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COMMENTARY
July 5, 2003
Flypaper
There are currently three main theatres of -- not war precisely but something resembling it within the Middle East. One is the civil insurrection in Iran which has continued to escalate even though the media have withdrawn their attention again wanting quicker results. One is in Iraq which is now getting more media attention as Saddamite and affiliated "dead-enders" try to step up resistance to the U.S. and British military occupation. The third is Israel/Palestine always aboil but where the media are reporting "hopeful signs". I almost tire of mentioning how the media -- specifically the "liberal" mainstream media that determine how 60 per cent of Canadians and 40 per cent of Americans think -- get everything backwards. So that by the time one has unwrangled their reflexive views one is stupefied by the doublings quadruplings and sextuplings of negatives. There are no hopeful signs in Israel/Palestine per se. The Bush administration and the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon are entering consciously into a devil's pact in which the Palestinian authorities who had pledged to disarm the terrorist militias have instead made a show of arranging ceasefires with them. Far from putting them out of action this gives Hamas Islami Jihad the various branches of Fatah and affiliates of Hizbullah -- all still recruiting and operating freely throughout the West Bank and Gaza -- an opportunity to regroup and repair the damage the Israel Defence Forces were able to inflict on them through almost three years' of Intifada and counter-Intifada. The ceasefires also give Israel an opportunity and diplomatic cover to pull back the most exposed West Bank settlements and make preparations for the isolation of the various Palestinian enclaves when the terrorism resumes -- which it will do almost inevitably. But on balance time weighs to the benefit of the terrorists. The hopeful signs are instead around the region -- just where the media are affecting despair. With each passing day the future of Iran's ayatollahs looks grimmer as it becomes clearer they can depend on the loyalty of no significant section of Iranian society and must increasingly doubt their own police and army. What appeared last year to be students versus ayatollahs is now effectively the people versus the ayatollahs with the biggest demonstrations yet planned for next week. The U.S. occupation of Iraq has done more to destabilize Iran than the ayatollahs could hope to do in Iraq; and then something. This "something" has befuddled the various "experts" on regional security trapped within their Pavlovian assumptions. They notice that the U.S. forces in Iraq have become a new magnet for regional terrorist activity. They assume this demonstrates the foolishness of President Bush's decision to invade. It more likely demonstrates the opposite. While engaged in the very difficult business of building a democracy in Iraq -- the first democracy should it succeed in the entire history of the Arabs -- President Bush has also quite consciously to my information created a new playground for the enemy away from Israel and even farther away from the United States itself. By the very act of proving this lower ground he drains terrorist resources from other swamps. This is the meaning of Mr. Bush's "bring 'em on" taunt from the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday when he was quizzed about the "growing threat to U.S. forces" on the ground in Iraq. It should have been obvious that no U.S. President actually relishes having his soldiers take casualties. What the media and U.S. Democrats affect not to grasp is that the soldiers are now replacing targets that otherwise would be provided by defenceless civilians both in Iraq and at large. The sore thumb of the U.S. occupation -- and it is a sore thumb equally to Baathists and Islamists compelling their response -- is not a mistake. It is carefully hung flypaper. And I think the na?ve "roadmap" exercise in diplomacy between Israel and the Palestinian Authority may make some sense in this context. I.e. Israel takes down its flypaper while the U.S. puts up its own in Iraq. At the moment it appears that most of the infiltration of Iraq is coming from the west through Syria and consists of Lebanese-based Hizbullah elbowing their way into Saddam's old territory. Their intention is to do to the U.S. Army in Iraq what they did to the Marines in Beirut in 1983. The chief source of both men and materiel is what Gal Luft has called "Hizbullahland" -- the 1 000 square kilometre patch that Hizbullah now rules under Syrian protection which was formerly Israel's security enclave in southern Lebanon (until they withdrew in a peace initiative in the year 2000). Hizbullah itself (the "Army of Allah" -- Shia and ultimately financed and armed by Iran's ayatollahs) are directing their attention less and less towards the "Little Satan" of Israel and more and more towards the "Great Satan" of the U.S. as events unfold. This is exactly what President Bush wants. To engage them away from Israel in mortal combat. To have an excuse for wiping them out -- a good solid American excuse from which Israel has been extracted. The good news is Hizbullah's taking the bait. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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