On Being an Ally

By William Safire
April 11, 2002
E-mail: safire@nytimes.com 

WASHINGTON — A decade ago, television pictures of a bloodied 
Iraqi Army in retreat caused Gen. Colin Powell — ever sensitive 
to "world opinion" — to stay America's hand. As a result of our 
failure to finish that fight, American lives must soon be put 
at risk to protect us from Saddam Hussein's nuclear blackmail.

Has our secretary of state learned the lesson of closure? 
Apparently not; he is now on a mission to stop Israel from 
winning the war of terror that was launched against it. 

President Bush is being pushed into a minefield of mistakes. 
Badgered by a pro-Palestinian U.N., Democrats in Congress and 
nervous Arab dictatorships, Bush has been maneuvered into 
"engaging" — a code word for imposing a settlement requiring 
vulnerable U.S. troops to enforce. As Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak 
learned the hard way, it is an engagement with one side intending 
no marriage. 

Only when Yasir Arafat agrees to a cease-fire and demonstrates 
his ability to end his suicide-bomber aggression can Israel begin 
to withdraw its defense forces from suicide cities. That was the 
agreement sought by Bush's envoy, Gen. Anthony Zinni, reluctantly 
agreed to by Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and 
contemptuously rejected by Arafat. 

America cannot insist that Israel stop fighting terror without 
insisting that Arafat's death squads stop committing terror. 
America cannot pulverize the bases of Al Qaeda terrorists after 
we are attacked — while pressuring an ally to meekly accept 
losses when its citizens are murdered by Al Qaeda's brothers. 

But what was the Bush reaction to Arafat's refusal of a cease-fire, 
bolstered by Saudi and Egyptian urging to fight harder? Day by day, 
Bush's resolve has been crumbling. He ingratiated himself with 
appeasers by pressuring Israel to stop fighting "now" — which 
would enable the Arab terror coalition to regroup, to get new 
shipments of arms from Iran and rewards from Saudis and Saddam 
to infiltrate more human missiles into Jerusalem.

Last weekend The A.P. reported Bush aides saying on background 
that our president was "frustrated" after his telephone call to 
Sharon. I asked another "senior administration official" about 
that, and was firmly told "no such thing." Such staff doubletalk 
ill serves the president and the press.

Lest we forget, Arafat started this war. He is an ardent ally of 
Iran, which sells him shiploads of arms, and of Iraq's Saddam, 
who pays off Arab families brainwashed to sacrifice their children. 
Another terrorist ally of Arafat's is Syria, supporting Hezbollah's 
new rocket attacks from Lebanon. (When Israel withdrew from its 
buffer zone in Lebanon, terrorists proclaimed victory; now those 
warring Arabs are proving that "land for peace" is a dovish 
illusion.)

What is persuading Bush to become a wavering ally as Israel fights 
for survival? It is the fear that al-Jazeera's one-sided TV 
incitement will lead to the overthrow of the regimes we prop up 
in Egypt and Jordan. But if they are that weak, we are wasting 
our money. As the wise and courageous Fouad Ajami wrote in 
The Wall Street Journal yesterday, "the way out of political 
ruin is an Arab break, once and for all, with the false consolations 
of terror."

With its back to the Western Wall, Israel is uniting to turn back 
the well-oiled wave of vilification. Sharon (sometimes accused 
of being my mouthpiece) has been joined by Barak on the left and 
Bibi Netanyahu on the right to explain to Americans that Israel 
and the U.S. are in the same battle to protect our populations 
against terror. If Shimon Peres stops playing politics, these 
voices could be joined by new, articulate Israeli ambassadors in 
the U.S. and the U.N. 

Unlike Russia's leveling of Grozny with heavy artillery while 
most Europeans shyly looked the other way, Israel is restraining 
its air- and firepower. It is expending the lives of its soldiers 
in narrow alleyways for the sole purpose of capturing terrorists 
and destroying their arms caches while minimizing Arab civilian 
casualties. Contrariwise, documents found in Arafat's headquarters 
show him buying the means for his "martyrs" to murder Israeli 
civilians. 

Let Powell lean on Arab rulers to induce Arafat to stop the killing 
he started and control his terrorists. Then Israel can safely 
withdraw. Then the two sides can work out a sensible separation 
and avert another round of war.