Posted on 06/28/2002 2:58:52 AM PDT by kattracks
On Monday, President Bush offered Palestinians pretty much everything they said they have been killing and dying for over more than a half-century. For Israel, the President outlined a plan that — even though heavily sprinkled with unanswered questions — he thought could end the terrorism that poisons every day of every Israeli Jew.
So at once, Bush was denounced not only by Muslims and Europeans who relish Jewish sorrows and blood, but also by Israeli and American diplomats who for years made fat careers by running negotiations that succeeded only in strengthening terrorism inside Israel and slicing the country down.
The President had become convinced that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was still providing money and supplies for the terrorists. He realized that Arafat's denials and promises about ending terrorism were one long lie. It is a puzzle why it took him more than a day or two to figure that out.
Over the machinations of officials he had appointed and now ought to fire, the President presented an action plan. First, Palestinians must get of rid of their corrupt leaders who double as terrorist organizers. Arafat leads that list. But Bush, for some reason, did not use the name, which lets Arafat grin and say, Who, me?
Second, Bush said, if Arafat and other rogues and terrorists get out of town, or if Arafat by some wild chance allows himself to lose the election that has been called for January, or if democratically minded Palestinian leaders pop up their heads and live long enough to win the election, the U.S. will recognize a new, independent Palestine. But only after three years, enough time to see if its leaders mean to practice democratic governance and wipe out terrorism.
Bush further warned that if Palestinians do not act against terrorism and for democracy, he will end the flow of American money to them. He said Palestine's economic stagnation was made worse by official Palestinian corruption, a slap that must have been heard around the world.
In return for these reforms, the President said, the Palestinians would get more of the land won by Israel in 1967, when Arab armies launched an attack. That war turned out to be a devastating, humiliating, never-forgotten Arab defeat. In the years of negotiations that followed, Israel lost to politics and diplomacy much of the land it had won militarily in Gaza and the West Bank. The new Palestine would regain all or most of the remaining land, if Israel was in a madly generous mood.
The Bush plan is built around his belief that aspirations toward democracy are no substitute for its reality, but it is essential for an American President to spell out such aspirations as a critical step on the road to peace. That's fine, provided he points out the man-made crevices and the highwaymen along that road and how he expects America and the victims of tyranny to deal with them. And Bush is doing that.
Sometimes, Bush himself chooses to pretend that certain highwaymen do not exist. After the bombing of the World Trade Center, he defined terrorism as the movements and networks that arm gangs of fanatics and empower them to bomb skyscrapers or, when they choose, whole cities. But he did not point to Arafat as Palestinian terrorist-in-chief in the Middle East. Only when he had enough of Arafat's sardonic lies did the President point with a stick.
But a major question goes unanswered. Far more important than Arafat to the growth of terrorism in Palestine is the slew of dictatorships that rule almost all the Muslim countries of the Mideast. Terrorism is an ally of the rulers of most of those countries, and democracy is a contagious enemy.
It is impossible to think that the despots — the rulers of Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya and other lesser highwaymen — would throw money and liberating expertise at a Muslim democracy that suddenly grew up among them.
They would present a democratic Palestine with terrorist dogs to tear it apart, dogs that would include Palestine's own murderer-bombers.
I think that generations of hate spreading and tyranny within the Arab world would strangle any real attempt at a democratic Palestine.
And so I confess to the crime of ambivalence about the Bush plan — for now.
But I felt a warmth, candor and decency of spirit in his Monday address to the West and the Mideast. Democracy gives life, and terrorism brings death.
So I think Americans, who cherish freedom for themselves, should give their President a chance to test his aspirations of freedom for Mideast Muslims — if the Muslims ever let him.
E-mail: rosecolumn@aol.com
But I, as the author of the piece, am grateful that the President has finally put it on the record that the PA is a tool of terrorism and that we are not going to do business with them. Let's see how long he sticks to that.
I don't think GW has any belief at all that the Arab states are going to allow Arab democracy to flourish! He's just saying that he's not going to be bullied (by the State Dept., Congress, the liberal press, all of Europe, Canada, all of the Arab states, and most of the rest of the world) into negotiating mindlessly and unproductively with an avowed terrorist - and that doing such is not in the best interests of Palenstinians anyway. That is not easy to do for a president. This man shows more moral clarity than most all of the president's of this century (and the last one as well). What a refreshing change. We should give him a chance. Even if his plan doesn't succeed (it's doubtful that anything at all will), at least he's stuck down a moral marker in the mudpit of the Middle East.
The stark choice he has offered up will eventually split the Pallie community into those who give a damn about having a nation/state and those who just want to kill off Israel.
Mark my word, Bush's decision is going to force the Arabs to turn inward and eventually eat their own......one way or another the ARABS will either walk willingly into the 21st century or will be bombed into it.
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