As I indicated in my previous post, President Bush is advocating a course of action which will ultimately lead to the death of Israel. Unfortunately, there are more severe consequences to this course of action than the mere death of Israel. By advocating that Israel negotiate with terrorists, President Bush is severely threatening the security of The United States.
I’d like to emphasize some points from my previous post which will also serve the purposes of this one.
There are only three responses to the initiation of force (or the threat of the initiation of force): to ignore it, to appease those who are initiating the force, or to retaliate against those who are initiating the force in the attempt to eliminate the force.Let’s take a look at a child throwing a temper-tantrum. Ignore the child, and the child continues to throw the temper-tantrum for an extended period of time until the child feels like stopping, at which time, much damage has been done. Appease the child, and the child learns that throwing a temper-tantrum can get them rewards from their parents. Punish the child, and the child learns that throwing a temper-tantrum is not the proper way to get what one wants.
This is a proper analogy to what happens when a nation either ignores, appeases, or retaliates against, the initiation of force from another nation. If a nation ignores the initiation of force, there is nothing to stop the initiators from completely destroying the nation. If a nation attempts to appease or negotiate with the initiators of force, it is possible that the violence may stop in the short-term, but what message will this send in the long-term? It will tell the initiators of force that initiating force is a successful policy to engage in if they want to achieve their goals. This only emboldens these initiators of force to engage in future acts of force, because there is nothing stopping them. When they initiate force, they will not be punished, but rather rewarded with certain things offered up by the nation being attacked in exchange for the end of the intiation of force. If a nation retaliates against those who initiate force against them, it will end the initiation of force in the short-term, and in the long-term, it will send the message to those who initiate force that that policy is not beneficial towards achieving their own goals, and will only be met with severe punishment.
Prior to Sept. 11, since the beginning of the Islamic Fundamentalism terrorist movement, the United States either ignored Islamic terrorism or appeased it.
In 1979 theocratic Iran—which has spearheaded the “Islamic Revolution"—stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 54 Americans hostage for over a year. In 1983 the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group Hezbollah bombed a U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 servicemen while they slept; the explosives came from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. In 1998 al-Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 individuals. In 2000 al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors.
So we already knew that al-Qaeda was actively engaged in attacking Americans. We even had evidence that agents connected to al-Qaeda had been responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. And we knew in 1996 that bin Laden had made an overt declaration of war against the “Satan” America.
But how did America react? Did our government adopt a principled approach and identify the fact that we were faced with a deadly threat from an ideological foe? Did we launch systematic counterattacks to wipe out such enemy organizations as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Fatah? Did we seek to eliminate enemy states like Iran? No—our responses were short-sighted and self-contradictory.
For instance, we initially expelled Iranian diplomats—but later sought an appeasing rapprochement with that ayatollah-led government. We intermittently cut off trade with Iran—but secretly negotiated weapons-for-hostages deals. When Israel had the courage to enter Lebanon in 1982 to destroy the PLO, we refused to uncompromisingly support our ally and instead brokered the killers’ release. And with respect to al-Qaeda, we dropped a perfunctory bomb or two on one of its suspected camps, while our compliant diplomats waited for al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks to fade from the headlines.
Sept. 11 was the result of this policy of ignoring and appeasing these terrorists who initiated force against us. By not responding to and eliminating the threat of Islamic terrorism, we emboldened the terrorists to engage in more and more severe attacks against us, and to continue their efforts free of any sort of punishment. By appeasing terrorists in certain cases, such as the taking of American hostages in Tehran, we sent the message to terrorists that attacking us through terrorism will get them rewards and very little punishment, if any.
When Sept. 11 occurred, it was evident that this policy of ignoring and appeasing terrorism had completely failed, and only a policy of ruthlessly going after all the threats to our country would achive peace and prevent any future terrorist attacks. President Bush gave lip service to this in his initial remarks after the Sept. 11 attacks. Also, he went after the main home of the Al-Qaeda organization and the dictatorship that was supporting them, the Taliban. After a pitiful campaign against them, in which we allowed thousands of Taliban and Al-Qaeda members to escape and a complete failure to capture Osama Bin Laden, President Bush promised that we would continue to eliminate all terrorist threats.
Since Sept. 11, our government, under the leadership of President Bush, has done a terrible job of eliminating the terrorist threats against our country. And now it appears as though the “war” on terrorism is becoming the “negotiation” with terrorism. This can be seen with President Bush’s policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead of eliminating the terrorist organizations which carry out attacks on Israeli civilians, Israel should, according to President Bush, negotiate with the terrorists, essentially, appease them by giving up some of their land to the terrorists. This is equal to giving Al-Qaeda some of what it wants, dead American citizens.
It now sadly appears that we are returning, after a pitiful short period of retaliation against terrorist threats, to appeasing and ignoring terrorist actions. Instead of identifying and then eliminating the terrorist threats and the governments which support them around the world, the U.S. government has now begun the process of negotiating with these threats to our country and the threats to our allies. The evidence of this is clear with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the North Korean situation, and our policy on Iran. We have told the Israeli government that we do not support their own “war on terror” but that they should rather give in to the terrorists’ demands. The North Koreans are threatening the United States with nuclear weapons, and instead of eliminating the source of this threat, we are now attempting to appease the North Koreans with food deals, monetary aid, and even a non-aggression pact, all of which will allow North Korea to remain a dictatorship and to continue to produce nuclear weapons. Most importantly, President Bush believes that the Iranian regime can be overthrown by “peaceful means,” as he indicated this morning in his press conference. This is the equivalent of stating during World War II that Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime can be overthrown by peaceful means. While the size of the threat of Iran is greatly smaller than Hitler’s Nazi Germany was, the Iranian regime represents the heart of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, and the heart of Islamic terrorism.
Sadly, it appears as though President Bush believes that Islamic terrorism can be defeated by appeasing them. He belives that Islamic terrorism can be defeated in the Palestinian territories by appeasing them, it can be defeated in Iran by appeasing them, in Saudi Arabia by appeasing them, in Pakistan by appeasing them, etc.
What is going to be the eventual result of this policy of appeasement and ignoring terrorist threats? The strengthening of the Islamic terrorist movement, their belief that initiating force against us will yield positive results, and future terrorist attacks against us.
