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 othing
is likely to change as a result of the latest Palestinian massacre
of Jewish civilians in Israel. Sharon will denounce Arafat, as usual.
(Israel has already retaliated, less than 24 hours after the attack.)
Palestinians will celebrate the "martyr" who committed
the disgusting act. The White House will denounce terrorism, and
remind Arafat that he'd better stop this sort of thing if he expects
the United States to take him seriously as a peace partner. The
Europeans will denounce no one, complain to one another about what
a nuisance Israel is, and send another emissary to speed up the
peace process. And the State Department will bemoan yet another
setback for peace. And the wheel will turn one more time, as Israel
prepares its revenge against carefully targeted leaders of the Palestinian
terror network.
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
oppressive obscurantist tyrants.
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 idea.
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