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Jewish World Review Jan. 21, 2002 / 8 Shevat, 5762
Michael Ledeen
The Hadera massacre
is a microcosm of the broader war against terror, in which the terrorists
consider the slaughter of every inhabitant of the West to be morally exhilarating,
a step on the road to victory, while we debate the finer points of every
tactical decision among ourselves, and finally identify a limited number
of acceptable targets. They wage total war against our civilians and our
cities; after careful consideration we respond against their leaders and
their strategic assets, and then pause to see if anything good has happened.
When the terrorists kill again, we again respond, and pause once more.
Sharon asks only
a week without carnage to resume peace negotiations, even though neither
he nor any other serious person believes there can be peace with Yasser
Arafat and the PLO. In like manner, our diplomats call upon Syria and
Iran to join with us in the antiterror campaign, even though Syria's dictator
laughed in Tony Blair's face when the British PM asked him to withdraw
support from terrorist groups based in Damascus, and even though the Islamic
Republic of Iran is identified by our very own Department of State as
the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism. It's Munich, all
over again, with Israel cast in the role of the brave little democracy
about to be devoured by the fearsome tyrant while the West acquiesces
and proclaims a new era of peace. I always marveled at the Europeans'
ability to praise Hitler as a man of peace, and get terribly annoyed at
Czechoslovakia for denying the poor man his richly deserved peace of mind...by
existing in his Lebensraum. I'm getting to understand it better these
days. The Europeans are more practiced at this form of self-deception
than we, and so they've gone straight to the final chapter: Israel is
the problem, we don't want this annoyance, so let's get on with it. The
American people won't buy this, and so even those Europeanized diplomats
who would love to see Israel disappear tomorrow (thereby producing real
and eternal peace, in their view) can't quite say it, and so they limit
themselves to a strained moral equivalence. But this is taking
a real toll, and the Israeli microcosm shows what we're headed for, alas.
While we are debating the finer theological points of international strategy,
the terror states and their murderous instruments are organizing for the
next atrocity. You would have thought that one Pearl Harbor was enough
for this generation, and that our leaders would be so determined to avoid
a replay that they would wage uninterrupted war against the whole crowd
of terror states, pound on our friends and allies to help us track down
the scattered ranks of al Qaeda, and install a model government in Kabul
and defend and support it with all our might and wealth, thereby showing
the rest of the region that only good things come from the defeat of But no. Just as the
Israelis pause, await the next assassins, and then studiously launch a
carefully tailored response, so we have paused, far too long already,
to test the diplomatic waters, to study all the various options, to consult
all the oracles in all the agencies of the government, and to let the
interagency process grind out a compromise that will cater to everyone's
favorite stratagem. Only the president
can put a stop to this dithering, and tell his people that time's up.
He's had it right from the first hour. He told us we were at war and he
was right. He told us the war could only be won by killing the terrorists
and destroying the regimes that harbored and supported them, and he was
right. He asked for patience at the beginning, and he got it. He asked
for steadfastness from the American people and he's got it. Now he's got
to tell the foot draggers to stop debating, get with the program, and
roll into the next phase of the war. The one in which we adopt the only
strategy that can bring peace: Destroy those who are waging war against
us. Maybe even General Sharon will get the
01/08/02: What's the Holdup?: It's time for the next battles in the war against terrorism
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