The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle
Commentary on the Flux of Events
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times calls it "a foul wind. . . blowing through the Arab-Muslim World." It's the odor of bloodlust as the Mideast careens toward all-out war. The Muslim masses want it. Friedman says the true Muslim moderates must now do everything possible to prevent that from happening. It would be nice, but Tom is whistling past the graveyard for the Times' genteel readers. It has gone beyond that. Not a single Muslim leader nor all of them put together -- Arafat, Mubarak, young King Abdullah of Jordan, or Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, or Bashar al-Assad of Syria, or god-help-us Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi-- can stop the trajectory of events now arcing toward war.
The Prince Abdullah "peace plan" -- A.) return to pre-1967 borders plus B.) free movement and access for Palestinians within Israel -- sounded immediately like a cynical fantasy to me, a way of saying (insincerely) "we tried to help. . . ." The Palestinians themselves came close to achieving most of part A through the Oslo process, but then Chairman Arafat blew it at the last moment by refusing to sign the protocols (proving himself to be incontrovertibly an unreliable negotiating partner). The argument against part B is eighteen months of Palestinian suicide bombers blowing up cafes, buses, schools, and pizza parlors.
I don't believe that anybody -- Muslim or otherwise -- can stop the Palestinian attacks currently underway. They are determined to drag the rest of the Muslim world into a war against Israel, and they may succeed because Friedman is right, that the Muslim masses see this as their golden moment to destroy Israel for once and for all. It may be completely delusional on their part, but that would not necessarily stop them. My guess is that the Israeli government -- including even the moderates -- see Israel as, indeed, at the edge of a fight for the nation's life, and that no power on earth will induce them to pull back from meeting each Palestinian act of aggression with ferocious counter-attacks. The rocketing of Arafat's Gaza headquarters -- empty now that he is bottled up in Ramallah -- ought to be a clear signal to him (and the world) that the next suicide bomb will result in Arafat's death.
Were a conventional catastrophic escalation to occur, the Israeli military is capable of defeating the armies of its immediate neighbors: Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan (though I do not believe their governments want to engage Israel in a big hot war). Who knows what Iraq might do. Or Iran. Who knows what kind of biological or nuclear devices militant Islam is capable of setting off in Israel in the days ahead. It may not be necessary for the other Muslim governments to engage their official militaries against Israel. The masses themselves might just conveniently bypass their governments, travel to Israel by any means necessary, jihad-style, by Toyota or on foot or by camel, armed with the stock-in-trade of asymmetrical warfare, small arms, kalashnikov automatic rifles, shoulder-launched rockets and grenades, and join the Palestinians in what would turn out to be a horrendous urban insurrection.
I am not convinced that the US can accomplish anything besides acting as a horrified bystander.
Even in a conventional war scenario -- governments against governments using soldiers and advanced weaponry -- it is hard to imagine any role that the US might play. We are a powerful nation, but we're not omnipotent.