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The new smite
I donât think itâs my imagination, though I have had to read a lot of tea leaves to come to this conclusion. I think, quite apart from exigencies of an election year, that the Bush administration, nay verily, President Bush himself is changing his tune; that his own reading of the apocalyptically bad situation in the Middle East is evolving with experience. He is quietly abandoning positions which have been proven naïve. He is hunkering into positions that have been proven unavoidable. The new song, which will flavour his second term if there is one, might be entitled, "No more Mr. Nice Guy." The tea leaves I am reading are all over Iraq, and Afghanistan, but also heavily deposited in Gaza. Punches the Americans were still pulling only a few weeks ago are being freely delivered. Now, the world is getting increasingly out of touch with America. This is evident in the common assumption that the Democrat presidential candidate, John Kerry, would offer a kinder, gentler version of American statecraft, and therefore deserves the prayers of the worldâs peaceniks. Mr. Kerry, though essentially a man of the left, is a political weathercock. Read carefully what he has been saying recently about the U.S. commitment in Iraq, and national interests throughout the region. He is now trying to position himself as hawk to Mr. Bushâs dove, in the "war on terrorism". He is less tactful than Mr. Bush in referring to the "Islamic threat", and has been downright rude to Saudi Arabia. In press conferences among international media, he has forgotten that he can speak French. (Mr. Kerry is also moving into positions that Mr. Bush is moving on from, but that is a different story.) And the polling data suggest the U.S. public may be getting grittier rather than softer in their determination to deal with the hard problems presented by international terrorism and rogue states. Example: at the same time that an increasing proportion think things are not going well in Iraq, a stable or increasing proportion think the U.S. should remain there. Karl Rove, Mr. Bushâs political wizard, seems to have detected that Americans are tiring, not of aggressive political language, but of anything that smacks of empty idealism. I have noticed that the administration, including even the State Department, is muting the blather about "democracy in Iraq". Since itâs not going to happen, they might as well stop promising. U.S. support for Israel is the real test, since Israel remains, to anyone with a reasonably clear comprehension of the Middle East, Americaâs only reliable ally. On Israel, the U.S. public has now had 31 months to consider the "plight of the Palestinian people", and also their behaviour, in light of what happened on 9/11/01. Sympathy for suicide bombers is at a new low. Sympathy for Israelis who kill Hamas terrorist leaders is at a new high. It is against this political background, that President Bush has been emboldened to "move the envelope" out of reach of the old Oslo platitudes, and openly endorse Prime Minister Ariel Sharonâs efforts to build a security barrier around the West Bank (to match the one already around Gaza), and even retain possession of proximate Israeli settlements on the non-Israeli side of the old "Green Line". Why should Israel give up anything, when she will get nothing in return? Why should she act any differently from the U.S. in hunting down and killing terrorists publicly pledged to her annihilation? The response to Mr. Bushâs endorsements of Israel are serious, by "moderate Arab" diplomatic standards. King Abdullah of Jordan postponed a meeting in the White House, and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt gave an interview to Le Monde in Paris in which he said, among other unpleasant things, that, "American and Israeli interests will not be safe, not only in our region but anywhere in the world." So what else is new? Appeasement is a two-way street. Until now, it has generally been assumed that the U.S. must do the appeasing, and that Arabs and their allies are supposed to be appeased. It is this basic formula that not only the Bush administration, but the U.S. at large has grown sick of. They get nothing for their appeasements but more grief; just as Israel received no benefits -- only more blown-up buses -- when she wasnât killing Yassin or Rantisi. Everything else being equal, you might as well smite your mortal enemies. The trick, after all, is to make them appease you. Iâll buy that David Warren Posted by: tipper 2004-04-22 |
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