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By
Jon Christian Ryter
Copyright 2002 - All Rights Reserved
To distribute this article, please post this web address or hyperlink
During
the presidential debates in 1988 then presidential candidate George
H.W. Bush uttered a phrase that would come back to haunt him during
the Election of 1992: Read my lips,
the Vice President said, no new taxes.
In 2002 his son and current President George W. Bush uttered a
phrase that will haunt Bushs prospects of winning the war
on terrorism. The phrase? The axis of evilIraq,
Iran and North Korea.
During past administrations, Americas
response to terrorism was completely reactive. If a terrorist organization
struck an American target anywhere in the world, or killed Americans in
terrorist acts in foreign lands, the United States retaliated. One terrorist
act, one retaliatory strike. During the Clinton years, national
security advisors predicted that within the next decade Islamic terrorists
would manage to buy nuclear missiles from a rogue nation, or would at
least buy or steal the know-how to construct a nuclear weapon and would
then launch a nuclear strike against the United States.
This knowledge and Osama
bin Ladens successful attack against the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon altered Americas public position on responding
to terrorism. America no longer had the luxury of making a token response
to terrorism. The nature of Osama bin Ladens attack against
the infrastructure of the United States changed that for all time. For
the first time since 1861, the citizens of the United States awoke to
discover the ravages of war on American soil.
Osama bin Laden did more than start
a Jihad by killing over 4,000 innocent Americans and foreign nationals
who worked at the World Trade Center (even though the U.S. government
has been officially reducing the number of dead by eliminating all
duplicate names and deleting the names of all foreign nationals from the
American tally).
Bin
Laden woke an angry giant with the strength of Samson.
And Samson was determined to slay his enemies
with the jawbone of an ass.
The ranking members of the Taliban which
controlled the government of Afghanistan quickly learned the jawbone
America was going to use was attached to their own skulls. Clearly nobodynot bin Laden, nor Mohammed Atef, nor Sheik Mullah Omar,
nor the Taliban, nor the al Qaeda thought the United States would
respond to the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
with an all-out invasion of a sovereign nation for two reasons.
First, the government of Afghanistan did
not attack America. Bin Laden was convinced that America would
fire a few guided missiles at suspected al Qaeda training camps
in Afghanistan and possibly Sudan, and then President Bush would
sputter the same type of anti-terrorist rhetoric that Bill Clinton
had sputtered before him. Second, bin Laden was convinced that
Bush would be unable to respond by invading Afghanistan because,
at that momenton August 24, 2001young President Bush
was enmeshed in a personal diplomatic crisis with the Saudi royal family
that nobody outside the State Department knew about. Nobody, that is,
except the entire Arab world.
On
August 24 Bush gave a news conference from his ranch in Crawford,
Texas. When a reporter asked Bush for his opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian
peace process which had just been interrupted by a new round of Palestinian-instigated
violence, a CNN viewer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia leaned forward in
his chair to listen more closely to Bushs response. The listener
was Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz, the defacto ruler
of Saudi Arabia.
Oblivious of how closely his words were
being monitored in Riyadh, Bush said: The Israelis will not
negotiate under terrorist threat. If the Palestinians are interested in
a dialogue, then I strongly urge Mr. Arafat to put 100% into...stopping
terrorist activity. And, I believe he can do a better job of doing that.
The
Crown Prince, a very emotional man according to a Saudi source to the
Washington Post at the time, went bananas at the Bush
remark. Prince Abdullah believed Bush was whitewashing Israels
culpability in the violence by laying all of the blame at the doorstep
of Yassar Arafat. And, of course, Bush was doing just that
because Arafats terrorists were massacring innocent Israeli men,
women and children and then screamed foul when the Israelis retaliated.
In the mind of the Saudi prince, as in the minds of the rest of the Arab
world, Israel was at fault not because the Jews initiated terrorist acts
against the Palestinians, but because the Jews were not intimidated by
the Hamas, the Hezbollah or the Palestinian Liberation
Front and, surrounded on all sides by historic enemies, retaliated
tenfold to acts of aggression against the Israeli population. Making matters
worse in Abdullahs mind was the fact that the United States
backed their play and provided the Jews with the weapons the Israelites
needed to hold the Arab world at bay. Compounding that was the Sauds
political allianceout of economic necessitywith America, the
best friend of their worst enemy, the Jews.
Watching the same news conference from his
rustic mansion in Aspen, Colorado Saudi Prince Bandar bin
Sultan (the ambassador to the United States) anticipated the call
from the Crown Prince. What he didnt expect was the message he was
to relay to George Bush. Abdullah ordered Bandar
to fly to Washington immediately and deliver a message to Bush.
Abdullahs message was delivered the following day to National
Security Director Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin
Powell. The message was as harsh as it was blunt: We believe
there has been a strategic decision by the United States that its national
interest in the Middle East is 100% based on [Israeli interests].
Abdullah admitted that America had the prerogative to take any
position it deemed to be in its national interest, but Saudi Arabia could
not accept that decision on the part of the Bush Administration.
Starting today, the Crown Prince said, you go your way
and I go mine. From now on, we will protect our national interests regardless
of where Americas interests lie in the region.
Bandar advised Rice and Powell
that effective immediately the Saudi government was breaking diplomatic
ties with the United States and, Bandar said, to ...get busy
rearranging our lives in the Middle East.
No word that Saudi Arabia had just broken
diplomatic relations with the United States leaked to the mainstream media
until February 10, 2002, long after the diplomatic crisis had passed.
But, word leaked rapidly through the Islamic community. Good news spreads
quickly in the Muslim worldand it spreads particularly fast in the
shadowy world of the Islamic terrorists.
Knowing that the diplomatic fracture would
be mended quickly, the Islamic terrorists in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen,
Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Palestinian
zone on the West Bank of Israel knew they had a small window of opportunity
available in which they could boldly launch an assault on American soil
and very likely get away with it without any meaningful retaliation from
America since the United States would need the political support of the
Sauds to successfully attack any Islamic nation and avoid being condemned
in the court of world opinion. In addition, the United States is dependent
on Saudi oiland they need the Sauds to help control the price of
oil at the wellheada fact brought home very forcefully in 1973 when
an American-armed Israel took on, and defeated the Arab world in 1973
leading to the Saudi-led OPEC oil embargo that economically crippled America
and led to skyrocketing inflation in the United States and caused Richard
Nixon to impose price and wage controls in the United States to keep the
American economy from suffering complete collapse.
Something happened on August 24, 2001 that
has not happened since Ronald Reagan was inaugurated on January
20, 1981the Saudis deliberately listened to the political
rhetoric coming out of the White House. The United States and the Sauds
have had a diplomatic understanding prior to August 24 that
was mutually beneficial to both nations. Both nations agreed not to hear
the political bantering of the other nation. This political deafness
allowed the ideologically-opposed nations to maintain the notion that
they are indeed true allies whose common interests greatly outweigh their
political and theological differences. In the Islamic world, no interest
outweighs the interests of Allah.
Taken
completely by surprise, Prince Bandars message from the Crown
Prince shocked the Bush Administration. Over the next 48
hours, the Bush State Department scrambled to appease the
Sauds. The appeasement began with a letter of apology from George W.
Bushand pressure applied by the Bush national security
team and the State Department on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
to use more discretion in retaliating against Palestinian
terrorist acts [i.e., no lethal retaliation].
Clearly the Islamic fundamentalists believed that the Sauds were signalling
a move back to the Islamic right. Most viewed the Crown Princes
decision as a sign that the Sauds were going to turn their backs on their
American benefactors as they did in 1973 to force the American State Department
to force Ariel Sharon to negotiate with Yassar Arafat. If
the Islamic terrorists in the Mideast were going to launch a massive strike
against the infrastructure of the United States there would likely never
be a better time to do it. While the Saudi embassy felt it would take
the Bush Administration a week or so to fashion an adequate
reply to the Crown Princes rebuff, most of the Islamic leaders in
the Mideast believed it would take up to 30 days for America to fashion
an appropriate response since they believed Bushs first act
would be to have Colin Powell meet with Ariel Sharon and
insist that the Jews modify their essential position on the Palestinians.
The pundits were wrong.
Bush responded within 36 hours.
Not only did he respond, he surprised the Arab world by offering to solve
the Arab-Israeli dispute to the complete satisfaction of the Sauds. What
startled the Crown Prince most was that Bush wholeheartedly endorsed
a semblance of the Bill Clinton plan to create a formal
Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip. Bush agreed to participate
more actively in the peace process, forcing concessions from Israel to
make a Palestinian state a reality.
Tragically, Bushs position
on August 26 was not much different from Bill Clintons
Arab-Israeli position. And, Clintons position was totally
pro-Palestinian. In his letter to Crown Prince Abdullah Bush
said: I reject this extraordinary, unAmerican bias whereby the blood
of an Israeli child is more expensive and [holier] than the blood of a
Palestinian child. I reject people who say when you kill a Palestinian
it is in defense; when a Palestinian kills an Israeli, its a terrorist
act. Bush, the Saudis declared, put into writing things that
Bill Clinton talked about but would not commit to paper.
Clinton was smart enough never to leave a paper trail that could
cost him votes. Bush, on the other hand, was smart enough to realize
that the Jewish vote would automatically be cast for whatever Democrat
ran against him in 2004. What Bush would have to worry about losing
in 2004 was the Christian vote. However, if he did not get the Sauds back
in his corner, he would risk losing the support of his key backers in
the oil industryRoyal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil and the Seven Sisters.
If that happened, Bush would have trouble enough mustering the
support he needed to get the GOP nomination let alone get re-elected.
Bushs quick response headed
off an Arab Summit called by the Crown Prince in which Abdullah
planned to commit the full support of the Saudi government to the Palestinian
cause. On August 24, as Prince Bandar alerted Colin Powell
to the diplomatic dilemma that existed, the Saudi military chief-of-staff,
General Salih Ali bin Muhayya met with Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld. The following day, after delivering Crown Prince Abdullahs
message to the White House, Prince Bandar was ordered to cancel
a formal meeting with Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell and return
to Riyadh. Forty other Saudi princes were scheduled to fly in to Washington
to attend this meeting. The flight was cancelled and the diplomats were
told to stand down. There would be no meeting.
As the Bush peopleincluding
George H.W. Bushtried to put out the brush fire before
it became a full-fledged forest fire that would ultimately consume the
administration of George W. Bush, the Islamic fundamentalists
in the al Qaeda grabbed the initiative to expedite their plans
to attack America. Osama bin Laden raced to strike America before
Bushs problems with the Sauds was resolved, believing if
he succeeded the al Qaeda would forever drive a wedge between the
Sauds and the United States that would destroy not only America but Israel.
Saudi
Expectations
When George W. Bush won the
Election of 2000 the Saudi royal family was ecstatic because the new president
was the son of the most popular American president in Saudi ArabiaGeorge
H.W. Bushwho was viewed as a national hero in Saudi Arabia.
But expectations from the son waned quickly as George W. made one
gaffe after another in the opening days of his administration. G.W.
came across to many
on the international scene as a Rambo wannabee. To many in
the Saudi government, young Bush was thought to be goofy.
He was believed to be a political lightweight who would very likely get
America involved in a major war in the Mideast.
Bushs letter to the Crown Prince
transformed him from a midget to a giant.
Abdullah responded with a 25-page
letter to Bush. In order that the other Gulf States understand
that Saudi Arabia had recommitted its allegiance to the United States,
Crown Prince Abdullah sent a copy of his reply to Bush to
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Bashar Assad of Syria, and King
Abdullah of Jordan. The Crown Prince then summoned Yassar Arafat
to Riyadh. At the time, Arafat was in South Africa trying to buy
arms. Abdullah forced Arafat to pledge to satisfy Bushs
demands for what Arafat had to do to rekindle the peace talks.
September
11
Life not only in America but in the Mideast
changed forever with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon. In a statement concerning the ramifications of the terrorist
attack, Prince Bandar admitted that he couldnt imagine any
tragedy that would do ...more damage to Islam and Saudi Arabia
than that which happened on September 11.
As America declared war on terrorism so did Englandand so did Israel.
The day after the terrorist attacks on the
Pentagon and the World Trade Center, Crown Prince Abdullah ordered
his oil minister, Ali Nuaimi, to rescind a pledge he had made to
OPEC only the day before. On September 10 OPEC agreed to
curb oil production in order to raise the price of crude, creating artificial
shortages of fuel oil and gasoline at the pump not only in the United
States but around the worldat the precise
moment that the United States would begin consuming twice the oil America
would normally consume in a peacetime environment if the United States
decided to respond to the terrorist attack on American soil.
Mindful of the misunderstanding
with the Crown Prince on August 24, the Bush Administration
was quick to meet with Prince Bandar to make certain that Crown
Prince Abdullah and President Bush were in agreement not
to hear the bantering of the other as America launched its war on
terrorism that would obligate either of them to take diplomatic positions
that were counterpoised to the political and financial interests of both.
As Bush launched his public relations
campaign to sell America on the War on Terrorism that America was
told would extend well past the borders of Afghanistan and well beyond
the body bags that contained the corpses of Osama bin Laden, Mohammed
Atef and Shiekh Mullah Omar, the Israelis ratcheted up their
own war against the Palestinian Liberation Front, using Bushs
words to justify their own war on terrorism against the Palestinians,
the Hamas and the Hezbollah that were increasing their attacks
on innocent Jews in response to Bushs attacks on the Taliban
and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
As the patriotic zeal of the liberals in
the American media cooled, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN ordered the removal of
displays of the American flag from on-camera shots, declaring that such
displays of patriotism were biased and inflammatory.
The mainstream media began counting body bagsnot American body bags,
but Islamic onesand weighed the bomb damage in New York and Washington,
DC against the bomb craters in Afghanistan and decided that America had
received its pound of flesh and
should end its war on terrorism.
The media decided that America was being
unduly brainwashed into believing that Islamics are bad people whose theology
mandates that they kill infidels [Americans] and Jewsa mandate ordered
by the Quran [Koran]. To counter this growing public perception
in the United States, the California Board of Education (one of the most
ethnically-diverse States in the nation) pushed a measure through the
State legislature that would allow an Islamic advocacy group, the Council
on Islamic Education that actively promotes the theology of Islam
in the public schools of America to set up its headquarters in a vacant
classroom at the Carden Hall Elementary School in Fountain Valley,
California where its founder, Shabbir Mansuri dispensed copies
of the Koran to the California public school system for use in the classroom.
In addition one of Americas largest textbook publishers, Houghton-Mifflin,
hired Mansuri as a consultant to edit a new textbook
that was introduced into the classrooms of California schools in January,
2002. The text, called Across the Centuries is being used in a
new class called World History and Geography Medieval and Early
Modern Times. This, of course, is a blatant, in-your-face violation
of the First Amendment that is being ignored by anti-religious and civil
rights groupsand Christian groups that have been targeted by the
American Civil Liberties Union who should be filing lawsuits not only
against the Council on Islamic Education
but the Boards of Education in almost every State that has adopted the
Islamic curriculum since this is precisely what the First Amendment bansa
State-sponsored religion.
As the Bush Administration
cautioned America that the War on Terrorism would take not weeks
or months, but years, to win the liberals countered by engineering a program
to indoctrinate the emerging generation of young adults with the notion
that Islam is a benign religion that is no different in its teachings
of love and forgiveness than Christianity.
Each time Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
holds a televised press conference, or President George W. Bush
steps into his bully pulpit to argue the need to continue or escalate
the War on Terrorism, Bush adds another nail to the box
he has put himself in, or adds another tier of slats to the height of
the box, which will make it even more difficult for him to extricate himself
from it when the War on Terrorism becomes so expensive that even the conservative
Americans who support the actions of the Bush Administration
begin to weigh the personal costs against the results. The box Bush
is building is his own political coffin. And, if he cant extricate
himself from it before the lid is hammered on, he will be buried in it.
The liberal media, the liberals in Congress,
and the utopian malaise behind it that has measured Bushs
War on Terrorism and is convinced that Bush has received
an eye for an eye and needs to end his war against the Islamic
terrorists before we get any closer to the midterm elections. The Democrats
need the War on Terrorism to be over before the late summer political
campaigning. They need to get Americas eyes off the flag and focused
squarely on the balance in the savings accounts and check booksand
the balance on their credit card statements. If they can get America focused
on the economy and the shrinking job base in the United States, the Democrats
will likely pick up one or two additional Senate and House seats, increasing
their majority in the Senate and closing the gap even more in the House.
If they cant, it is likely the GOP will regain control of the Senate
and expand their majority in the House.
Israels
role in helping build the Bush Box
As Bush continues to sell America
on the War on Terrorism, Israel has found a degree of success in
mimicking his rhetoric. If it was okay forAmerica to go after terrorists
anywhere in the world for killing Americans on American soil, why is it
not okay for Israel to go after Palestinian terrorists on Israeli soil
for killing Jews on Jewish soil? Clearly, the world could not applaud
Americas fight against global terrorism and chastise Israel for
protecting its people from the same terrorists.
It was a logic that Bush could not
argue againstat least publicly.
Publicly Bush has been forced to
defend Israels right to protect itself against terrorism.
Privately, to keep the Sauds firmly in the
American camp, the Bush Administration pressured Ariel
Sharon to negotiate with Yassar Arafat even as Arafats
terrorists continued their war of terrorism not only on Israeli political
figures but on innocent Jewish women and children not only on the Gaza
Strip, but in Hebron, in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel, forcing Sharon
to crack down on the Palestinians even more. Even more, the Bush
State Department is pressuring Israel to use non-lethal means when
it retaliates against the Palestinians who continue to kill innocent Jews
on a daily basis simply because the Jews are Jews.
The
Saudi Role
As the Israeli Knesset enacted one
emergency edict after another to protect its population from not only
the threat from Yassar Arafats Palestinian Liberation Front
but Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists from Iran, Iraq, Saudi
Arabia, Yemen, Syria, and Egypt as well, the Saudis pressured the Bush
White House to play that more active role in the Mideast
peace process. It was Bushs secret August 26 understanding
with Crown Prince Abdullah that led to the visit of Saudi King
Fahds nephew Prince Al-Walid
bin Abdul Aziz to New York on October 11, 2001 ostensibly to visit
the site of the World Trade Center disaster. During a photo op with then
New York mayor Rudy Giuliani the prince gave Giuliani a
check for $10 million. As Prince Al-Walid passed the check to Giuliani,
his emissaries passed out a press release to the media. The press release
said: At times like this one we must address
some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack. I believe the government
of the United States of America should re-examine its policies in the
Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.
The official Saudi position is that the jihad against the United States
was triggered by Americas ill-advised support of Israels
terrorism against the helpless Palestinian people. What Prince
Al-Walid was saying between the lines was that since Israel is the
natural enemy of the Muslims, anyone who helps the Jews is also an enemy
and should expect nothing less than America received. And, while then
Mayor Giuliani, who was oblivious of the Bush/Abdullah understanding,
returned the $10 million check to the Saudi government Al-Walids
rhetoric was not lost on the Bush national security team. Another
slat had just been added to the box that Bush was building around
his own presidency.
Even before the first rockets were fired
at the Taliban in Afghanistan the Al-Sauds warned the Bush
Administration that the Islamic mullahs and Wahhabis clerics would
issue a fatwa against the Saudi royal family if America launched an attack
against any Islamic nation and the Sauds were politically aligned with
America. Without regard for the political alliance that Bush had
pledged to sacrifice Israel over on August 26, America launched an all-out
rocket and bomb assault on the Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan as a
blind 80-year old Muslim cleric, Sheikh
Hamoud bin Oqla al-Shuaibi issued the first of several death warrants
on the Saudi royal family.
Angered, a senior Saudi official told the
American media that when the conflict in Afghanistan is concluded his
government would likely ask the United States to close down its airbase
in Saudi Arabia. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card acknowledged
in an interview with CNN that the Saudis had informed the Bush
Administration that the Sauds were interested in ...reducing
American footprints in Saudi [sand].
As the Bush Administration,
the Clinton Administration, and the first Bush Administration
knew all too well, Saudi Arabia like all of the other Arabian peninsula
Gulf States (except Israel) are Islamic. Some are Sunni, the others are
Shiite. But, they are all Islamic fundamentalists. As such, based
on the tenets of the Koran, they are obligated to kill the Jews and destroy
Israel. Further, any non-Jew who comes to the aid of Israel must be viewed
by the Islamic loyalist as an infidel and, according to the Koran, that
person, or that group of people, must likewise be killed. When a Muslim
aids the infidel, the Muslim must also be killed.
When President George H.W. Bush
put together his Desert Storm coalition, most Americans still do
not realize the impossibility of the task he accomplishednor do
most know, or care, that when the Saudis allowed the American military
to establish a presence on sovereign Saudi soil, Sheikh Oqla issued
a fatwa not only on King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah,
but on every member of the al Saud royal family. (A fatwa is a holy
assassination order. Muslims believe that any Islamic who carries out
a fatwa will go to Heaven, just as Muslim suicide bombers believe they
will go to Heaven for killing Jews.)
Backing the United States during the Gulf
War, and backing the American position in Afghanistan did not come without
risks to the Saudi royal family since each knew that at any moment a Muslim
extremist might pop up from anywhere and, without any regard for their
own lives, kill them. The Sauds believed that, like Desert Storm,
when America freed Afghanistan from the Taliban and captured or killed
Osama bin Laden, the War on Terrorism would effectively
be over and Bush would be hard-pressed to keep the momentum alive
long enough to pursue the war into the Gulf States.
The
Axis of Evil
The Saudi royal family knows if Bush
attempts to pursue the War on Terrorism into the Gulf States region
it is likely they will be overthrown by Muslim extremists. Since the Bush
Administration knows that several terrorist organizations are trying
to buy weapons of mass destruction that can be used against the United
States, Bush also knows that America will not be safe until every
terrorist group and the state sponsors of terrorism are eradicated from
the face of the Earth.
Playing cowboy once again as
he did when he announced that he wanted Osama bin Laden dead
or alive, Bush named three rogue nations who are currently
attempting to create weapons of mass destruction that can be used against
America. He called them the Axis of Evil. Iraq, Iran
and North Korea. Bush announced that he would immediately go after
Iraq and Iran, implying that he would take them out together.
The Sauds reacted immediately, and even before the ink was dry on the
headlines, England announced it would not pursue Osama bin Laden
into the Mideast. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, forced to
back down, inadvertently nailed another slat in the box that was now growing
taller by the day around the young American president. Blair was
facing a tough election of his own, one that would focus on Englands
entrance into the European Union. And, like most liberals, domestic issues
were Blairs strong suit and he wanted to campaign on familiar
turf.
Understanding the very nebulous nature of
the thin thread of cooperation between Bush and Crown Prince
Abdullah, the backers of terrorism in the Gulf knew that all they
had to do to get the Sauds to throw in the towel was provoke the Jews
enough for Israel to escalate its action against the Palestinians. Both
Yassar Arafat and Ariel Sharon picked up their hammers and
began to add new slats to the box around Bush. Pretty soon the
box would be all but impregnable. Once it was reinforced by the Democrats,
George W. Bush would not be able to escape and, war hero
or not, he would be hard pressed to campaign effectively for re-election.
Once he was labeled as part of the Axis
of Evil, Saddam Hussein knew the likelihood of Iraq being revisited
by Stealth Fighter-Bombers in the near future was pretty good. Immediately
his emissaries were visiting Tehran. Iran, the ancient enemy of Iraq,
pledged to join its neighbor if the infidels from the United States visited
Baghdad. While he was not included in the Axis, Bashar Assad of
Syria knew that the NSA, the CIA, the FBI and the
DIA all knew that he was as much a sponsor of terrorism as Iraq.
If Bush was successful against Iraq and Iranas he believed
America would bethen it was only a matter of time before smart bombs
were knocking on doors in Damascus.
The key to stopping Bush would be
found in Riyadh. Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad needed
to pull the Saudi welcome mat out from under Bush and force the
Saudi royal family to withdraw the key to the gulf from the
United States.
The task would be easy enough. First, the
Gulf axis of evilIraq, Iran and Syrianeeded to
get more guns into the hands of Yassar Arafats Palestinian
terrorists; and Arafat needed to escalate violence against the
Jews. This would force the Jews to retaliate more severely against the
Palestinians. With enough Palestinian blood spilled on the desert sands,
Saudi Arabia would be forced to renounce its allegiance to the United
States. Once that happened, the Muslim world could wage a successful Jihad
against the United States. As terrorism escalated in Israel the Bush
State Department tried, in vain, to keep the lid on the pressure
cooker by suggesting to Ariel Sharon that Americas war on
terrorism was somehow different than Israels. Each new escalation
added a new tier of slats in the box that was now imprisoning Bush.
It was reaching the point where the Bush Administration
would need a ladder just
to peer over the top of the box.
After 17 months of rapidly escalating violence
against the Jews, Israel struckand struck hardagainst Arafat.
Political pressure was applied, once again by the Sauds on the Bush
Administration to
force Ariel Sharon to back off. Under the threat of the loss of
Saudi support for his war on terrorism, the National Security Agency
applied extreme pressure on Sharon. Sharon was left with few options.
If he backed off his own war on terrorism, he would be perceived by the
Jews as weak. Once the Jewish people become sufficiently disillusioned
with his leadership, new elections will be called and very likely Benjamin
Netanyahus Likud Party would resume control of the Knesset
and Netanyahu will once again become Prime Minister. Netanyahu
was Israels 9th Prime Minister, elected in May, 1996. He was too
radical for the Clinton Administration (which favored Palestinian
appeasement and the creation of a formal Palestinian state on the Gaza
Strip) because of his hardline anti-Palestinian stance. To get rid of
him, Clinton loaned his top spinmeister, James Carville,
to the Labor Partys candidate Ehud Barak. Carville,
who helped elect Tony Blair, convinced Israel that Barak,
Israels most decorated soldier, would end the bloodshed in Israel
without surrendering hard fought land to the Muslims. Barak, a
protege of assassinated Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, proved to
be the most leftwing prime minister ever elected. Baraks
solution to solving the Palestinian problem and creating peace was one
of total surrender. Barak actually considered a UN-backed proposal
to partition Jerusalemsomething the Arabs have demanded for since
1973.
As Barak considered multinational
control of Jerusalem, his government crashed around his ears. When his
government began to topple in 1999, the Clinton spinmeisters went
to work on Netanyahu to make sure that the most popular Prime Minister
since David Ben Gurion would not get re-elected. Instead of Netanyahu
who was accused of improprieties while in office, Shimon Peres
replaced Barak, and just as quickly, Ariel Sharon replaced
Peres.
In his speech to the Jewish public on February
22, Ariel Sharon urged the Israelis to remain calm and restrained
in face of terrorist violence that had grown increasing deadly over the
past few weeks. In lieu of military responses to violence, Sharon
proposed the creation of barricaded buffer zones between the
Israeli and Palestinian settlements. It was the speech demanded of him
by the Bush White House after a Palestinian suicide bomber
walked into an Israeli supermarket wearing a belt packed with explosives
and was shot to death by a woman shopper before he could detonate the
explosives. On the same day, Palestinian terrorists shot and killed a
59 year old Israeli who was driving near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Leftwing opposition leader Yossi Sarid called Sharons
speech ...embarrassing and troublesome, yet it is the leftwing
which favors precisely that type of appeasement.
As Bush did his tightrope walk to
defuse this Israeli-Palestinian situation, Saddam Hussein increased
his efforts to shoot down American surveillance planes in the No
Fly Zones over both northern and southern Iraq in an effort to force
Bush to respond militarily in Iraq. The Sauds, who are also in
a box not of their making, realize that if Bush persists in extending
his war on terrorism into the Gulf States, they will be forced to break
off diplomatic relations with the United States and side with its Arab
neighbors against Israel. Another row of slats were added to the sides
of the box that now engulfed George W. Bush.
Because this is an election year, pressure
will mount in the liberal media to end the War on Terrorism before
it can be won. Compounding Bushs tenuous relationship with
the Sauds, Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger
vilified the Saudis even more by saying that since September 11 ...the
veil has been lifted and the American people see a double game that theyre
not terribly pleased with. They see a regime that is repressive with respect
to the extremists that threaten them, but more than tolerant...to the
general movement of extreme Islamics in the region. It has never
been a secret that the Sauds are Muslim. Nor is it a secret that Saudi
Arabia is not a democracy. Nor is it a secret that 90% of the terrorists
involved in the September 11 attack from Saudi nationalists, or that several
Saudi charities have funded terrorist activity all over the world. Those
are facts. Everyone knows it. George Bush knows it better
than anyone else. It is, after all, our National Security Agency
that uncovered most of this information. However, politics breeds strange
bedfellows. Bush knows that to win the War on Terrorism
he needs the support of the Saudi government.
On the other hand, the Democrats in both
the House and Senate know that for them to win the political war that
is brewing this fall, and gain the seats they need to control the political
agenda of the nation, they Bushs War on Terrorism
to be over by June or Julyhopefully without a satisfactory conclusion.
If Osama bin Laden is caught or killed before the election season
opens up, George W. Bush will be too popular to beat. And,
Bushs battlefield victories will carry over into his domestic
agenda. Traditionally Democratic issueslike Social Security, Medicare,
and education, will become GOP issues and the Democrats will lack the
impetus to win any additional Congressional seats this fall. In fact,
they will likely lose control of the Senate and wil lalso lose three or
four additional House seats.
If some dramatic win does not
happen in the War on Terrorism by August, Bush will lose
momentum that will affect his domestic agenda credibility and the Democrats
will gain at least two Senate seats and could also regain control of the
house. If that happens, then Bush will face a tough re-election campaign
in 2004. Bushs father, who came out of a heroic war effort with
a 91% popularity rating in March, 1992 became vulnerable when the statesman,
not the warrior, was forced to run for re-election.
The same thing could happen to his son.
And, that is precisely what Bill
and Hillary Clinton hope will happen.
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