Israelis' snub a sign U.S. not omnipotent
Jay Bookman - Staff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, April 18, 2002
In the days after Sept. 11, foreign policy took on a new moral clarity. President
Bush could tell other countries "either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists." Our task was clear: Kill the terrorists before they kill us. Wherever in
the world they hid, we would hunt them down. And most of the world pledged to
support us in that effort.
That era of clarity has proved brief. It had been waning for weeks if not months,
but it ended altogether on April 4, when President Bush stood in the Rose
Garden to demand the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West
Bank. He also announced he would be sending Secretary of State Colin Powell
to the region the following week.
In response, the Israelis ignored him.
Two days later Bush repeated his demand, and national security adviser
Condoleezza Rice stressed that "the important point is to begin [the withdrawal]
now, without delay, not tomorrow, not when Secretary Powell gets to the region,
but now."
The Israelis still ignored him.
It is now two weeks to the day since Bush issued his ultimatum. Powell has
come and gone, and still the Israeli troops remain in Palestinian cities, with
promises of withdrawal from some areas sometime next week.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from that situation. First, Bush
squandered considerable respect around the world by issuing a public demand
that he could not enforce. History will prove that to have been a blunder. Other
leaders have surely noted the deaf ear that Ariel Sharon has turned to Bush, and
by extension to the United States. They will also note that Israel has suffered no
repercussion for its defiance.
In the future, when the United States attempts to strong-arm nations such as
Saudi Arabia or Turkey, or even our allies in Europe, the example set by Sharon
will be hard to overcome. American omnipotence has been exposed as a myth.
Sharon's obstinacy also exposed another difficult truth. Sovereign nations such
as Israel have their own perspectives and priorities, and when they contradict
American priorities, local concerns win out. In Sharon's case, he believed that
continuing the invasion was important to Israel, as well as to his own political
standing. If that caused problems for the United States, well, tough.
Not surprisingly, the world is full of leaders who think that way, and in a sense
Sharon has done us a favor by reminding us of that fact. Yes, we are the world's
sole superpower, the biggest, baddest dude on the planet. And yes, we're still
pretty angry about the events of Sept. 11. But the sympathy --- and the awe at
the depth of our anger --- that drove other nations to pledge full cooperation last
fall has now waned.
The Saudi ambassador to Great Britain, for example, recently published a poem
in praise of Palestinian suicide bombers. Another Saudi official has written to
Bush and Congress, defending the suicide attackers as "young men and women
[who] offered their souls for the sake of freedom and independence and in
defense of their religion."
Does that mean that the Saudis are no longer with us, and thus against us? Is
Europe now against us, too, because it opposes military action against Iraq?
Clearly, the easy divisions have broken down, and in fact have become terribly
complex.
Future cooperation will once again require diplomacy, which is the art of aligning
our priorities with those of other nations when possible, and easing conflicts
when conflict is inevitable. It is an art too little respected by many in the Bush
administration.
Even now, as Powell has been in Israel trying to repair the damage caused by
U.S. disengagement, anonymous colleagues in Washington have been sniping
at the secretary of state for even attempting to halt the Israelis' attack on
suspected terrorists. Such an effort, they whisper, violates the Bush Doctrine,
which mandates just the kind of response against terror that Sharon is
conducting.
Of course, many of the whispering class are also among the most ardent
advocates of an American attack on Iraq and Saddam Hussein. They do not wish
to understand that by allowing Israel free rein against the Palestinians, we make
it all but impossible to win Arab support against Hussein.
Their answer, of course, is that we don't need Arab support.
But of course we do. We need it politically, strategically, militarily and
economically. And we need it not just from the Arabs but from the Russians, the
Chinese, the Europeans and Asians. The world --- so simple for so brief a period
of time --- is once again complex.
And complex people will be required to manage it.
Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/thursday/opinion_c3eb271dd413a10a008d.html
jbookman@ajc.com |
