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are at present in the illusory "Phoney War" stage of the
War on Terrorism. In the original "Phoney War" of 1939-40,
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared confidently
that "Hitler had missed the bus" just weeks before Hitler
conquered Norway, France, and the Low Countries. So the confident
statements now issuing from Washington and London should be taken
with at least a pinch of salt.
If Osama's terrorists score a series of successes — or if Anglo-American
forces commit a series of blunders — then both President Bush
and British Prime Minister Tony Blair might begin to temper their
stern moral demands for a clear victory over terrorism and settle
for diplomatic assurances from terrorist states that they would
reform their ways.
That would
be a near defeat on the scale of Vietnam; it would cripple U.S.
foreign policy; and it would invite future terrorist attacks rather
than averting them. But it is not impossible.
Consider Tony
Blair. Since September 11, Mr. Blair has been a loyal friend of
the United States and a fierce scourge of al Qaeda. And that is
consistent with his previous statements. Over the years he has repeatedly
denounced the terrorism of the IRA, declared that it could never
defeat democracy, and in particular demanded that the IRA surrender
its arms and renounce violence permanently before its political
wing, Sinn Fein, could be admitted into government.
But Mr. Blair
had hardly lived up to these brave words. He had helped Sinn Fein-IRA
into a powersharing Northern Ireland government even though they
had failed to surrender a single bullet. Then three events took
place: the IRA was discovered helping anti-American Marxist terrorists
in Colombia; Sinn Fein's president Gerry Adams announced a visit
to Cuba; and the World Trade Center was destroyed. Suddenly Washington
was hostile to all terrorism — including Irish terrorism. Blair
was in a position to insist that the IRA decommission its armory
once and for all.
Last week Sinn
Fein-IRA announced it had done exactly that. Gerry Adams, and his
colleague, Martin McGuinness, secretly met with the IRA's army council
to appeal to them to surrender their arms to "save the peace
process."
Accordingly,
John de Chastelain, the Canadian general in charge of decommissioning,
was taken to some spot near the border — he has no idea where
— and watched as an unspecified number of weapons — he
has no idea how many — were "put beyond use." Applause
all round.
And that seems
to be that. Although the IRA retains the great bulk of its armaments,
no one except a few Unionist "hardliners" seems to be
pressing them to continue the decommissioning process. Neither London
nor Dublin is setting any kind of timetable or deadline for the
all the IRA's arms to be surrendered or destroyed. The general view
— shared by Tony Blair, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern,
and Secretary of State Colin Powell — is that Sinn Fein-IRA
has taken a risk for peace and it is now up to others, notably the
aforementioned Unionist "hardliners," to do the same.
Mr. Blair himself
instantly reciprocated — apparently on the principle that there
is no limit to the number of times an Englishman can be persuaded
to buy the same horse from an Irish horse trader. Although the British
government between 1994 and today had conceded all — Irish
administrative bodies, a power-sharing Northern Irish government,
guaranteed ministerial jobs for former terrorists, the release of
several hundred convicted terrorists and murderers, and the dismantling
of the Ulster police force in return for a full IRA decommissioning
that was never delivered, it purchased this first partial disarmament
with two more concessions: the demolition of British Army watchtowers
in "bandit country" and an amnesty for those few IRA terrorists
still on the run.
And to complete
the process, Mr. Blair, Dublin, Washington, and former senator George
Mitchell are now putting pressure on the Unionists to rejoin the
powersharing Northern Ireland executive so that Sinn Fein-IRA ministers
can get their ministerial jobs, offices, and chauffeured automobiles
back. The "crisis" will then be over.
Of course,
the Sinn Fein-IRA conglomerate will still retain its weapons; it
will still run its paramilitary and criminal structures controlling
and terrorizing large Catholic ghettoes; and it will still continue
its almost medieval "punishment beatings" of dissenters
and petty criminals and its occasional murders of suspected informers
— while running for elections on both sides of the border.
Mr. Blair has
not only thrown away a real chance to force a party of fascist terrorists
to abandon violence for genuine democracy; he is helping to restore
its respectability at the same time.
Blair's fight
against Osama bin Laden's terrorism is admirable. But will he —
and will Mr. Bush — stick with it if the going gets appreciably
rougher? And if he does, as we must hope, won't that put him in
the unusual position of being strongly opposed to terrorism and
terrorists — unless they happen to murder his own people?
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