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

To: JohnM who wrote (65248)	1/10/2003 10:37:05 AM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

re Doran, here are some comments on it that I just received from a player I respect hugely. this is the kind of debate that the top people have with each other in private, btw--as you can see, it's not so different from the kind of stuff that we do here, at least at its best... tb@flatterywillgetoneeverywhere.com "Read his piece. Good point about Palestine-as-symbol. But I don't agree with his prescription. Yes, we have to take care of Saddam and do it effectively. BUT, precisely because, as he says, Palestine as symbol works best when Palestine as place is burning, we need to be doing what we can to lower the flames there at the same time as we confront Al Qaeda and Baghdad. If we had seized on the Saudi initiative to promote the Mitchell/Tenet plans we would have been able to help Israelis and Palestinians out of the abyss and that would have benefited our "get Saddam" strategy. He has created somewhat of a straw man since the alternative to what Bush is now doing is not an all-out effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict -- it's obviously not ripe for that at the moment. The real alternative was an effort to help both sides out of the death embrace by on-the-ground engagement to get them to take the steps that would help end the violence and terrorism and put them back on the path towards a negotiated solution. That was doable in the first year of the Bush administration, especially after 9/11 and even more so in December 2001 when Arafat was under huge pressure and started to act against the terrorists. But we gave up after a pathetic effort -- Zinni came home for Christmas -- and Sharon and Arafat went off the cliff. Now we're left with much more drastic options and Palestine-as-symbol making it more difficult for us to pursue Saddam precisely because Palestine-as-place is burning. "By the way, he's wrong about the Saudi initiative as a way for the Saudis to avoid doing anything serious about Palestine -- they were prepared to act: they even got involved in helping the Palestinians write a democratic constitution (!) in order to wrest power away from their nemesis Yasser Arafat and, unlike their efforts to stop funding Al Qaeda, they actually did cut funds to Hamas in an effort to get them to talk about a ceasefire (which is happening in Cairo at the moment). I believe we could have gotten them to do a lot more if we had been prepared to engage seriously in the effort. He's also wrong if he imagines Bush is going to follow his advice and launch an all-out effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after he's through with Saddam -- the same reasons for not engaging before will apply afterwards as well. There'll be the mop up and stabilization efforts in Iraq itself, there'll be the crisis in Korea, problems with Afghanistan, the economy stupid and the ever-present concern that by actually doing something to help Israel out of this mess Bush would lose those precious Jewish votes he's managed to garner by doing nothing."