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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doc Bones who wrote (14995)	12/29/2001 1:47:55 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Here's a good argument for you, Nadine ;-) Thanks. I needed that. ;-) To my mind, of course, the Bush administration did not so much put itself in the Sharon corner as withdraw itself from the Arafat corner. This was due to the behavior of the Arafat corner, which she tactfully omits to mention. Colin Powell tried to steer a middle course, offered up US support for "Palestine", sent Zinni as his envoy, a man whose good track record has been with our Arab allies, and what kind of welcome did Zinni get? Suicide bombs right in his face, almost literally (his hotel in Jerusalem was about a block from the triple bombing; he got to watch the body parts being scraped off the street). In fact, the US has been doing just what she advised him to do at the end of her piece: It should also do what it did not do during the Oslo agreement in the late '90s, which is to monitor, tough-mindedly, the compliance or noncompliance of both sides to agreements Tough-minded monitoring means that you notice when one side has broken its agreements. Under Oslo, Arafat agreed to suppress terrorism and promised not to turn his police force into an army that would shoot at Israelis. He broke these pledges when he started the intifada. Does she forget that small matter? To say that we must always remain evenhanded, no, even more, that we must be perceived by the world as being evenhanded, removes the power of judgement from US foreign policy. Arafat has always counted on diplomatic allies who will let him off the hook, call him "hapless and hopeless", argue that he must not be held responsible, that no one should hold him to his word, that evenhandedness must be preserved in all circumstances, that he must be paid again for the promises he broke the last time. But finally, the US has judged that Arafat must be held responsible for the terror that he has fomented and used as an instrument of policy. Arafat is gathering excuses from the usual sources. We'll see which judgement lasts.