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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (21921)	3/22/2002 9:10:05 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

I don't think those who weren't persuaded by Arafat's refusal of Barak's offers are persuadable under any circumstances. Nadine.. Peace will happen when the conflict ceases to be one of peripheral interest to Europe and the US, and one in which both powers commit forces to imposing and preserving the peace, literally knocking heads together. That's been the problem here... The world has two little siblings mauling one another, lining up allies amongst their other siblings and threatening to launch a family feud. The global parents, Europe and the US, have been just saying "oh those children.... What can we do??.." But now this is getting to the point where the children are threatening the parents and some immediate action has to take place to impose order and to solve the problem as best is practicable under the circumstances.. Even if it means sending both sides to the corner for some "time out" while we separate them physically. It's obvious that the "family council" we call the UN has been ineffective, and now its time for the "carrot/stick" approach. And btw, however morally reprehensible it might be, suicide bombings against civilians is a highly effective tactic. If you look back, the world was appalled when the Germans bombed Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. "This is just not done", the moralists of the time proclaimed.. "It's barbaric.. morally reprehensible... How can someone justify killing civilians during war??"... But you know something? All sides targeted civilian populations during WWII.. The British fire-bombed German cities. The US fire-bombed and nuked Japanese cities... The German's fire-bombed English cities... History's full of examples of societies using tactics and strategies that the other side believe morally reprehensible. The British thought the American colonists were not "playing by the rules" when we used guerilla tactics against them. We thought the Japanese had complete disregard for human life because they would crash their planes into our ships. It's not much of a leap for the muslim extremists to justify their tactics, claiming that anyone living by western ways is the enemy, and thus worthy of death. The question is what will it take to convince us to reciprocate. And that's why I say that we must have our "Munich", the epiphany where we have removed all doubt that this is not just an "Arab-Israeli" conflict, but a "Muslim-Western" conflict of social and cultural ideologies. And the first step in that is removing the argument on the Arab side that the lack of a Palestinian state is the whole cause for the existence of these extremists. I don't buy it.. I know you don't.. But we're, perhaps, a bit more attuned to the reality involved here. Now we have to have something that will convince even the most naive that these extremists truly hate the secular west and wish to conquer us. Hawk