Posted on 04/02/2002 1:25:29 PM PST by Apolitical
April 2, 2002: Whether the Bush administration realizes it or not, it has reached an unwelcome fork in the diplomatic road with its ever-shifting policies on defining the terrorist threat to Israel. One path will lead to a reduction in the bloody carnage that comprises business as usual in the Middle East today. The second now-favored path -- which is more akin to a slippery slope leading into a precipice which is impossible to climb out of -- could open a nightmarish pandora's box of misery and suffering for the American people too.
As many pundits have already pointed out, the logical consequence of any further backtracking, by the Bush administration, from George W. Bush's bold and clear post-9/11 opposition to terrorism in any form -- in an attempt to appease either the American "street" (read the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek and other loud and unruly proponents of moral equivalence in the mainstream media) or the Arab street (read all the supposed Arab allies needed diplomatically to appease world opinion during an all-out campaign to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein) -- is to send a loud and clear message to the calculating cynics behind the car bombs and suicide bombers currently ravaging the holy land that their uncivilized, nihilistic tactics work: Blow up a sufficient number of ordinary civilians going about their everyday lives, and create enough bloody confusion, carnage and panic, and timorous American leaders will cave in and give you what you want diplomatically.
In other words, the recent attempts by Dubyah and company to respond to the chaos in Israel and the Palestinian Authority by taking a more "even-handed", "balanced" approach which "recognizes" Palestinian grievances -- by suddenly reversing previous policy and defining as unacceptable Israel military actions similar to those of America's response to 9/11, or formally endorsing the establishment of a Palestinian state only after the most heinous atrocities against Israeli civilians -- sends one clear message to the cold, brutal nihilists who have recruited, trained and equipped the many willing suicidal "martyrs" for the Palestinian cause: Terror works, and absolute terror works absolutely, in cowering the timid West.
Of course, the hope of the Bush administration, in its recent erratic attempts to appease the Palestinian terror machine, has obviously been to put a damper on the tinderbox of the current Middle East conflagration. But the effect of each mistaken act of "sympathy" and "understanding" by this administration has instead been to throw yet another log on the fire and spark the conflagration even more. In other words, each display of rubbery diplomatic knees has only encouraged more terror attacks, in a cynical attempt to extort more concessions from the weak-kneed Colin Powells of the American foreign-policy establishment. And as members of the Bush administration continue to show their faltering resolve in response to what seems to be an escalating armageddon in Israel and its environs, the psychotic fringe in the Middle East is even more emboldened to raise the ante and unleash more murderous and anarchic acts to cow America and the West into giving them what they really want -- abandonment of all support for Israel and symbolic permission to unleash a 21st-century holocaust on the Israeli people that ultimately beings about their total extinction one way or the other (perhaps by means of a rain of nuclear missiles unleashed by a still unbridled Saddam Hussein).
So what, you may ask. Maybe we should never have gotten embroiled in this mess in the first place, by always siding with Israel. And besides wouldn't America be justified in leaving the Israelis to the wolves, considering all the "injustices" done to the Palestinian "nation" by the Israeli "occupation", as objectively chronicled in "balanced" news reports by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CBS News and company?
Well, whether there really is such an entity as a Palestinian nation or an Israeli occupation is problematical. And certainly to mention the New York Times, CNN or CBS news and balanced, objective news coverage in the same sentence is an outrageous oxymoron. But regardless, the cautionary amber lights are blinking so brightly, one is hard pressed not to remember the classic biblical injunction: "As ye sow, so ye shall reap".
After all, let's face reality. Appeasement in this one policy area will only embolden the extremist forces of expansionist Arab Islamo-fascism to lobby for appeasement in others -- whether it's in pursuit of a repressive feudal Taliban-style pan-Arab religious autocracy ruling over the entire Middle East (and maybe later Turkey, Spain and even Italy), or demands for the imposition of Taliban-style restrictions on American culture, to purge the unholy decadence of the democratic, secular American state (and wipe out for good the perceived roots of modernist, secular 'globalization' throughout the world). And let's be realistic here. The Islamo-fascist notion of 'lobbying' does not mean simply flattering and bribing corrupt, amoral politicians like William Jefferson Clinton (though that obviously helps). It means exporting its most potent weapon -- car bombs, fanatical suicide bombers and mindless carnage and murder -- to the thoroughfares, restaurants and shopping malls of the target of its intended diplomacy.
In other words, if America caves now, it sends the message to the Middle Eastern fanatical fringe that there is one weapon that works in cowering the most powerful nation in the world -- unleashing the Arafat brand of murderous terror on vulnerable civilian populations and urban settings. Today it may be the streets, restaurants and gathering places of ordinary Israelis in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv which are the target. Tomorrow it may be the streets, restaurants and gathering places of ordinary Americans in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Topeka or who knows where?
In their hearts, Americans may have tired of being long-distance spectators to the carnage in the Middle East, and may crave the disengagement and moral high ground promised by opinion makers in the mainstream media if overtures for peace are initiated. But the appeasement, equivocation and moral cowardice advocated in the name of "peace" by the likes of the New York Times editorial board, NPR, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather (along with their favorite intellectual gurus like Noam Chomsky and Edward Said) only promise greater chaos, conflict and suffering in the future.
This time, however, Americans won't be spectators in this nihilistic battle. They will be participants, as the psychotic fringe of Islamo-fascism brings its car bombs and suicide bombers to the cities and streets of America and attempts once again to impose its irrational will on American policy with the senseless slaughter of innocent men, women and children -- and, let's be clear about this, innocent American men, women and children.
After all, the psychotic Islamo-fascist fringe must already be thinking: if it worked in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, imagine how effective it will be in New York, L.A. and even Boise, Idaho.
I guess you missed the story this week about capturing the #2 guy in al-Qaida.
I would love to see Bush say. "Yes, what's going on in Israel is as bad as 9-11. Yassir Arafat is a terrorist, and he harbors terrorists. Israel has every right to defend itself, and we back it all the way."
But alas he's too worried about non-existent Jewhater coalitions to do what's right.
I haven't seen the "waffling", though I've heard of it from the DCmedia, Bush seems to be doing very little in public (and in private, I asume)- and I think that is the right tack, to let things work closer to a solution.
I agree with the author's point in re the US, however it's obvious that Israel is no super-superpower like the US and therefore doesn't have the options we do.
And it's not in our interest to give them those options.
We've already done a great help to them by finishing the large action in Afghanistan before this mess could be started by the terrorists.
There would be unfortunate synergetics if both conflicts were in full bloom concurrently as Usama had probably hoped.
I would love to see it too. But W is thinking Iraq and how to let Sharon clean out Arafat and his mess and at the same time get ready to take out Saddam. Maybe it can't be done, and perhaps that's why there seems to be a bit of a vacuum from the US on Israel. But if Bush were to say the things you quoted above, I am not sure it would help our long term goals. If Arafat is knocked out, who takes his place. I think there must be a moderate palertinian out there willing to be reasonable but he likely fears for his life from the radical terrorist groups.
Why is Bush not listening to Cheney and Rumsfeld? Ultimately, the buck stops with Bush.
This needs to get onto the American radar screen, and fast.
And that will not happen short of nuclear conflagration.
BUMP
Eight years of the traitor, Kli'ton's, "administrative" treachery has depleted the armoury.
If you search on this topic you will find that American munituions factories are all working triple shifts seven days per week to try and catch up on eight years of capital-treasonous anti-American hatred at the helm!
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