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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (58189)	11/21/2002 11:41:50 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Frum at NRO adds his comments on Snowcroft, who we should remember was Rice's first Mentor. Also a bit on Canada and Turkey. PS. I see that PBS is going to do a segment on the Fox letter. Like PBS is the home of unbiased Journalism! NOV. 21, 2002: DATELINE TORONTO Blame Jonah: I'm in Canada today, and I have to report that people here still twitch irritably when they hear the words "National Review." Jonah Goldberg's suggestion in the magazine's last issue that the U.S. wage educational war against Canada continues to enflame feelings. On the other hand, Canadian laxness in the war on terror makes me twitch irritably. On Tuesday, Britain and the United States froze the assets of a large Canadian Muslim charity, the weirdly misnamed Benevolence International Foundation, as a terrorist front. Yet the Canadian government refuses to act ? as it has refused to act to halt Hezbollah fund-raising on Canadian territory or to crack down on terrorist sleeper cells inside Canada. Prime Minister Jean Chretien's theory seems to be that by tolerating terrorist activity within Canada, Canada can buy itself a degree of immunity from terrorism. It?s a policy that disgusts a great many people in Canada. But it?s a policy that looks likely to last as long as Chretien?s hold on power does. Fortunately, his days do seem numbered .... The Path Not Taken: Chretienism does however have its American supporters, notably former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who appears in the Washington Post this morning with an absolutely breathtaking article . For Scowcroft, it is never too late for one last effort to save Saddam Hussein. He proposes that President Bush pocket his UN Security Council Resolution, give the inspectors lotsa-lotsa time to go about their business, and in the meantime devote himself to, guess what?, restarting the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process." Scowcroft pays lip service to the idea that "peace" requires that Palestinians refrain from acts of terror. But he carefully notes that "total compliance" cannot be required as a "precondition" for peace. The ?peace process? in other words has become an elegant euphemism for a policy of urging Israel to make concessions to the sponsors of terror. We can all recognize that this is a dumb idea for America. It doesn't get smarter when it is applied elsewhere. Unfortunately for Scowcroft, publication his article coincides with the latest Palestinian enormity - this time a bomb attack on a bus packed with students on their way to school. ?A torso that had fallen over the side of the bus was covered with a white-and-blue checkered blanket. Sandwiches and schoolbooks lay scattered in the street.? Eleven are dead, 48 wounded, eight of them very seriously. We need to call such acts by a less arid name than ?noncompliance.? Democracy for Turkey: On Tuesday?s Washington Post oped page, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria vigorously scourges the European Union for dishonoring its pledge to begin work on Turkish entry into the EU. Zakaria notes that Turkey has committed itself to a broad program of internal reform and respect for the rights of its Kurdish minority. The Kurdish language has been legalized and state media now broadcast in the Kurdish language. This is important progress and it deserves to be acclaimed ? and rewarded. Turkey has been a good friend to the United States first in the Cold War and now in the War on Terror. But the recent election gains for Islamist parties in Turkey warn us against too simple a view of Turkey?s internal politics. Turkey is a friend. Turkey is also a potential problem. Turkey is a testing ground for the thesis that democracy can immunize a Muslim-majority state against Islamic extremism. It can be a testing ground for something else too, which Zakaria will discuss in a forthcoming book ? the proposition that there is more to democracy than elections alone. Turkey must build a democratic culture to animate its democratic institutions. That democratic culture will require a full reckoning with Turkish history, the bad pages as well as the good, the atrocities against the Armenians as well as the achievements of Kemal Ataturk. Turkey has emancipated itself from so many of the malign influences of Islamic tradition, but there is one more veil that must be lifted ? the veil that inhibits so many Muslim nations from perceiving themselves as anything other than victims, no matter what acts they themselves have committed. We?ll know that Turkish democracy has become permanent and irreversible when Turkey can tell itself the truth about the events of 1916. And the United States can help Turkish democracy to become permanent and irreversibly by pressuring Europe to keep its promises to our Turkish ally.