Posted on 04/14/2002 7:32:00 PM PDT by Lessismore
Events in the West Bank are hindering the US president's Iraq strategy - and could threaten the anti-terrorism coalition, says Quentin Peel
If Saddam Hussein ever says his daily prayers, he must surely be saying a fervent thank you for the behaviour of Ariel Sharon.
The actions of the Israeli prime minister, in launching and now ruthlessly pursuing the current onslaught of the Israeli Defence Force on the Palestinian towns and villages and refugee camps of the West Bank, have almost certainly upset the plans of President George W. Bush for "regime change" in Iraq.
Anger throughout the Arab world, demonstrated on the streets from the Gulf to Rabat, has made practical planning of any large-scale military operation against Baghdad - an exercise that would anyway require months of preparation - incomparably more difficult.
Even such a loyal US ally as Bulent Ecevit, the Turkish prime minister, whose country would have to provide an essential base for action against Iraq, has been moved to denounce the Israeli action as "genocide". That seems certain to aggravate Turkish doubts about US policy, already seen as potentially strengthening its own Kurdish dissidents.
Pro-American Arab regimes, such as Jordan and Bahrain (not to mention Saudi Arabia, where demonstrations have been forbidden), could easily be destabilised by the backlash on the streets. The single issue that most unites and infuriates Arab popular opinion is the Israeli attacks on Palestinian settlements. The second most inflammatory question is the suffering of Iraqi civilians. To combine the two could be devastating.
That is the problem facing Middle East policymakers in Washington. No wonder they are in a terrible muddle. Their confusion is in danger of undermining the entire US-led campaign against terrorism. For even if the conflict in Israel was not the root cause of the terrorist attacks on September 11, resolving that conflict will determine the success or failure of the response.
Colin Powell's latest trip to the region starkly demonstrated the confusion and indecisionin Washington. He came with a mandate to call on Mr Sharon to pull back his armed forces from the Palestinian towns. Yet almost as soon as he had arrived in Israel, another suicide bomb caused him to hesitate and put the onus instead upon Yassir Arafat to stop the terrorism.
Mr Sharon seems to be blithely ignoring both the US secretary of state's calls for restraint and the distant sound of Mr Bush stamping his foot. It was one of the more blatant diplomatic snubs an Israeli premier has ever inflicted on a US president.
The fact is that too few in Washington are prepared to admit what a rotten ally Mr Sharon is in its fight against terrorism. He is not just undermining the Bush plan to remove Mr Saddam. He is alienating Arab opinion. He is causing a backlash in Europe. And he is pursuing a no-hope policy for Israel that will do far more damage to his own country in the long run than it will to his neighbours.
The only good thing that can be said of Mr Sharon's use of tanks to terrorise the Palestinian people is that it will eventually discreditthe use of military force as a tool against terrorism. But the short-term cost to Israel and the Palestinians is terrible.
A few doubts about the Sharon actions are creeping into US public opinion, with concern for the humanitarian crisis precipitated on the West Bank. The polls suggest that the majority in favour of the Israeli military action has narrowed - with more than 40 per cent now doubting its justification. But Mr Bush's criticism of Mr Sharon has remained half-hearted, and Mr Arafat still attracts the main force of his anger.
One of the problems may be that Mr Bush has had no Middle East adviser on his National Security Council staff in the White House since he came to power. That has given the Pentagon Middle East hawks, such as Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, disproportionate influence against Mr Powell's more reasonable doves in the State Department.
When it comes to Iraq, however, the determination to overthrow Mr Saddam seems to have become almost an obsession for the president and his closest advisers - to complete the business that his father left undone at the end of the Gulf war. His concern about the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction is real, because of the potential for Iraq to arm future terrorists. But this is more. It is also personal.
There are even voices suggesting that Mr Bush should press ahead with action against Baghdad before trying to calm the situation on the West Bank. The argument is that he will never get US political support to restrain Mr Sharon until he has a big Middle East success under his belt - and that means Iraq.
It is the sort of argument that ignores the reality on the ground in the region, and takes the whims of US politics as paramount. It is disturbing. And it is the kind of thinking that is causing heartache to Mr Bush's allies in Europe.
Even Tony Blair, the prime minister, that most devoted of European friends, doubts the wisdom of pressing ahead with action against Baghdad without first stopping the blood-letting in Israel and the occupied territories. He admits that nothing is likely to happen till the end of the year at the earliest. But the other EU leaders insist nothing should happen without full United Nations backing. It is an argument that seems to carry little weight in Washington.
Why is such a gap opening up across the Atlantic? It is not new, of course. Tensions date from long before September 11, as the reality of America's status as the solitary superpower, and its inclination to unilateralism, made the Europeans feel like second-class citizens. The terrorist attacks temporarily reversed the trend, but not for long.
Since then, public opinion on both sides has drifted apart. Many if not most Americans, and certainly most of the present administration, believe they are at war. They are not bothered about the causes of terrorism. They are bothered about the consequences.
Europeans do not think they are at war. They see the problem of terrorism far more in terms of tackling causes. In the Middle East that means focusing every effort on ending the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, not on launching a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.
It is a fundamental difference. Mr Sharon - who knows he is at war - has brought it into sharp perspective. Mr Bush has a tough choice to make: between backing the Sharon tactics, or preserving a broad anti-terrorist coalition. He cannot have it both ways.
I agree. We went to war with Hitler because it was in our interest to do so. But this isn't to say the Jews weren't begging us to enter the war, or that our sacrifice didn't help European Jews.
What I objected to was Masada's contention that we "betrayed" the Jews in WWII and thus their blood is on our hands. And thus the only way Bush can settle this debt is to conduct American foreign policy in a way that best serve's Israel's needs.
WE did act attrociously. During the 1930's local anti-Semites in the State department made sure that fewer Jews were allowed into the US than the quotas allowed for. After the start of world war 2, this policy extended into Nazi occupied countries.
My father's next door neighbors in Poland were a family composed of An american citizen, his wife, and son. The US Consulate refused to allow them to leave in early September claiming that the quota was filled. This was a blatant lie. In this case, teh family was not killed by Nazis but by the NKVD. However, the point is that the State Dept condemned Jews to death by refusing to allow Jews in under the quota even after Nazi atrocities were published in early 1941. (My grand-uncle worked for the State Dept in France and was fired for leaking the policy.)
The US certainly did little to nothing once we entered the war. We refused to bomb camps or transportation to camps, even when it was clear that they were used for German industry.
Fifty million people died during WWII, most of them civilians. There was no way we could let into this country all the people who wanted to come here.
Prior to our entering WWII, neither Roosevelt nor most other Americans gave much thought to European Jews (or to Europeans of any nationality). They weren’t seen as our responsibility. I didn’t know our immigration policy discriminated against Jews. I do know it was calculated to weed out Marxists, socialists, and anarchists to try to prevent what had happened in Russia and the Weimar Republic from happening here.
The US certainly did little to nothing once we entered the war. We refused to bomb camps or transportation to camps, even when it was clear that they were used for German industry.
Entering the war was our contribution. If our war on Germany did nothing to help the Jews one wonders why they considered it so important that we enter the war.
As to whether or not our not-bombing the rail lines was an act of indifference toward the Jews (and everyone else) in those camps or attempt to stay focused on the main goal—Hitler’s defeat--, I don't know. I do know that Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that Washington simply didn’t care. Others have argued that there was no such thing as precision bombing in those days, railroad tracks are both hard targets and easily repairable, the military didn’t want to divert bombers needed for the Normandy invasion. I also expect it would be hard for any American president to try and sell the notion to the American public that it was more important to put the welfare of camp inmates ahead of that of American soldiers fighting the German army.
There’s another thing to remember. Nowadays when we think of WWII, the first thing that pops into our minds are the concentration camps. During WWII, concentration camps weren’t even on the radar. Should we have bombed them, given that we bombed practically everything else? It’s an open question, though one wonders why the issue comes up more often now, 55 years after the end of the war, than it did right after the war ended.
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