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| Bill Quick on Bush, Powell, Sharon and Yasser... |
| 2002-04-19 |
| Bill Quick turns his eye toward what the Bush administration's policy was (and remains) regarding Yasser and his thugs: "Far worse, though, is that Israel is indeed doing what it set out to do: Destroy the terrorist infrastructure. They've captured arms caches, destroyed safe houses and bolt holes, killed hundreds of low-level fighters, and captured dozens of mid and high level leaders, including those at the very top. When Arafat is finally released from his incarceration (if he ever is) he'll come out into the sun, blinking like a mole, to find he has no organization left - except for shattered remnants, half of whom will no doubt, in the grand Arab tradition, be trying their damndest to murder him. Though it's not over yet. The targets were al-Aqsa and Tanzim on the West Bank. That still leaves Hamas, with its strength concentrated in Gaza. The cannon fodder will be replaced easily and the arms will be shipped from Iran to replenish what was lost. The big losses were the Big Time Hard Boys, up to and including Barghouti. That takes it out of the short-term effective category and puts it into the medium- and maybe even long-range. "Say what you will about George Bush, but this outcome was no accident. In another month, the middle east will be a much quieter place, as the various governments contemplate in horrified awe what the "Zionist entity" is capable of by itself - and what the capabilities of its ally, the United States, must be on a far grander scale. But they already knew that, which is why their armies haven't tried to take on the IDF since 1973. A low-level (usually) war of attrition has proven more effective. The IDF counterstrike this time may render it more costly than the PA wants to bear, but I doubt it. Gunnies are cheap, and the imagination on the other side is confined to the propaganda wing. They'll try and rebuild and give more of the same. "George Bush, whether the world quite realizes it yet or not, has carefully planned and carried out the destruction of the Palestinian Authority and its terror brigades, and managed to do so without triggering anything more threatening from the Arab states than a few fundraisers." That's the way things stand as of this moment. If Sharon backs off and allows them to regroup, then this could all be wasted effort, with things back to the way they were this time next year. The question in my mind is, what are they going to do to stop them from regrouping? Sure hope the first step is keeping Yasser bottled up without plumbing until he dies of old age. Fred, my guess is this is a short term stopgap to put the quietus on the problem until the fall, when we are going to rain the fires of hell on Iraq. The fall of Iraq is going to shatter all sorts of mid-east fault lines, and in the ensuing scramble, I doubt if anybody will be paying much attention when Israel settles its Palestinian problem permanently. It's my personal opinion, with nothing to back it up, mind you, that we'd be raining all over Iraq right this moment if we didn't have to wait for new cruise missiles to be delivered. Remember Clinton ran the stock down, and then we expended a bunch of them in the early days of the bombing. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |