Bush Is Held Hostage by His Obsession with Iraq

The New York Times nicely illustrates why I think the current administration’s obsession with Saddam Hussein and Iraq is counter-productive. Reporter James Bennet writes,

Mr. Bush’s quandary is this: To retain a consistent and coherent stance against terrorism, he has little choice but to excoriate Mr. Arafat for failing to stop the suicide bombings. So on Saturday Mr. Bush demanded that Mr. Arafat call for a halt in the suicide bombings in Arabic and use his besieged security forces to crack down on the terrorists and their weaponry. So far, Mr. Arafat has ignored those calls.

Under the logic of the Bush doctrine, that would compel Mr. Bush to treat the Palestinian leader the way he has treated Al Qaeda and the Taliban, a point the Israelis are making daily. But in this case, as some of Mr. Bush’s advisers acknowledge, that logic has run headlong into other priorities.

To build Arab support for his impending confrontation with Iraq, Mr. Bush knows he cannot afford to alienate other Arab nations, whose anti-Israel declarations have grown in vehemence and urgency, along with their demands that Mr. Bush restrain the Sharon government.

Bush’s seeming inflexible view that there must be some sort of attack on Iraq is allowing Arab countries to hold U.S. foreign policy hostage. Don’t push too far on Israel, they saw, or forget about counting on us when it comes time to take out Saddam Hussein.

There is an odd parallel in the way Bush was recently held hostage by one of his dumber acts of deal making with Congress, when he refused to lift steep tariffs on Pakistani textiles to please corporate fat cats and voters in areas likely to be impacted by any cessation or lowering of such tariffs.

I’ve always wondered what the fascination is to hold such awesome power and then let people nickel and dime it away from you. Letting Arafat know the United States will not tolerate terrorism in that region any longer should be a much higher foreign policy goal than removing Hussein — especially when Arab countries are going to have a lukewarm reaction at any attack on Iraq regardless of what the United States does visa vis Israel.

Palestinian Authority’s Hypocrisy

From an MSNBC story about Sharon’s saying Israel is at war with terrorism and the latest military incursions by Israel into Palestinian areas,

Palestinians immediately criticized the latest Israeli military move. Also speaking to the “Today” show, Hassan Abdel Rahman, the chief Palestinian representative in the United States, accused Sharon of “driving Palestinians into violence.”

“The war Mr. Sharon is waging … is [being waged] against the Palestinian people. He is not trying to achieve security for Israel. Peace cannot be achieved by killing more Palestinians.”

The real problem, of course, is that the Palestinians — including Arafat — seem to be under the impression that victory can be achieved by killing more Israeli civilians with suicide bombers.

Besides, if peace cannot be achieved by killing more Palestinians why does the Palestinian Authority openly tolerate the lynchings of Palestinians suspected of being Israeli collaborators?

Kofi Annan and Israel

As usual, Steven Denbeste nails what is going on between Israel and Yasser Arafat. The short version: both Israel and the United States want Arafat to conduct a serious crackdown on Hamas and other groups. Arafat has long resisted that, correctly thinking that doing so might put both his life and political position in danger from within. As Denbeste notes, the United States and Israel are currently in the process of not-so subtly telling Arafat that he’s got two choices — crack down on Hamas or make good on his promise to die for the Palestinian cause.

Actually I don’t think the United States wants to see Arafat dead under any circumstance, but Israel has maneuvered Arafat into a corner where they are quickly approaching a point where they will be able to say “we had no choice” and the U.S. will likely look the other way.

Oh yeah, this was going to be about Kofi Annan. The idiot in charge of the United Nations was running around the world the other day blasting Israel for its latest incursion and claiming that violence would not solve the Middle East’s problems.

Earth to Kofi — the entire world, including the Israelis, saw exactly what the United Nations considers to be a “solution” to violence when the blue hats stood by and did nothing during the Rwandan genocide. I think the Israelis are probably not interested in Annan’s idea of a non-violent solution, which apparently boils down to sit back and allow yourselves to be massacred.

The Bin Laden Video Is Fake, and the Holocaust Never Happened

From what I can see skimming this morning’s news, a lot of the reaction from Arab newspapers and television is that the Bin Laden video released by the United States yesterday is a fake.

This from a region of the world where newspapers regularly republish The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as if they were legitimate historical documents. In fact, television producers in Egypt are in the midst of creating one of the most expensive miniseries ever in that part of the world which includes a major subplot about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy taken straight out of the Protocols.

Add to that the commonplace Holocaust denial, and the recycling of medieval myths about Jews (such as Suha Arafat’s claim that Israel was poisoning the water that Palestinians drink), and you have to wonder what exactly the standard of evidence for authenticating documents is in the Middle East.

Arafat’s Time Is Up

I think Steven Den Beste is right when he says that Yasser Arafat is now in a no win situation and Arafat will be lucky if he survives to see 2003. And the main reason I think Arafat is doomed is that the Israelis no longer find him useful (in fact, pushing the Palestinians to a point where they kill Arafat may be the best outcome Israel can hope for at the moment).

There have always been hardliners in Israel who wanted to kill Arafat outright, but at least in recent years the government has ruled out attempts on Arafat’s life, largely on the grounds that a) the alternatives to Arafat are even worse and b) killing Arafat would likely result in a total war between Israel and the Palestinians, possibly involving other Middle Eastern countries.

Neither of those conditions hold anymore. Arafat may be on the moderate end of the Palestinian political spectrum, but he no longer can keep the extremists in line. The Israelis now have a situation where Hamas or some other group carries out a suicide bombing and commentators around the world rush to say that Arafat’s not responsible because he can’t possibly control every terrorist within the Palestinian Authority. Exactly.

Second, if Israel is not already in a state of total war, it is increasingly obvious that it will be in such a state very soon. Every time a suicide bomb goes off in an Israeli mall, there’s one more bit of evidence that the Oslo accords were a horrible mistake. Using means both covert and overt, I suspect that the Israelis are going to begin the process of undoing that agreement.

How — by backing Arafat into a corner where he cannot survive. As Den Beste notes, if Arafat gives in to Israeli and American demands and actually starts an earnest crackdown on Palestinian terrorism, his days are numbered. On the other hand, if he doesn’t, he provides cover for continued Israeli incursions into territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority, which also helps hasten his end.

So what’s the best way out for Israel? Palestinian hardliners finally get angered enough at Arafat and successfully assassinate him. After a couple of additional terrorist attacks, Israel declares it has had enough and sends in its military to renew the occupation and deal with the terrorists in its own way. Sure it will receive international condemnation, but it will be much more blunted with the Palestinian Authority devolving into chaos.

The only real obstacle to this scenario would be U.S. objections. At some point, however, the Israelis might just realize that American politicians are more than ready to urge Israel to “restrain” itself right into non-existence as a viable political entity (in fact, you have to think that many Israeli politicians likely think their single biggest mistake was ever becoming so excessively dependent on U.S. aid, which constrains their range of action. Sure Egypt is constrained in much the same way, but it doesn’t face the same sort of problems that Israel does).