Sullivan comments on Friedman's column. (My we are getting inbred, aren't we?)
THE ARAB-ISRAELI SIDESHOW: It's Tony Blair's fixation; and Tom Friedman's as well. At least Friedman, in an excellent and honest column, grapples with the paradox here. What if the Israeli-Palestinian crisis isn't really the main problem in the Middle East, but since that's what everyone there and elsewhere believes, we'd be crazy not to take it into account? Clearly, for the Arab world, this is the psychological issue of the first order. Humiliated by their backward economies and societies, ashamed in some inchoate way that their biggest exports in recent years have been Western-produced oil and mass murdering religious fanatics, they now have to watch as yet another despised Arab despot gets his comeuppance. How can we expect them to deal with that if we don't throw them a bone over the West Bank? I take the point. It extends beyond the Middle East to Europe, where we need allies, and where Israel is regarded as the source of almost all the problems in international affairs. But the real question is: do we continue to enable or even promote this delusion or do we confront it? I know it's a high stakes gamble, but it seems to me that by not entertaining this fantasy we might actually do more good than if we do. In war, clarity matters. In that war, our enemy is Islamist terrorism and its state sponsors. When we've dealt with them - and we've barely started - we can return to the Israeli-Palestinian situation. In fact, it's only after we have dealt with Saddam and the Iranian Mullahs that we will get Palestinian interlocutors who know they have nowhere else to turn. Then we can talk, and get tough on Israel with regard to its destabilizing settlements as well. Meantime, set up a diplomatic diversion. Let Blair have his conference. Say all the conciliatory things. And depose Saddam - soon. |
