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case you think that our State Department is right in viewing the
terrorist horror in America as a great opportunity to push for a
fine agreement between Israel and her peace partners, consider this:
Just a few hours before our assault on the Taliban, the Voice of
Palestine, Yasser Arafat's official radio station, "informed"
its listeners that the FBI had discovered that Israel was behind
the September 11th mass murder in New York and Washington, and had
arrested several teams of Mossad agents.
This is the
sort of thing that Arafat always says to his own people in Arabic,
and gainsays when he talks to us in English. Remember that the Palestinian
Authority threatened violent reprisals against any news organization
that broadcast pictures of Palestinians dancing in the streets upon
learning about the events of September 11th. It tracks perfectly
with his two-track policy on terrorism: simultaneously training
and supporting terrorists, and lamenting their excesses when it
serves his purposes to pose as a moderate. It's an old story, but
our diplomats have never wanted to accept it, because the consequences
are fatal to their dreams of negotiating yet another treaty and
staging yet another historic handshake.
In his great
book on Communist Romania (Red
Horizons), Ian Mihai Pacepa, the former chief of Ceausescu's
secret intelligence service recounts his conversations with Arafat
about the deadly terrorist group headed by Abu Nidal. It turns out
that Abu Nidal was an Arafat creation that served a double purpose.
It enabled Arafat to feign moderation, and it gave him an assassination
squad to use against anyone who challenged his authority. I have
always suspected that Arafat's relationship to Hamas and Islamic
Jihad was similar, and this latest lie is of a piece with his overall
disinformation strategy.
When a terrorist
repents, there is never any doubt about the transformation. One
of the most remarkable public statements about our bombing of Afghanistan
came from Tripoli, Libya, from the mouth of Muammar Qadaffi, for
many years one of the world's leading sponsors of terrorism. Qadaffi
said unequivocally that we were right to attack the Taliban, that
it was a clear act of self-defense, and that it was entirely in
keeping with international law.
Somehow, I've
missed Arafat's praise of the first stage of our war on terrorism.
How did Libya's
formerly radical Islamist leader come to change his mind? He crossed
swords with a serious American president, Ronald Reagan, who ordered
the bombing of Tripoli after discovering that Libya was behind the
bombing of a discotheque in which several American soldiers were
killed. That bombing was carefully crafted to strike targets directly
linked to Qadaffi's personal tyranny: his offices and residences
(including his tents), the headquarters of his intelligence service,
terrorist training camps, and so forth. Army barracks and the like
were left untouched, thereby sending a message to the Libyan Army
and the Libyan people: our fight is not with you, but with your
leader. If he goes — and you might like to consider how best to
accomplish this — we'll get along just fine.
President Bush
has carried this strategy one step further, simultaneously bombing
things that have to do with the despotic oppression of the Taliban,
and airlifting food and medical supplies to the miserable refugees
fleeing for their lives.
It looks like
some Afghanis understand, if early reports about insurrection near
the Iran/Pakistan/Afghanistan border are right. So we've got a workable
model: bomb the bad guys, support the people they've crushed under
their murderous regimes, and go after the individual terrorists.
But don't be
gulled by the likes of Arafat. He's part of the problem, not part
of the solution.
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