Can we please take a little break from the “pursuit of peace” in order to acknowledge what we have just learned about the Middle East? We have learned that when the United States and Israel specifically demanded just a couple of days of relative peace, Palestinian terrorists made a point of slaughtering over a dozen Jews at a Passover meal. Notice the timing. Can we also aknowledge that the Arab summit in Beirut has also collapsed into a complete mess of infighting, squabbles and incoherence? So much for the alleged concern of most Arab governments for the plight of the Palestinians. The crisis over there is not hard to discern. Arab and Islamist terrorists, fed by a diet of vicious anti-Semitic propaganda, are engaged in a war aimed at the destruction of Israel and the second holocaust of the Jews. The Arab regimes who help foment the hatred of Israel to distract from their own corruption and failure would be perfectly happy to see this war succeed, and are already supplying the arms for the war effort. Every single attempt to forge some kind of truce between Israel and the Palestinian terrorists and the population that supports them has failed. The efforts have failed because the problem cannot be solved. One side wants to live in some sort of security; the other side, whatever it says in public, is committed to the destruction of what they call the “Zionist entity.” The recent pathetic meanderings of the vice-president of the United States government have had one clear effect: they have emboldened the terrorists to believe, with good reason, that the more they kill, the more leverage they will have with Washington. And the terrorists are using our imminent attack on Iraq as even more leverage to wage an uninterrupted war against Israel.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO?: Perhaps we have an obligation to go through the motions of trying to get a cease-fire. But it won’t happen. Every day, a real full-scale war approaches in which Israel will once again have to fight for survival – but this time against powers that might have access to weapons of mass destruction, and who prefer warfare by surrogates to the conventional conflict in which they have always lost. My own view is that there isn’t much we can do to prevent this except to disable and disarm the most dangerous power in the region, Iraq, and then to foment a regime change in Iran. Negotiating in good faith with pathological anti-Semites and murderers is a mug’s game. They cannot be reasoned with. In the end, they will have to be confronted. The only question is the timing – which I leave in the hands of those with more access to military details than I have.
REALITY CHECK II: “The last time an elected Vice-president did not run for reelection was John Nance Garner in 1940 – 62 years ago! This still does not stop DC gasbags from filling space between elections by speculating about replacements for Nixon, LBJ, Agnew, Quayle and now Cheney. We in New York have recently been subject to speculation about Rudy running for VP. Now we get you on Condeleeza Rice. Next will be Robert Novak plugging Jack Kemp to unify tax cutters, Fred Barnes speaking out for Bill Bennett to line up the religious right, The Bull Moose for McCain to get reformers and David Broder urging Bush to pick Zell Miller as part of a grand coalition to end terrorism and save social security. Stop the nonsense. Cheney will run again as long as he is alive.” This and other charming ripostes to yours truly can be found on the best Letters Page on the web.
THE LAST PRANKSTER: I’m grateful to a reader for pointing out the diary in the current New York Observer. It’s about one of the survivors of the LSD generation immortalized by Tom Wolfe in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” I’m a real liberal when it comes to legalizing recreational substances, but it also seems to me that those of us who favor legalization of most soft drugs have to acknowledge that such a move would hurt some lives as well as help others. This life remembered is a deeply sad one – but it has a serene ending, of sorts. Here’s how his niece, Rachel Lehman-Haupt, describes it:
The life that defined my uncle was not about pushing his mind to the outer limits. It was a painful, daily fight to stay within the limits. Yet Sandy managed to become a leader in Sullivan Counts recovery community. Everyone called him “Duke,” and his pastor would seek out his advice. As he found mind-stabilizing drugs, sobriety, a good marriage and a church, he discovered that Keses amped-up American dream was empty. For him, Kesey was not an American hero, but a self-indulgent cultish leader who made a lost young man more lost.
THOSE AMBULANCES: You may recall how one of the most impassioned recent complaints of some Palestinians was that the brutal Israelis were preventing medical ambulances from getting into Palestinian refugee camps to tend to the wounded, after Israeli army incursions. The Israelis argued that these ambulances were actually being used by terrorists to funnel arms for suicide bombers. All the usual suspects decried the Israeli argument as paranoid and unconvincing. Funny. A report today, forwarded to me by a reader, includes the following details:
Reserve soldiers at a mobile roadblock today captured a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance driver who was caught transporting an explosive belt of the type detonated by suicide bombers, Israel Radio reported. The ambulance was stopped and searched between Nablus and Ramallah, and soldiers found the explosive belt under a stretcher upon which a Palestinian boy was lying. The boy’s family was with him in the ambulance. The ambulance driver, Islam Jibril, a resident of the Balata refugee camp near Nablus, told interrogators he received the belt from Muhammad Titti, a senior Tanzim activist close to Palestinian Authority West Bank security chief Marwan Barghouti. The belt contained some 10 kilograms of explosives. IDF sappers detonated it in a controlled explosion.
See? This is the reality. Israelis have to live with it daily. Instead of crticizing and cajoling them, we need to reassert that terror is terror; and that it is the goal of the United States to unite with Israel in defeating it, wherever it is found.
BRUNI FIGHTS BACK: “I like it that I’m suddenly “godless.” A question about that: would you prefer that writers like me not admit to and examine some of those prejudices we do have? And is it really best to try to smack us around when we’re honest?” I’m with Bruni on this one. And then there’s another batch of reader responses. Get your questions to Bruni in soon. He’ll be in the hot seat Friday morning.
OUR GREAT SENATE: Wanna know why some members of the Bush administration are not so keen on sharing all their military planning with Senators and Congressmen? Because you end up with stories like this.
THE PRICE OF CELIBACY: An interesting little column in the St. Louis Post-Despatch. It has the following haunting quote from a priest in it:
“When a young man comes to the priesthood, he is directed to divorce himself from sexual feelings. Later, he m
ay have a sexual awakening of sorts, and it’s as if he is going through adolescence, a time of awkward sexual advances. Sadly, he may see a child as a safe person to approach.”
Of course this doesn’t in any way excuse this behavior. But it does seem to me that we need to understand why good men do awful things, what pressures celibacy and the current training of priests may inflict upon a man’s psycho-sexual and emotional health. Celibacy, after all, is a deeply unnatural and difficult calling. Imposed on the unprepared or the under-developed, it can lead to great evil. Isn’t that one reason to debate it in the context of the current crisis?
The Dish 