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Isn't it amazing how easily policymakers can be deflected from the main mission? Back when we were trying to bring down the Soviet Empire, our diplomats and analysts were forever finding treaties to negotiate, agreements to be reached, embassies, and consulates to open, confidence-building measures to be launched, and peacekeeping units to be dispatched. As if these had anything to do with the price of eggs, if you see what I mean. And yet these epiphenomena ate up enormous chunks of time, when time was at a premium. So it is with the Middle East. A few years ago when Oslo was in vogue I won quite a number of bets from people who believed that peace was at hand. I took the position that you couldn't have peace without a convincing defeat of one side or the other, and that in any case you couldn't even address the Israel-Palestine issue unless the terror states — Iran, Iraq and Syria — were on board. And they weren't on board. So there wasn't going to be any peace treaty. I rather suspect that it's going to be harder to find peace believers today, but it is maddening to see that no end of deep thinkers still talk about the Israel-Palestinian thing as if it were a thing in itself, something that can be "solved" out of the broader context of the terror war. In the interest of clarity, here's a brief review of the bidding: 1. Arafat doesn't matter. And you can parse that till you're blue in the face: It doesn't matter if Arafat lives or dies, doesn't matter if he stays or goes, doesn't matter if he has electricity or not, doesn't matter if his cell phone works or not, doesn't matter if his toilet flushes or not. The issue is not Arafat. The issue is the terror war. 2. It's not about a Palestinian State. It's about a terror war, whose goal is to destroy Israel and end American influence in the Middle East. 3. We are in this war, so the only alternatives are winning or losing. We can't opt out, we can't transcend it, and we shouldn't be evenhanded. The United States is a target of the terrorists, not a disinterested observer. We want to win. (You'd think this was obvious enough after September 11, but it isn't.) And did nobody take seriously the Hamas declaration that Americans are now legitimate targets everywhere in the Middle East? 4. Peace comes at the end of war, and is the word that describes the terms imposed by the winners on the losers. Once we've defeated the terror states, the PLO will become a minor player in the region and peace will be a lot easier. So let's roll, already. Faster, please. — Michael Ledeen is an NRO contributing editor & resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute. He is author, most recently, of Tocqueville on American Character
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hile we dither on
and on, the brave and the innocent are being murdered throughout the Middle
East by the enemies of freedom and democracy. These deaths, from Israeli
hotel dining rooms and public markets, to the Arab and Iranian streets,
are our responsibility. President Bush announced we would wage war on
the terror network, and then permitted his policymakers to paralyze the
war, and rollback his promises to take the struggle to the terrorists'
homelands. Thus, the Passover massacres. Thus, the ongoing brutality against
the Iranian people. Thus, the ongoing incitement to jihad against Jews
and Americans in the Palestinian, Iraqi, Iranian, Egyptian, Jordanian,
Syrian and Saudi press. Thus, the incredible lies in Saudi newspapers
accusing Jews of draining the blood of young Muslims for festival pastries,
and inventing an anti-Semitic Benjamin Franklin to justify the murder
of Jews throughout the world. Anyone who believes that Saudi Arabia is
a "moderate" country after all this should be forced to read
Mein Kampf daily for a year, to perform a comparative analysis
of Saudi publications, and to memorize Hitler's peace plans for Czechoslovakia
and the Sudetenland.
