David Warren : The New Smite

I don't think it's my imagination, though I have had to read a lot of tea leaves to come to this conclusion. I think, quite apart from exigencies of an election year, that the Bush administration, nay verily, President Bush himself is changing his tune; that his own reading of the apocalyptically bad situation in the Middle East is evolving with experience. He is quietly abandoning positions which have been proven naïve. He is hunkering into positions that have been proven unavoidable. The new song, which will flavour his second term if there is one, might be entitled, "No more Mr. Nice Guy."

The tea leaves I am reading are all over Iraq, and Afghanistan, but also heavily deposited in Gaza. Punches the Americans were still pulling only a few weeks ago are being freely delivered.

Now, the world is getting increasingly out of touch with America. This is evident in the common assumption that the Democrat presidential candidate, John Kerry, would offer a kinder, gentler version of American statecraft, and therefore deserves the prayers of the world's peaceniks.

Appeasement is a two-way street. Until now, it has generally been assumed that the U.S. must do the appeasing, and that Arabs and their allies are supposed to be appeased. It is this basic formula that not only the Bush administration, but the U.S. at large has grown sick of. They get nothing for their appeasements but more grief; just as Israel received no benefits — only more blown-up buses — when she wasn't killing Yassin or Rantisi.

...[President Bush] is quietly abandoning positions which have been proven naïve. He is hunkering into positions that have been proven unavoidable. The new song, which will flavor his second term if there is one, might be entitled, "No more Mr. Nice Guy."
....Punches the Americans were still pulling only a few weeks ago are being freely delivered.
...U.S. support for Israel is the real test, since Israel remains, to anyone with a reasonably clear comprehension of the Middle East, America's only reliable ally. On Israel, the U.S. public has now had 31 months to consider the "plight of the Palestinian people", and also their behavior, in light of what happened on 9/11/01. Sympathy for suicide bombers is at a new low. Sympathy for Israelis who kill Hamas terrorist leaders is at a new high.
It is against this political background, that President Bush has been emboldened to "move the envelope" out of reach of the old Oslo platitudes, and openly endorse Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's efforts to build a security barrier around the West Bank (to match the one already around Gaza), and even retain possession of proximate Israeli settlements on the non-Israeli side of the old "Green Line". Why should Israel give up anything, when she will get nothing in return? Why should she act any differently from the U.S. in hunting down and killing terrorists publicly pledged to her annihilation?
....Appeasement is a two-way street. Until now, it has generally been assumed that the U.S. must do the appeasing, and that Arabs and their allies are supposed to be appeased. It is this basic formula that not only the Bush administration, but the U.S. at large has grown sick of. They get nothing for their appeasements but more grief; just as Israel received no benefits -- only more blown-up buses -- when she wasn't killing Yassin or Rantisi.
Everything else being equal, you might as well smite your mortal enemies. The trick, after all, is to make them appease you.

David Warren

David Warren - Clear-thinking Canadian - BUMP [please freepmail me if you want or don't want to be pinged to David Warren articles]

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