Bush's Strategic Blunder

Submitted by JOHN BORGMAN, JR. (United States), Mar 5, 2003 at 18:26

If it wasn't the dancing in the streets throughout the West Bank on 9/11, then surely the capture of the Karine A early last year should have shown to the entire western world that Arafat and his Mideast Mafia are squarely on the side of the terrorist threat this war is designed to eliminate. Or at least those were our president's words in the immediate aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist atrocities.

Bush seems to have the same fatal weakness which hobbled his father (incidentally, this is the reason Iraq bedevils the U.S. today), that of coming down hard and decisively upon an opposing opponent or faction. A statesman of true geopolitical ken, Benyamin Netanyahu, understands that 'Arafatistan' is as immediate a danger to the U.S. as Afghanistan. Bush and his multilateral secretary of state, instead of shamefully chasing abrasive weak regimes such as France and Saudi Arabia to support our war on terror, should make a major declaration backed up with action that Israel is our key ally in the Mideast. Hard-headed strategy rather than wishful thinking should be guiding us in this war---a war for the very survival of our culture and way of life.

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