By Harry W. Weber
December 26, 2006
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Recently the Iraq Study Group, that august collection of Democratic and Republican politicos brought together to find a graceful U.S. exit out of the Iraqi quagmire, came up with its recommendations. At first glance, and even before getting into its detailed recommendations, it seems highly suspect that any political problem, whose recommended solution requires no less than 79 steps, has any chance of being solved via those steps. For no political problem is that murky, that fuzzy and that dependent on so many lateral and/or sequential steps.
So what went wrong with Bush's Iraq war initiative, and more generally with his entire foreign policy -- post 9/11? Firstly, the President must be given full credit for the proper diagnosis of the 'disease'. The September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center was the post-World War II version of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. It revealed to all that the West has been attacked by a new and heretofore misunderstood enemy -- Islamic jihad, or holy war -- bent on no less than the military and economic defeat of Western civilization. The signs that radical Islamic terrorists were out to disrupt and de-stabilize the West were already out there earlier -- witness the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam in 1998, and the attack on the S.S. Cole in 2000.
Actually, the first clue to the existence of Islamic terrorist cells in the U.S. should have been detected after the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane. But ironically, the man most closely associated with the platform for expelling Moslems out of Israel because they threaten its existence, was murdered by them in the U.S., and even in his death was unable to wake up the U.S., or anyone else for that matter, to take the global Islamic terror threat seriously.
After belatedly identifying the threat, President Bush looked for Islamic terrorist targets to attack in order to prevent future 9/11s on American and European soil. The primary hiding place of Al-Queda -- Afghanistan -- was the natural first target, and correctly so.
Unfortunately, Al Qaeda and Bin-Laden had local support in Pakistan, and there was scarce cooperation from the Pakistani government in hunting down Al Qaeda on its side of the border. This lack of cooperation prevented the U.S. and its allies from hermetically sealing off Al Qaeda from all directions and slowly moving in for the final kill. The war there goes on and on, because the U.S. and its allies refuse to cross into Pakistan in pursuit of Al-Qaeda.
Bush's next step in the war against Islamic terrorists, was, in hindsight, very flawed. He confused the secular dictator in Iraq, who for all his blustering, was no Islamic ideologue ready to march on the West, with his neighbors next door. They, the Iranians, are radical Shiites who fervently believe in the coming of their 'Messiah' -- the twelfth Imam -- after they begin the global war to subdue all infidels under Islam. The Iranians are the terrorists Bush should have taken on next -- not Saddam Hussein.
Had President Bush allowed the U.S. commanders in Iraq to pursue the terrorists entering Iraq from Iran to their bases in Iranian territory, he would have corrected his initial strategic error of failing to identify Iran as the logical next terror target, by means of a simple tactical decision that should have been inevitable.
This was Bush's big blunder -- and that is clearer today than ever before. Today Iran is on track to manufacture nuclear weapons within six months. Iran's number one foreign policy objective is to become firstly a regional, and then a global military force that will lead the war on the 'satanic' West.
Iran's immediate plan is to eliminate Israel, the West's proxy in the Mideast. That is why Iran supported Hizbollah, Lebanon's Shiite terrorist party, with billions of dollars in arms since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. And that is why it is collaborating with Syria in its joint efforts of sending terrorists into Iraq. Iran's plan is to cause maximum sectarian bloodshed in Iraq, thereby forcing the U.S. to withdraw. So far the plan is working very well, witness James Baker's recommendation that the U.S. engage diplomatically with Iran and Syria -- the two greatest exporters and supporters of Islamic terrorism.
The inevitable conclusion so far is that Mr. Bush had the proper diagnosis of the problem and the proper goals to deal with it, but botched up the execution of the strategy to solve the problem. In contrast, the Iraq Study Group is focused solely on the tactical issue of a graceful exit from Iraq, and completely ignores the huge strategic problem facing the West -- the World War declared on it by radical Islam.
The Iraq Study Group does not see the wave of radicalization that is sweeping the entire Moslem World. Sunni and Shiite Moslems in Africa, Asia and Western Europe are united in their antipathy of all that is Christian and Jewish. They are prepared to kill and be killed, to murder and commit suicide for their 'lofty' goal of Islamic global domination.
Mr. Baker didn't understand or simply ignored that reality, thereby earning his Study Group an F. Had his group read the Koran, had it interviewed Western experts on Islam -- not Islamic apologists or Islamic clergymen -- it would have learned the truth about the political goals of Islam, that peace is not a value in Islam, nor is democracy, and that all peace treaties with 'infidels' are meant to be broken as soon as pragmatically feasible.
So the question still remains: where did President Bush go wrong? The answer is ironic, for the President is a born-again Christian, and as such a person who should be familiar with the Bible, for whom the Bible is not just a history book, but the book of life -- a book relevant at all times in all places. The Book, in Genesis 16:12, says of Ishmael, the ancestor of all Arabs: 'And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.'
Maimonides and other sages interpret that to mean that he will prey on others and others will prey on him, and that his descendants will grow and will be at war with all the nations. That is Ishmael and this is the eternal character of the Arab-Moslem world, forever. Such a nation has no need for democracy, has no interest in peace, for it is at war with everyone, forever.
Mr. 'F--- the Jews' Baker may be forgiven for not knowing or wanting to acknowledge that, but Mr. Bush should have read the Bible with more present day insight, and should have understood the Moslem world as described eternally in God's book.
With that understanding it is now clear that the plan to bring democracy to Iraq in particular, and to the Arab world in general, was doomed from the start.
Democracy is not for everyone, and certainly not for the Arabs. The proof: there is not one Arab state in the entire world that is democratic. However, Bush's biggest mistake occurred when he invented his 'roadmap' for peace between Israel and a future 'Palestinian democratic state'. A more ridiculous oxymoron cannot be imagined.
Firstly, there are no 'Palestinian' people. The Moslems living today in Judea and Sammaria are simply descendants of Arabs who came to populate the area, looking for work among the Jews, after the latter began their historic return to their ancestral homeland about one hundred and twenty years ago.
Secondly, even if there is a 'Palestine', Jordan was established as the Arab successor to it on 76% of historic 'Palestine'. So there is a Palestinian state already, today -- Jordan! Thus Bush's 'roadmap' is really a plan for three states for two peoples.
It's high time the President realized that Israel, sitting on land that Moslems once controlled, was the first target of radical Islam. Israel is simply the forerunner victim of Islamic terror, preceding the U.S. and Europe by some fifty years. And just as all Moslems are religiously precluded from making permanent peace with Israel (they are forbidden by Islamic law from accepting a treaty or ceasefire with infidels for a period of more than ten years), so are they incapable of making peace with the West.
It is interesting to note that the war in Iraq was started on March 20, 2003. The President declared his 'roadmap' for Israel and the 'Palestinians' on April 30, 2003. The idea then was to bring forth Arab support for the Iraqi invasion by forcing Israel to make life-threatening concessions to an implacable enemy -- and call it peace. The moral and geopolitical disconnect the President committed between America's war on terror and Israel's war on terror was untenable -- and unbearable. For whom? For Him - for God Almighty!
Even putting aside the Bible and the Koran as keys to understanding human history, what about learning from recent history itself? What about World War II? Then Britain tried to placate Hitler by offering up Czechoslovakia. Bush, in his 'roadmap', and Baker in his Iraq Study Group recommendations, are repeating the same colossal mistake -- this time offering up Israel. Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton propose no less than the immediate destruction of Israel -- geographically by carving it up, demographically by allowing the Arabs to overrun it via the right of return, and completely, by allowing Iran to build the bomb on the excuse that it is needed for its defense against Israel's bomb. Hitler was unappeasable and so is Ahmadinejad! And not just Ahmadinejad, all Arabs! God will not forgive Mr. Bush or America if they ever accept the Baker Holocaust plan.
I stated in March 2003, with the publication of President Bush's 'roadmap', that there is a geopolitical rule in effect since 1948 -- the Israel Principle. The principle states that any U.S. president who takes actions that intend to violate the territorial integrity of land held by an Israeli government as part of its divinely ordained boundaries, or acts to threaten its security, will be ranked as a bad U.S. President by the American people -- the more anti-Israel, the lower his ranking, the more pro-Israel, the higher his ranking.
The principle has been proven statistically valid for all elected U.S. presidents since World War II. On that basis, I alone predicted, in March 2003, when the President's approval was nearly ninety percent, that the 'roadmap' will be his undoing, and that he will be ranked extremely low among post-World War II presidents. Unfortunately, I was right -- and I take no pleasure in it.
What can President Bush do in the last two years of his presidency to reverse course and save the West, save Israel and save his legacy? In a nutshell, he should reject the Iraq Study Group proposals outright; he should attack Iran's nuclear facilities, and then, and only then, get out of Iraq.
America's current job is to make the world safe from Islamic Jihad, not bring democracy to Arabs who inherently reject it on religious and national character grounds. He should abandon the 'roadmap', call Jordan 'Palestine', help Israel break up the Palestinian Authority, and help financially in the resettlement in Jordan of all Arabs living in Israel and Judea and Sammaria.
The president has two years to implement this plan. It is the only plan worthy of a great president, a Churchillian president, a president who knows the truth, wants true peace, and is prepared to bring it forth -- for now and for generations in the future.
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