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 eorge
Bush, the American administration, and the rest of the West have
adopted a new grand strategy based on the old "good cop-bad
cop" routine familiar from every police drama on television.
The difference
is that this one is more like "Good Terrorist-Bad Terrorist."
According to it, there are certain bad terrorists, like Osama bin
Laden, and — if you're British — the IRA. (If you are
American, Puerto Rican terrorists are not only good but downright
useful, especially in helping get Hillary elected when Bill releases
them all.) To fight these bad terrorists, you need to conscript
for your cause lots of good terrorists, including Syria, Iran, and
the Saudis. So never mind that Iran blew up a building full of Argentinian
Jews. Never mind Syria's track record, including massacring 10,000
of its own civilians in Hama; never mind that it's running Hizbollah.
And never mind that the Saudis fund the Palestinian terror. (You
know, Saudi Arabia — the place where you can be executed for
celebrating Christmas.)
And as part
of Good-Terrorist-Bad Terrorist, the Bushies have escalated their
pressures on Israel. In order to fight a no-compromise war of annihilation
against the Islamist fascists and terrorists in Afghanistan, the
U.S. has decided that the only way to deal with Palestinian Islamist
terrorists is by capitulating to their demands, coddling them, holding
talks with them, and making goodwill gestures toward them. This
is a central plank in the new Bush antiterrorist platform.
There would
seem to be good Islamist fascist terrorists and bad Islamist fascist
terrorists. The PLO and its affiliates are suddenly on the administration's
list of good ones. When Ariel Sharon protested the U.S. pressures
on Israel to appease the PLO as part of the worldwide antiterrorism
campaign, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed this as
"unacceptable" — not coincidentally, the very adjective
used that same day to dismiss the Taliban's offer to review evidence
against bin Laden.
As part of
the war against terrorism, Israel is now expected to parley with
the PLO, despite the fact that PLO atrocities continue every single
day, because the best way to deal with good Islamist fascist terrorism
is to meet its demands. And even as the PLO continues to murder
Jewish civilians every day, Israel — under U.S. pressure —
is expected to negotiate with the PLO about implementing the Mitchell
Commission agreement, with its concessions to and appeasements of
PLO terror (or what the BBC describes as "what Israel calls
terror").
True, Ariel
Sharon is conditioning such negotiations on a 48-hour period of
tranquility, whose definition has been so debased that it now would
describe any two days in which PLO terrorists miss the Jewish targets
they're trying to murder. These days, significantly reduced violence
is what happens when only a couple of Jewish mothers get murdered
by PLO "policemen." The U.S. then congratulates Arafat
publicly on really making a serious effort to stop the shootings
and bombings. And on really trying to arrest those same Hamas
and Jihad leaders, whom the PLO — unlike the CNN camera teams
— just never can locate.
President Bush,
who wants to destroy Islamist terrorism, has decided that the most
effective way to do so is by sucking up to Islamist terrorists.
He has suddenly "kashered" (made kosher) Syria and Iran.
The Hizbollah, Hamas, PLO, and Jihad appear to be suddenly off the
list of world terrorist organizations, or at least off the active
list. Bush then decides to reward Islamist terrorism by declaring
in the middle of his efforts to attack the Taliban that, yes, of
course the U.S. has "always" favored creation of a Palestinian
state, rewarding Arafat's year of atrocities.
Next, President
Bush and his people announce that in any future "peace accord"
between Israel and the Islamist fascists — er, I mean, the
Palestinians — the PLO will have control over "the holy
sites." He did not spell out which holy sites he had in mind,
but it is pretty obvious that he did not mean merely the Al-Aqsa
mosque and Temple Mount.
Now, need we
really point out here that these holy sites are not exactly George
Bush's to hand out? He certainly does not speak for Jews and Muslims,
and indeed has no authorization to speak about holy sites for Christians
either. I can just imagine the outrage of the Texas Baptists and
Evangelicals and Hispanic Catholics there when they learn that the
U.S. wants to hand all of the churches in the Holy Land to Yasser
Arafat.
This war is
either going to be a war against terrorism or merely a war against
Afghanistan. If it is to be a war against terrorism, then the U.S.
must stop sucking up to Arab terrorist regimes, and it must endorse
a broadside assault by Israel against the Islamist fascists and
terrorists of the PLO and its affiliates. Israel must be encouraged
to deal with the PLO in exactly the same way the U.S. is dealing
with the Taliban, and with the same international support.
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