Talking with terrorists

In one of those coincidences of timing that might lead one to suspect that a particularly mischievous pixie is guiding events, Sen. Ted Kennedy announced he was canceling his meeting with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams the same weekend that the Bush administration let it be known it might deal in some non-coercive way with Hezbollah -- the Islamist terrorist organization based in Lebanon. I fear that President Bush is about to begin matriculating in the same course of study from which Ted Kennedy, after decades, has finally seemingly graduated, the lesson of which is: 'Tis easier to see a rainbow than to follow it to its pot of gold.

For decades, seekers of peace and democracy for the Emerald Isle have believed the fiction that one could deal with Sinn Fein as a legitimate democratic political party separate from the terrorist Irish Republican Army. This was an illusion not only for Irish Americans with a romantic view of the grand old struggle. Her Britannic Majesty's governments, which for centuries have held quite the opposite view of Ireland's struggle for freedom, shared in that illusion. And to some extent they still do.

As went the deeply-character-flawed appeasers that comprise Tiny Blair's once-great-british socialists in their dealings with the morbidly-Marxist mob of mass-murderering gangster bastards that so grandiosely self-styles itself the "i r a,' so heads our president in suggesting dealings with the middle east's death-worshipping and psychopathologically-hesperophobic hezb Allah haters!

God forbid Foggy Bottom's Brahmanas leading our President and his administration on another stability-at-all-costs look for a lemmings' leap!

Since this article appears in JWR, I take it the chief interest is in how Bush deals with Hezbollah.

My first reaction was that I hope he makes them an offer they can't refuse, along the lines that he dealt with Musharref. But as I think of it, I don't know why he should be dealing with Hezbollah at all. Instead, he should be dealing with the leaders of the various ethnic and religious groups.

If the members of Hezbollah want to be good citizens, fine. But the organization will never reform.

Perhaps the same might be said of Ireland. If the IRA has now written itself off as irrelevant, the parties still need to consult with the Irish Catholics of Northern Ireland in one way or another, rather than simply telling them to shut up and get to the back of the bus.

It's a double edged sword

you want people to use the political system to affect change not violence

now can a leopard change its spots?

Sinn Fein blew it, they had a chance to make a clean break, they still do, but their credibility is shot, that is the key, you have to be able to make that clean break, disarm and act within the political system OK

Hezbollah does have political seats in Parliament and unlike IRA/Sinn Fein, I believe most of their violence has been directed at Israel not the Lebanese, at least since the end of the civil war....though they have certainly aided and abetted the Syrian occupation (and i thought Arabs found occupation so repulsive)

it seems to me what Bush is doing is the right thing, given the changes going on in Lebanon now, after the Iraqi elections, Bush is challenging Hezbollah to grab history by the horns and go legit, totally legit, and disarm (which will avoid a civil war)

we all know they won't however, or who knows, there could be a split in Hezbollah as I believe there has been in Sinn Fein and the IRA, and other groups, or in the Shia Muslim community in South Lebanon, and that in and of itself is a good thing, because then it would weaken Hezbollah at least

so Bush can shrug and say, we tried, they rejected democracy and non violence, oops, or could it be Bush has been getting mixed messages etc from the ground in Lebanon? you know that W, he is crazy like a fox sometimes...

after all the British thought George Washington et al were terrorists....

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