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 ately
both Mr. Arafat and Saddam Hussein — who shocked the world
in the late 1970s and 1980s with their threats, terrorism, and anti-Americanism
— look like stunned deer in the headlights. Their creased visages
are not merely explicable because they are aged and worn by their
own self-induced catastrophes. Nor do their paunches and lines reflect
recognition of their checkered pasts that finally have burdened
their souls; both have far too much blood on their hands for any
such remorse. No, all the epaulettes, sidearms, and occasional ceremonial
headdresses cannot disguise that they at last have figured out that
we are in an entirely new world which has little use for either
of their ilk.
We forget that
both originally rose to power through either the tacit or explicit
help of the Communist bloc — the Soviet Union and its Warsaw
Pact supplying clandestine money, refuge, and intelligence to the
radical Palestinians and overt military hardware to Iraq. No matter
how incendiary either tyrant was, both Arafat and Hussein —
who kissed and hugged each other during the Gulf War — could
at least count on Russia to confront the United States, and thereby
clean up the detritus from misadventures in Palestine and the Gulf.
Provoke a war with Israel? — the Soviets will step in before
Palestinians and their allies are annihilated by an Israeli counterattack.
Rattle sabers among the oil sheikdoms or Iran? — the Russians
will make good any losses and sell or give away almost any nightmarish
weapon that could be used against America or its allies.
But with the
breakup of the Soviet Union, and the increasing anger of a new Russia
and its allies at the Islamic fundamentalists, there is no succor
left. Even the opportunistic Chinese are more worried about their
own fanatics than in propping up these two rather bothersome and
aging provocateurs. No state has the willingness to make good their
gaffes; those few firebrands in the Middle East that might secretly
wish to lend military support have neither the audacity nor the
wherewithal. The younger Assad and the aging Khadafi these days
sound either shrill or irrelevant — and often times both at
the same time. It says something when Arafat and Hussein find support
from the nut in North Korea or the windbag in Havana.
With the demise
of the outlaw states of the Communist world, there simply are no
longer friendly East German intelligence agents, Soviet arms-peddlers,
safe houses in Budapest, Czech mouthpieces at the U.N., phony KGB
passports, or any of the other assorted harbors that the PLO and
the Bathists used to sail into once their self-created storms broke.
We have not had a real war in the Middle East since 1973. Should
it break out again — God forbid — the only obstacle between
Israeli tanks in Damascus is the United States — not Russia,
not the Arab World, not the Chinese. If Saddam Hussein thought the
tottering Russian Communists ignored him in 1991, he can only imagine
what Moscow in 2001 will be like.
The bleak situation
for these walking anachronisms is worse than the mere fall of Communism
and the end to state-organized anti-Americanism. The United States
not only defeated Marxists, but successfully spread its own culture
abroad. The result is that South America, Asia, and Eastern Europe
rather like free elections, capitalism, and secular tolerance. For
all the brutishness of the new globalism, even its most recalcitrant
critics welcome international banking, communications, air travel,
and intellectual exchange. In other words, outside of Mr. Arafat's
own close circle and a few sycophants in Baghdad, hardly any worker
in any state wishes to see continual suicide bombers and poison
gas plants on the evening news when there is a chance to catch a
Schwarznegger movie, read spirited newspapers over coffee, and put
a little away for a VCR. Indeed, even individual Arabs at Ground
Zero in Jerusalem and Baghdad — if they could speak freely
without repercussions — would perhaps prefer an end to their
own state's sanctioned terror and a chance to join the rest of the
world in the effort at living comfortably and securely.
In the past
Mr. Arafat and Hussein as the last resort could always triangulate
with Europe, where opportunism and fashionable anti-Americanism
used to bring either kudos, arms sales, cash subsidies, or at least
threats to pull out of assorted coalitions should the United States
act forcefully. But September 11th has changed all that. Europeans
are rather proximate to North Africa and the Middle East, and no
longer seem to like what they see across the Mediterranean.
Europeans once
seemed proud of the new-age multiculturalism of their union, and
welcomed thousands of Muslims to their shores without requirements
or even promises of eventual assimilation; yet now they are not
all that eager to sleep so soundly in the lumpy beds they have made.
In the months ahead, Interpol will be more likely to wiretap than
wink at Hamas operatives, Hezbollah fund-raisers, and Iraqi consular
officials in Bonn, Paris, and Rome. After the murder of thousands
of Americans, threats of dirty bombs, and anthrax scares, no European
company will be eager to ship anything to Iraq. A few may even reexamine
funds sent to the PLO that they know are shared among suicidal terrorists
who are blowing apart children.
Nor can Arafat
or Hussein put much currency in the rantings of the European cultural
elite. In the last ninety days it has been proved absolutely intellectually
and morally bankrupt — and now occupies the same insolvent
position as British rightists circa 1939. Euro-leftists' ominous
promises of American incompetence were proved wrong by the liberation
of Afghanistan; of American evil doing wrong by the shaved beards,
burqa piles, and female newscasters in Kabul; and of American isolation
wrong by the sudden warmth of India, Russia, and dozens of states
in the former Soviet Union. If an endorsement of Mr. Arafat in The
New Statesman or a Le Monde op-ed urging restrain —
if not friendship — toward Saddam once momentarily bothered
Americans, such antics now barely warrant a chuckle.
The last bastion
of tacit aid was always the American university, a tiny clique of
Arabists in the State Department, and some of our elite media, who
all could be counted on to chastise us for U.N. sanctions, Israeli
reprisals, or simply be against whatever America was for in the
Middle East. But I think September 11th has also crippled such knee-jerk
support for homegrown anti-Americanism as well. When an anchorman
catches the scent from the ruin of the Twin Towers, he is less,
not more, likely to listen carefully to Mr. Arafat's contorted explanation
of why the blasting apart of Israeli teenagers is morally equivalent
to Israeli retaliatory missile attacks on PLO police offices. When
tenured professors hear of stories about dirty bombs planned for
Boston or New York, have their mail disrupted by anthrax scares,
and wait three hours in line at the ticket counter on the way to
the next conference, silently they wish that Arafat and Hussein
would just disappear, no questions asked.
For all their posturing about independence and principled opposition,
the American intelligentsia has always wished foremost to be liked,
envied, and courted — Orwell once said of their similar opportunistic
counterparts in England that if it paid better they would be fascists.
Yet now 90 percent of Americans support the current military response;
Americans by a margin of four to one think the PLO, not Israel,
is the problem in the Middle East; and 70 percent wish to remove
Saddam Hussein. Our airwaves are full of thoughtful and serious
ex-officers, idealistic young enlistees, and sober senior planners
in the Defense Department — quite a contrast from the occasional
appearance of some whiny, often hysterical professor, activist,
or high-priced lawyer lecturing us about voluntary interviews of
Middle Eastern aliens, the confusion of John Walker, or the certain
advent of a police state. Bill O'Reilly usually makes short work
of them on national television — if not first enticing them
to reveal their rather harebrained ideas to millions of shocked
listeners. Academics were always somewhat irrelevant — but
nevermore so than during the last 90 days, when the country at large,
their own students, and many on the campus itself have simply stopped
listening to them. With fickle friends like them, who needs enemies?
What does this
brave new world mean for the odd couple? They have one — and
only one final — chance of survival. With careful wrangling
the PLO could about face, deplore the bombers they once tacitly
sanctioned, and accept something like the overly generous terms
once offered by the Clinton State Department — forcing on Israel
either a humiliating acceptance or an even more embarrassing rejection.
An apologetic Hussein still could open up his country to U.N. inspectors
and appear on global television as solicitous of international cooperation
in the new post-September 11th world. Both actions would be insincere;
they would be abjectly disingenuous — and very dangerous. Yet,
given the opportunistic and often cowardly nature of world opinion,
it would most likely work and perhaps even allow Mr. Arafat and
Hussein to fade away peacefully into their dotage as heads of illegitimate
states. But far more likely both autocrats, as is always the nature
of such tyrants, will do neither — and so in the coming weeks
they will find themselves without friends and at the mercy of an
increasingly angry and powerful United States.
In turn, we
should be especially careful. In their eleventh hour the two are
beginning at last to grasp the new realities of this altered universe
in which their terror invites not reprisal but the specter of their
utter destruction. In their final desperate throes, they will for
a brief moment be more, rather than less, dangerous as they sadly
try to take others down with them and openly revert to their original
natures. "Who cares about the Americans?" Mr. Arafat now
scoffs; "America will face disaster", Saddam rants.
Yet, despite
their rhetoric and perhaps the chance of some unforeseen last gambit
to come, the final verdict is clear — a suddenly confident
civilization has rejected both leftovers, bored with, rather than
afraid of, them. So the odd couple shall soon vanish, with a few
penultimate shrieks as the fresh wind of a brave new world blows
their shades away forever.
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