We’ve entered WWIII whether we know it or not. The shot heard 'round the world began with the fall of the World Trade Center’s twin towers. President Bush said that we are entering a new kind of war, unlike any the world has ever known and that our response would be prolonged and thorough. The war would last not days or weeks, but years.
Our enemy is an amorphous band of marauders aided by rogue states. The response: through espionage on the ground and in the air, through banking intelligence, and with a brute might of a military invasion. Our first battleground was Afghanistan, soon followed by our swift victory in Iraq. We who cherish freedom are now called upon to defend it.
With Saddam gone, the war is not over. Far from it. This party is now just starting. Grab a drink. You’ll need it.
With Saddam removed and the threat of Iraq as a terror base against the U.S. eliminated, we have to now reconsider our short-term and long-term objectives.
Our first objective is to eliminate immediate threats such as insidious terrorist-training camps and the governments that aid them. Yes, numerous terrorist training camps and inhumane torture chambers and were discovered, first in Afghanistan, then later in Iraq, even if the WMD were not.
In one remote, desert terrorist camp, the Salman Pak camp, 20 miles south of Baghdad, troops found a complete passenger airline fuselage for training pilots. We suspect it wasn’t there to train pilots and flight attendants for Air Iraq.
And the sleaze ball Abul Abbas, a Palestinian terrorist mastermind who was arrested in Iraq just last month, was believed to have planned the infamous 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. This crime involved a disabled American passenger in a wheelchair who was viciously shot and thrown overboard. This heinous crime is now forever etched into the world’s psyche. Abbas was found relaxing in Iraq under Saddam’s generous care.
Syria and Yasser Arafat should be invited next to our soiree. Damascus hosts no fewer than 22 terrorist organizations, according to the Times of London. And you thought that the U.S. was a good party host. How would you like to be at a Syrian fiesta with an assembly of the world’s top 22 most wanted? That would be good reality TV.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has predicted that the war in Iraq will create “100 bin Ladens.” He’s wrong. We’ll be destroying terrorist camps and capturing terrorists. Do the arrests, prosecution and incarceration of vicious criminals in America create more criminals? Hardly, and neither will our hunt for the terrorists abroad or for those who are lying in our midst have anything but a therapeutic and cleansing effect.
Already peace is breaking out in the Middle East. There have been far fewer terrorist suicide bombings and terrorist attacks against Western targets since America woke up and started paying attention militarily. And despite a suicide bombing last week in Tel Aviv, the terror network is in disarray. Someone is getting the point.
Syria announced just this week said that it would start participating in a peace process with Israel after a 14-year absence. Gee, I wonder if this might have been related to the U.S. shutting off the illegal oil pipeline from Iraq discovered by our troops in the aftermath of the liberation. Iraq was not supposed to have sold its oil to anyone, except under strict U.N. supervision. Iraq and Syria were in violation.
Moreover, just this week the world witnessed perhaps an even more remarkable turnabout: Libya came clean on the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing. Libya announced that it would pay $10 million to the families of each of the 270 victims. This is first time any terrorist state has confessed to be complicit to one of the world’s largest terrorist acts.
Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgham confirmed the compensation when he said, "My country has accepted civil responsibility for the actions of its officials in the Lockerbie affair, in conformity with international civil law and the agreement reached in London in March by Libyan, American and British officials."
The Boeing 747 blew up and crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988, after taking off from London, killing all 259 people on board and an additional 11 on the ground.
I think that Libya’s stark confession ought to bring our troops to the doorsteps of Khadafi’s hideaway in Tripoli; perhaps the Army Rangers could even remodel a few palaces there. I hear they’re good decorators. However, in the interim, let Libya’s blood money bring some modest compensation to the grieving families.
Build a lasting peace in the Middle East. How? It certainly won’t involve thousands of peaceniks marching in circles and breaking store windows in the U.S., as many recent “peace marchers” myopically did.
How can there be an end to the cycle of violence and turmoil when tyrants rule the roosts? In pre-liberation Iraq, for example, Shiite Muslims, who constitute 60 percent of Iraqi citizens, could not even freely practice their religion because Saddam was a Sunni, a minority Islamic sect.
Start building peace and democracy in Iraq. This will not be easy. No one said it would be. There was first looting and now shooting of civilians in Iraq. Peace is not cheap. There will be setbacks, but we must be steadfast and persevere.
This week, U.S. soldiers opened fire on Iraqis at a Shiite-organized nighttime demonstration against the American presence after people shot at them with automatic rifles. Shiite clerics are vying for power. After not having any power under the rule of Saddam, the Shiites are now demanding a Shiite-controlled nation. Not going to happen, nor should it. Just look at the recent turmoil against the Shiite ayatollahs in Iran. Iraq and we will survive this temporary civil unrest. It’s birthing pains.
The Iranians are getting tired of oppression and theocracy. So we must learn these lessons and commit to bringing stability to Iraq. We have a small opening and we must not blow this opportunity. Bringing peace to a nation that has never known peace and freedom will be no simple undertaking.
Syria has created a puppet government and maintains Lebanon’s jails and torture chambers. According to evidence, presented by Free-Lebanon groups throughout the world, they rival those of Saddam. Syria continues to bleed the people of Lebanon.
Syria supports 22 terrorist groups, perhaps none more ferocious and deadly than the Hezbollah. This group took "credit" for the massacre that killed 241 U.S. Marine peacekeepers in a car-bomb attack on Oct. 23, 1983. Hezbollah also blew up the American Embassy in Beirut, killing more than 60.
Syria is ready for democracy as is Lebanon. And the sooner we deliver it, the better off the world will be.
In some ways the Bush plan is even worse. It creates, almost immediately, a Palestinian state and tries to then negotiate Palestinian concessions afterward. Fat chance of that happening, once the Palestinians have their hands in the cookie jar.
The world has now been waiting with bated breath for the new Palestinian leadership of Abu Mazen, as a new prime minister of Palestine. This hand-picked successor of Arafat will not create any sea change in the road map. You can breathe out now.
Mazen appears powerless, as leaders before him, to reign in the terrorist groups operating out of his new nation or to veer dramatically away from his predecessor in the negotiations. There are deep-seated ethnic hatreds on the part of the Palestinians that will not recede by diplomatic maneuvers.
We should give the Palestinians more than they bargained for and create a meaningful state; have the new Palestinian state be the current state of Jordan.
Seventy percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian. This would require the abdication of the throne by King Abdullah, the Hashemite ruler of Jordan. The Hashemites royals are a part of a minority people in Jordan who rule over the majority Palestinians.
King Abdullah and his ruling Hashemite family are friends of the U.S., so an accommodation could be made to quicken the surrender of power. Perhaps, give the king a ruling hand in Iraq by slicing off a section of southern Iraq and creating a new nation.
This idea is not so far-fetched for the Hashemites, who were driven out of Hejaz in Saudi Arabia by Ibn Saud in the last century, and out of Baghdad in 1958 by a royal assassination. The Hashemites might even gain a few oil wells in the bargain. As they have no oil now, perhaps they’ll consider this plan in earnest and join the talks. Perhaps a carrot-and-stick approach can work.
We need big ideas and expansive plans to create a world vision of peace. If we don’t have a big vision or if we simply lack the courage to implement it, we can continue to expect big trouble for generations to come. True world peace takes a lot more guts than marching around with ripped jeans and signs with cheap anti-American slogans. So live the dream, share the vision and take real meaningful action for peace, for the world’s sake.
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