator.

A nice summation of what most FReepers have been saying for weeks.

[BlessedBeGod]

Finally -- someone who ties it all together brilliantly.

BUMP !!!

[arkfreepdom]

People need to not judge who is dancing with who now, but who is sprawled on the floor when the dance is over.

[rabbitdog]

I believe this is exactly right. I can't disagree with anything in this article, and remember President Bush even said there would be things going on behind the scenes that would not be in the open(maybe Venezuela too?). Unless I'm way out in left field, I believe we are seeing some brilliant strategy.

[miamimark]

The Palestinians might decide that they are sick of being used as pawns by other Arab dictators in a bloody game of Middle Eastern chess

Arafat & his mob boyz could care less-They still get massive funding. The more bodies-the more shekels. Powell should freeze the funds-It's all about the benjamins.

[RamsNo1]

Bush #43 publicly shoots his mouth off about Saddam, sends his VP around the ME to get Arab support for an Iraqi attack and then we have an escalation in the ME violence. Bush #43 asks for Israeli restraint just like his father when Israelis were eating scuds for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bush #43 indirectly caused the escalation of violence in the ME and thus suicide bombers have killed more Israeli citizens in this current ME crisis than Iraqi scud missiles did 11 years ago. This was all done without a declaration of war. I would say, Saddam=1, Bush=0

[thoughtomator]

A great summation of my muddled thoughts on the subject, thanks for posting it.

What I believe the Arab regimes fear most is that the Palestinians are the most likely of all Arab cultures to become a democracy/representative republic. This accords with their support of Arafat, who is the single biggest obstacle to that development. Palestinians are the most westernized culturally of all Arabs - look at the images in the press, there are more of them who dress in the western style than in Arab style.

[Cato the Censor]

It's simple!!!! Sharon figured it out. If a bully threatens, coerces and attacks you and you kick his ass, your life becomes peaceful, others give you begrudging respect and no one dares to muck around with you in the future.

[RamsNo1]

Huh? Palestinians are living in the stone age. It is more likely that Iraqi and Iranian citizens are living in this century than the muslim hoards in the palestinian areas. For all the abdominable things that Saddam is, he is more westernized and secular than alot of other Muslim countries.

[uncbob]

Saddam is really behind all this. Bush was drumming up support to go after Saddam by publically dumping on him daily.Probably hoping that the military remembering the huge loss of the GULF WAR would take him out
Did they really think Saddam was just going to sit back and wait ?
I think the administration was caught by suprise.
Saddam pulled the same thing during the GULF WAR when he hit Israel with SCUDS hoping to goad them into retaliating. They ate the SCUDS for the sake of the coalition but got screwed when Saddam was allowed to stay in power
This time Saddam is using a premptive tactic and Israel is not going to eat daily suicide bombers while waiting for USA stategy to work and Saddam to leave the scene

[Common Tator]

Once upon a time back in the first half of the 20th century there was the observed belief that partisonship ended at the waters edge. But that is no longer true. American presidents especially Republican Presidents have to fight two battles. One against our foreign enemies and one against the Democratic party. It is important to win both wars.

The last thing we would want to do is unite the Arabs and involve the United States in such a way that they can conduct a guerilla war against the United States and Israel. For the Militant Muslims, it is very much to their benefit to keep the pot boiling in Palistine and to pull us in on the side of Israel. For if they can divert us from taking down Sadam and then others, it will be a good ploy.

The Bush policy has been divide and conquer. It is the Miltant Muslims who are tyring to counter that policy with Unite and Resist. Thy hope to make the battle ground Israel and Palistine. There is no way to better unite Muslims than a conflict with Israel. Even people in the media should be able to figure that out. But don't bet the rent they will.

What is going on is "Divide and Conquer" versus "Unite and Resist."

If the Muslims are successful in pulling us into a middle east war of terrorist attacks on Israel, they can unite all of Arabia against us. They would like nothing better than to get us on the ground in Israel and Palistine in a guerilla (terrorist) war. The ideal war for them would be a war of attrition in which our "peace keepers/ freedom defenders" died by the dozens per day, while our guys were accused fo killing babies if they struck back. The militants would fight and lose women and children, pretend to surrender, then fight and lose some more women and children, all the while stacking up body bags in Virginia. That is their game plan. Nothing else explains their actions.

If the Muslims can make that happen, if they could milkl the will to fight out of both the US and Israel, they can hope to turn the middle east into another southeast Asia, and Israel into a deserted South Vietnam.

The object for the Muslims since 1948 has been to take Israel. Our support is what keeps them from doing it. The goal is to remove our support. The Vietnam method of removing our support has to look good to them. It is about the only option they have. They are certain to continue to try to get it started.

What would the Muslims need to prevail? First a lot of American troops stationed in Palistine and perhaps part of Israel. They would need areas off limits to our counter attack. Safe sanctuaries like the Nort Vietnamese enjoyed in Nam would be nice. A friend that is not a friend but one we could not attack would be nice source of staging snctuary. Many parts of the Middle east could do that nicely. They would just need an "Osama bin Laden" trail to emulate the "HO CHI MEN" trail. Covertly backed up by Syria, Iraq and Egypt and even Iran they could trade bodies until we delcared victory and left.

It would not take long for the American media to be allied with the Arabs demanding we declare victory and come home. Ah yes, "Can't you just picture Katie Couric pleading for us to Give peace a chance."

Defeating the militant muslims is our goal. Their goal is to get us out of the middle east. If you were a militant Muslim how would you go about getting the US out of the Middle east?

I wonder if a lot of the posters here who demand that we use physical force to support Israel, much like we supported South Vietnam 40 years ago, have real first names like "Mohammad" and "Osama".

[larryjohnson]

Hits the nail...!

[uncbob]

I wonder if a lot of the posters here who demand that we use physical force to support Israel,

Israel doesn't need physical support ( other than material ) but they don't need conflicting messages coming out of the USA

BTW They did the west and themselves a hell of a favor taking out Saddams nuclear facility back in the 80s

[Davea]

This article has it right. Let the Israeli's take care of the PLo then move east to Leabanon/Syria. We'll take care of Iran/Iraq farther east and then move west. A classic pincer move with Israel/US meeting up, oh I don't know, perhaps in Damascus. Check that. Damascus will be a ruinous heap.

[Erasmus]

Andrew mentions the Saudis only in passing. And he gives them a pass on their role as financiers of the terrorists. Failing to deal decisively with these sand______s will nullify the benefits from handling Ira{q,n}.

Of course, how to handle the Saudis is the problem. We could conceivably embargo their oil shipments to us, but our with-friends-like-these-who-needs-enemas Euroweenies would pick up the slack, minimizing our efforts to defund these particular terrorist sponsors.

What to do about them. Oh, I know, send CPowell over there to "dipomacy" them out of their weevil ways.

(-----Okay, sorry. I just had a little sargasm.)

Whatever we're gonna do, it can't be nothing.

[GatorGirl]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is twaddle

Thank you, Andrew!!!!!

[dalebert]

Andrew did pretty well on this. He just got one thing wrong. There is no such thing as a Palistinian or Palistinian state. Palistine was old name of Israel and it used to be a lot bigger before the Brits sold them out.