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

To: david who wrote (63634)	12/30/2002 3:17:05 PM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Good post David, but it will take time for this to happen and there might not be enough of it left. Also they can talk democracy all they want but if enough pals dont renounce terror, no progress will be made. Unfortunately the terrorists will always see to that. mike

To: david who wrote (63634)	12/30/2002 3:58:04 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

ould you accept the idea that Sharon is doing to Arafat and his corrupt Regime the same Bush intends to do with Sadam H.? david, I don't think the comparison works all that well. I presume you have in mind the "regime change" policy. I'm not a fan of Arafat, that's for certain, but it still looks to me as if the relation between Arafat and the Palestinians is qualitatively different from that of Hussein and the Iraqis. Thus, I think Sharon's policies of trying to get rid of Arafat have only served to bolster his standing among the Palestinians. Also those policies make it less likely other leadership can come forward; not more likely. It also looks to me as if Sharon's policy to get rid of Arafat, rather than producing what we would all hope, democratic elections as you say, drives more Palestinians into the radical Islamist camps. Friedman has some material on the ways in which Palestinian life changed for the better between 67 and 87, that the material wellbeing increase was coupled by an increasing identity as Palestinians and an increasing anger at Israeli occuption. Makes sense to me. As for Begin signing the first peace treaty, my reading to date, and Friedman, my source for all things here says as much, that peace treaty was thanks to a huge and daring and very courageous gamble by Sadat coupled with some, surprise, surprise, very hard bargaining from Jimmy Carter. In fact, on that latter point, Friedman uses Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter as the model for ME tough US diplomacy and George Schultz as the anti-model. I found that surprising.