The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle

Commentary on the Flux of Events

Prime Minister Sharon was unmoved by President Bush's command for Israel to cease its anti-terror operations "without delay." Like George Clooney's madcap character in O Brother, America is "in a tight spot."

We wish the world would approve of our global efforts to root out terrorism using every weapon in our arsenal from the B2 Stealth bomber to the A-above-middle-C piano wire garrote, but we're very uncomfortable about Israel dismantling the Palestinian terror regime on the local scale. We make our demands because not doing so we would risk alienating the rest of the Islamic world, losing whatever grudging support we thought we could muster for a future Saddam hunting expedition, and putting our desperately-needed oil imports at hazard. The short-term conundrum for America: how to not appear craven.

The US has no more use for Yasser Arafat than the Israelis do, because he can't close a deal. All parties would benefit from a change of Palestinian leadership. The failure of an alternate faction to emerge is itself telling. It indicates either that Arafat's way (continual insurrection) is the only way, or that his regime holds its own people in captive thrall. Or perhaps it indicates that no credible Palestinian figure wants to begin a peace process. If an Israeli prime minister failed as spectacularly as Arafat has, plenty of candidates representing a wide range of views and policies, would step forward to replace him, some of them desperate peaceniks.

So the systematic dismantling of Palestinian terror infrastructure (the bomb-making laboratories, the caches of Kalashnikovs and RPGs, the suicide bomber field leadership) will continue until the Israeli Defense Force feels the job is complete.
The US ends up looking feckless.

I hasten to add that our leaders, from Bush and his close advisors to Secretary Powell, General Zinni, and Director Tenent, have played their roles in this tragic script pretty honorably. The violence is deplorable, including the awkward and brutal use of Israeli tanks in the labyrinth of the Palestinian towns. The violence should have been deplored and the US properly did so. Alas, the Israeli operation was necessary. There was no other way to discontinue the suicide bomber program. It was probably even desired by the PLO as a means for enhancing their "victim" status -- a smokescreen for their diplomatic ineptitude and intransigence.

The further consequence, though, is that America's impotence only puts the Islamic nations in their own tight spot. The call will arise for them to do something, and what will that something be? Widening of hostilities? Use of the oil weapon? The Arabs, too, are cravens. When it comes to real war, they know that they would get their asses kicked if they jumped in.

Observers so far have scoffed at the idea that Saddam Hussein's declared oil boycott will have any effect on the global supply, but whatever the truth is -- even whether Saddam would actually embargo his oil or just sneakily route it through alternate sales channels -- the markets are certainly responding by bidding up the price of crude more steeply than at any time since last spring. And now that Iran has joined its longtime enemy Iraq in supporting an oil boycott, who knows whether other Islamic nations will either fall into line, or be dragged unhappily into it. My own sense is that a unified sentiment for an oil boycott will take shape because 1.) it is the most potent non-military weapon of the last resort that they have, and 2.) there is an historic inevitability to it (I admit the latter may be tautological). We should have a clear picture by the end of this week.