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Jewish World Review April 8, 2002 / 27 Nisan, 5762
Michael Ledeen
Gulled: In the Middle East, Arafat doesn't matter
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
Isn't it amazing how easily policymakers can be
deflected from the main mission? Back when we were
trying to bring down the Soviet Empire, our diplomats
and analysts were forever finding treaties to negotiate,
agreements to be reached, embassies, and consulates to
open, confidence-building measures to be launched, and
peacekeeping units to be dispatched. As if these had
anything to do with the price of eggs, if you see what I
mean. And yet these epiphenomena ate up enormous
chunks of time, when time was at a premium.
So it is with the Middle East. A few years ago when
Oslo was in vogue I won quite a number of bets from
people who believed that peace was at hand. I took the
position that you couldn't have peace without a
convincing defeat of one side or the other, and that in
any case you couldn't even address the Israel-Palestine
issue unless the terror states - Iran, Iraq and Syria -
were on board. And they weren't on board.
So there wasn't going to be any peace treaty.
I rather suspect that it's going to be harder to find peace
believers today, but it is maddening to see that no end of deep thinkers still
talk about the Israel-Palestinian thing as if it were a thing in itself, something
that can be "solved" out of the broader context of the terror war. In the
interest of clarity, here's a brief review of the bidding:
1. Arafat doesn't matter. And you can parse that till you're blue in the face: It
doesn't matter if Arafat lives or dies, doesn't matter if he stays or goes, doesn't
matter if he has electricity or not, doesn't matter if his cell phone works or not,
doesn't matter if his toilet flushes or not. The issue is not Arafat. The issue is
the terror war.
2. It's not about a Palestinian State. It's about a terror war, whose goal is to
destroy Israel and end American influence in the Middle East.
3. We are in this war, so the only alternatives are winning or losing. We can't
opt out, we can't transcend it, and we shouldn't be evenhanded. The United
States is a target of the terrorists, not a disinterested observer. We want to
win. (You'd think this was obvious enough after September 11, but it isn't.)
And did nobody take seriously the Hamas declaration that Americans are
now legitimate targets everywhere in the Middle East?
4. Peace comes at the end of war, and is the word that describes the terms
imposed by the winners on the losers. Once we've defeated the terror states,
the PLO will become a minor player in the region and peace will be a lot
easier.
JWR contributor Michael Ledeen is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Tocqueville on American Character
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© 2001, Michael Ledeen
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