Posted on 06/24/2002 7:32:18 PM PDT by goldstategop
A new birth of freedom
The Oslo "peace process" was born on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993. It died yesterday in the White House Rose Garden.
From the beginning and putting aside the palaver about a New Middle East the strategic calculus that informed Oslo was a simple one: Deputize thugs to take care of thugs. Revive the weakened strongmen of the PLO and they will do Israel's dirty work against Hamas and Islamic Jihad without without fear of cavil from sundry human-rights groups in Israel and beyond. Wash your hands of the Palestinians once and for all, leave them to their sqaulor, their corruption, and their tyranny, and they will leave us alone.
Nearly nine years later, the results of Oslo are in. The creation of a Palestinian Authority has indeed led to Palestinian immiseration at the hands of their thuggish leaders. But it has not given Israel the peace it thought it would gain in the process. Instead, we have the French Hill bombing, and the Egged bus bombing, and the Meggido Junction bombings, and the Park Hotel bombing, and the Moment cafe bombing, and the Haifa bombings, and Sbarro bombing, and the Dolphinarium bombing, and the Ramallah lynchings; an endless succession of genocides in miniature committed by the very regime Israel gave birth to on that fateful and awful day in September, 1993.
All this has been allowed to continue, through the Hebron Accords, and the Wye River Plantation agreement, and the Mitchell Plan, and the Tenet Plan, because the whole world Israel too believed that thugs could be entrusted with the care of Jewish lives.
What a strange idea.
To appreciate the power of President Bush's historic address yesterday, note first its plainspokenness. "Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism" a statement made all the more impressive by the very adamancy with which it has been denied by every Western government, up to and including the State Department's report on global terrorism issued last month. "Today, the Palestinian people live in economic stagnation, made worse by official corruption" a fact that has been overlooked by spendthrift aid givers too willing to close their eyes to the regime in which they had invested every false hope. "Today, the elected Palestinian legislature has no authority, and power is concentrated in the hands of the unaccountable few" a truth ostensible champions of democracy repeatedly contradicted with bizarre references to the "elected Palestinian leadership." To conduct a statesmanlike diplomacy, one must first look reality in the face. This the President has done.
Then too, the significance of Bush's speech is not its promise of Palestinian statehood, but its transformation of that promise from axiomatic to conditional. In essence, Bush is requiring that his doctrine be applied to a Palestinian state before it is established.
Again, look at the President's language. "If the Palestinians actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel.... If they energetically take the path of reform, the rewards can come quickly. If Palestinians embrace democracy, confront corruption and firmly reject terror, they can count on American support...." (Emphasis added.) If the President follows through with these words, it will mark a fundamental shift in the thinking that has dominated American Mideast diplomacy for the last 35 years. Never before has the US committed itself to Palestinian statehood in such time-specific terms, but never before has statehood become so contingent on Palestinian, rather than Israeli actions.
While never mentioning Yasser Arafat, Bush could not have been clearer that Arafat has to go. Nor could he have been more emphatic in rejecting the idea of cosmetic reforms that would simply re-enforce the existing regime. This too, marks a historic departure from the "let's pretend" universe in which previous diplomatic initiatives took place.
Bush also paired his expressions of solidarity with Israeli suffering under terrorist attack noting that even Israeli kindergartens are now under armed guard with sympathy for Palestinian suffering under their own regime. He described Palestinians, accurately, as "pawns" in the conflict whose dreams of democracy and independence were dashed, not only by the corruption of their leaders, but by their leaders' rejection of the hand Israel stretched out in peace.
For years, the US acted as if the real obstacle to peace was Israel's reluctance to give up land. The great breakthrough in this speech was the unmistakable shift in the US interpretation of the "root causes" of the conflict. The concept of land for peace has been relegated to where it should have been all along: a reflection or ratification of peace, rather than its source or cause.
In all history, no two mature democracies have ever warred with each other, an axiom that applies to the Middle East no less than to Europe or the Americas. Now the President has noted this fact, and embraced its wisdom.
For this alone, he stands at the cusp of greatness.
The essence of President Bush's speech if it followed through is this: territory is not the road to peace but its result or ratification. What is needed to bring about peace between Jews and Arabs is nothing less than a paradigm shift, than in the birth of freedom amongst the Palestinians. Not the thugocracy midwifed under Oslo, but democracy.
That is why the Oslo experiment is for all intents and purposes over. The President looked reality for what it is in the face and listed what's wrong with Oslo: the Palestinians authorities encouraging of terrorism, official corruption, a legislature with no real power, and the fact the Palestinians are ruled by despots. Now that is describing the very essence of the reality in the Middle East today. This is not the usual Colon Bowell State Department moral equivalence palaver.
While President Bush spoke of a Palestinian state, he listed steps that have to be taken before one comes into being. Contrary to the expectations of the liberal media pressitutes, the State Department striped pants crowd and the Eurotrash this does not mean the Palestinians just get a state because this is trendy and inevitable. They only get one if there is a sea change in both their culture and they commit themselves to democracy, cleaning up their governmental processes, and eschewing terrorism as an instrument for bringing about political change. Yes the U.S is committed to Palestinian statehood but only if it is contingent on Palestinian actions. All of which means an end to the P.A as it is now presently constituted.
The Palestinians have had the misfortune of choosing the wrong leaders and behaving as those the rules that governed the rest of mankind did not have to apply to them. Basically, the Palestinians acted as though the could commit mass murder of Jews, build up an armed terrorist tyranny and at the end of the day, still expect the U.S to rescue them from the consequences of their own folly. The real thrust of the President's message is its time for them to leave the sandbox and behave like adults.
The President has inverted the equation from one of territory for peace to demanding a change in the nature of the Palestinians' regime and by extension of the Arab world at large. Follow through to its logical conclusion a Middle East filled with friendly and stable democracies would mean an end to the twin threats that America fears today: future Al Qaeda terrorism and the prospect of Middle Eastern dictatorships like Iraq and Iran acquiring weapons of mass destruction to threaten both America and her friends and the peace of the world.
If the President's new policy is followed through, we will have a safer, peaceful, and freer world than we have had before. Make no mistake: the dictatorships and terrorist groups of the Middle East are not going to disappear tomorrow. But the historic significance of the President's speech lies in the fact that America IS going to promote "a new birth of freedom" in a part of the world that has never seen it. This is what upsets all the President's foes and all the Leftist defenders of the Middle East's dictators and thugs. Like the Jerusalem Post editorial said, "for this alone he stands at the cusp of greatness."
But look at the labor pains that preceded that "new birth" Lincoln spoke of: 700,000 dead Americans. I fear we are going to see more Gettysburg's and 9/11's before freedom's sibling draws a breath.
I knew the Snailbiters were somehow involved in all of this!
In all seriousness, I find it suprising that a liberal paper like the Jerusalem Post is not only supporting a conservative U.S. President, but also that the Post is railing against Oslo, considering that the Oslo agreements were based almost solely on liberal ideology: "Give peace a chance. Peace before security. If they want to destroy us, let's talk to them about their feelings and find out what we can do to make them like us."
I suspect this may be the case........I'm betting Cheney made the case months ago when he traveled to the Arab capitols......real peace, or real war.
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