By George I think she got it!
Our World: Grounded in fantasy Iran and its client
state Syria have a strategic vision for the Middle East. They wish to
take over Lebanon. They wish to destroy Israel. They wish to defeat the
US in Iraq. They wish to drive the US and NATO from Afghanistan. They
wish to dominate the region by driving the rest of the Arab world to
its jihad-supporting knees. Then they wish to apply their vision to the
rest of the world. Today, Syria and Iran are ardently advancing their strategic vision
for the world through a deliberate strategy of victory by a thousand
cuts. Last week's Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip; Sunday's reopening
of the Lebanese front against Israel with the Syrian-ordered rocket
attacks on Kiryat Shemona; the now five-week old Syrian ordered
low-intensity warfare against Lebanon's pro-Western Siniora government;
last week's attack on the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra; the recent
intensification of terrorism in Afghanistan and Iran's move to further
destabilize the country by violently deporting 100,000 Afghan refugees
back to the war-torn country - all of these are moves to advance this
clear Iranian-Syrian strategy. And all these moves have taken place against the backdrop of Syria's
refashioning of its military in the image of Hizbullah on steroids and
Iran's relentless, unopposed progress in its nuclear weapons program. For their part, both the US and Israel also have a strategic vision. Unfortunately, it is grounded in fantasy. Washington and Jerusalem wish to solve all the problems of the
region and the world by establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza,
Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. While Israel now faces Iranian proxies on
two fronts, in their meeting at the White House today US President
George W. Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will gush about their
support for Palestinian statehood. Creepily echoing LSD king Timothy
Leary, they will tune out this reality as they drone on about the
opportunities that Gaza's transformation into a base for global jihad
afford to the notion that promoting the Fatah terrorist organization's
control over Judea and Samaria can make the world a better, safer,
happier place. Today Bush and Olmert will announce their full support for Fatah
chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas's new
government. The US will intensify General Keith Dayton's training and
arming of Fatah forces. Israel will give Fatah $700 million. The
Europeans and the rest of the international community will give the
"moderate, secular" terror group still more money and guns and love.
The US will likely also demand that Olmert order the IDF to give Fatah
terrorists free reign in Judea and Samaria. Olmert and Bush claim that by backing Abbas militarily, financially
and politically they will be setting up an "alternative Palestine"
which will rival Hamas's jihadist Palestine. As this notion has it,
envious of the good fortune of their brethren in Judea and Samaria,
Gazans will overthrow Hamas and the course will be set for peace -
replete with the ethnic cleansing of Judea and Samaria and eastern
Jerusalem of all Jewish presence. Fatah forces barely raised a finger to prevent their defeat in Gaza
in spite of the massive quantities of US arms they received and the
military training they underwent at the hands of US General Keith
Dayton. Bush, Olmert and all proponents of the notion of strengthening
Fatah in Judea and Samaria refuse to answer one simple question: Why
would a handover of Judea and Samaria to Abbas's Fatah produce a better
outcome than Israel's 2005 handover of Gaza to Abbas's Fatah? They refuse to answer this question because they know full well that
the answer is that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the
outcome can be better. They know full well that since replacing Yasser
Arafat as head of the PA in 2004, Abbas refused to take any effective
action against Hamas. They know that he refused to take action to
prevent Hamas's rise to power in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. They know
that the guns the US transferred to Fatah in Gaza were surrendered to
Hamas without a fight last week. They know that the billions of dollars
of international and Israeli assistance to Fatah over the past 14 years
never were used to advance the cause of peace. They know that that
money was diverted into the pockets of Fatah strongmen and utilized to
build terror militias in which Hamas members were invited to serve.
They know that Fatah built a terror superstructure in Judea, Samaria
and Gaza which enabled operational cooperation between Fatah, Hamas and
Islamic Jihad terror cells. So why embrace the fantasy that things can be different now, in
Judea and Samaria? Rather than provide rational arguments to defend
their view that Hamas's takeover of Gaza is an opportunity for peace,
proponents of peace fantasies as strategic wisdom explain vacuously
that peace is the best alternative to jihad. They whine that those who
point out that Israel now borders Iran in Lebanon and Gaza have nothing
positive to say. To meet the growing threat in Gaza, they argue that Europeans, or
maybe Egyptians and Jordanians can be deployed at the international
border with Egypt to stem the weapons and terror personnel flow into
Gaza. To meet the growing threat in Lebanon, Olmert pleads for more UN
troops. Both views ignore the obvious: Gaza has been transformed into an
Iranian-sponsored base for global jihad because Egypt has allowed it to
be so transformed. Assisted by its Syrian-sponsored Palestinian allies,
Hizbullah has rebuilt its arsenals and reasserted its control in
southern Lebanon because UN forces in southern Lebanon have done
nothing to prevent it from doing so. No country on earth will volunteer to fight Hamas and its jihadist
allies in Gaza. No government on earth will voluntarily deploy its
forces to counter Hizbullah and Iran in south Lebanon. This is why -
until they fled - European monitors at the Rafah terminal were a joke.
This is why Spanish troops in UNIFIL devote their time in Lebanon to
teaching villagers Spanish. So why are Bush and Olmert set to embrace Fatah and Abbas today? Why
are they abjectly refusing to come to terms with the strategic reality
of the Iranian-Syrian onslaught? Why are they insisting that the
establishment of a Palestinian state is their strategic goal and doing
everything they can to pretend that their goal has not been repeatedly
proven absurd? Well, why should they? As far as Bush is concerned, no American
politician has ever paid a price for advancing the cause of peace
processes that strengthen terrorists and hostile Arab states at
Israel's expense. Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton had Arafat over to
visit the White House more often than any other foreign leader and
ignored global jihad even when its forces bombed US embassies and
warships. And today Clinton receives plaudits for his efforts to bring
peace to the Middle East. By denying that the war against Israel is related to the war in
Iraq; by ignoring the strategic links between all the Iranian and
Syrian sponsored theaters of war, Bush views gambling with Israel's
security as a win-win situation. He will be applauded as a champion of
peace and if the chips go down on Israel, well, it won't be Americans
being bombed. Olmert looks to his left and sees president-elect Shimon Peres.
Peres, the architect of the Oslo process which placed Israel's national
security in the hands of the PLO, has been rewarded for his role in
imperiling his country by his similarly morally challenged political
colleagues who just bestowed him with Israel's highest office. Olmert looks to his left and his sees incoming defense minister Ehud
Barak. In 2000, then prime minister Barak withdrew Israeli forces from
Lebanon, and enabled Iran's assertion of control over southern Lebanon
through its Hizbullah proxy. In so doing, Barak set the conditions for
last summer's war, and quite likely, for this summer's war. By offering Arafat Gaza, 95 percent of Judea and Samaria and half of
Jerusalem at Camp David, Barak showed such enormous weakness that he
all but invited the Palestinian terror war which Arafat began planning
the day he rejected Barak's offer. For his failure, Barak has been rewarded by his Labor Party, which
elected him its new chairman on the basis of his vast "experience," and
by the media which has embraced him as a "professional" defense
minister. Olmert looks to his right and he sees how the media portrays Likud
Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu and former IDF Chief of General Staff Moshe
Ya'alon as alarmists for claiming that Israel cannot abide by an
Iranian-proxy Hamas state on its border. He sees that Shas and Yisrael
Beiteinu supported Peres's candidacy as president and have joined their
fortunes to Olmert's in a bid to block elections which will bring the
Right to power. Israel has arguably never faced a more dangerous strategic
environment than it faces today. Yet it is not without good options. It
can retake control over the Gaza-Sinai border. It can renew its
previously successful tactic of killing Hamas terrorists. It can
continue its successful campaign of keeping terrorists down in Judea
and Samaria, and it can continue preparing for war in the north. All of
these options can be sold to the Left. But today both Bush and Olmert will reject these options in favor of
mindless peace process prattle. They will reject reality as they uphold
Abbas as a credible leader and shower him with praise, money and arms.
Their political fortunes will be utmost in their minds as they do this.
And they will be guaranteeing war that will claim the lives of an
unknown number of Israeli civilians and soldiers. Bush and Olmert should know that when the time for reckoning comes
they will not be able to claim, along with Peres and Barak that their
hands did not shed this blood. Reality has warned them of their folly.
But in their low, dishonest opportunism, they have chosen to ignore
reality and amuse themselves with fantasies and photo-ops.
By Caroline B. Glick
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Lebanese people carry the coffin of slain anti-syrian lawmaker Walid
Eido who was killed by an explosion on Wednesday, as they head to a
Mosque during his funeral procession in Beirut, Lebanon Thursday, June
14, 2007. A bomb-rigged car, rocked Beirut's seafront Wednesday,
killing an anti-Syrian lawmaker Walid Eido and his 35-year-old son, two
of his bodyguards and six others in a narrow street off the main
waterfront in Manara. The blast, a new blow to the stability of this
conflict-torn nation, comes days after the government began putting
together an international tribunal ordered by the United Nations to try
suspects in the killing of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut
two years ago a move strongly opposed by Syria and its allies in
Lebanon. The slain lawmaker, Walid Eido, was a prominent supporter of
the tribunal and a close friend of Hariri. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
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