Pat Buchanan Fri Aug 4, 6:49 AM ET
With the second Intifada and rise to power of
Ariel Sharon, Israel abandoned Oslo and land-for-peace. We will never again negotiate with Arafat, said Sharon, because Israel does not negotiate with terrorists.
Two Israeli prime ministers, Rabin and Peres, had shared a Nobel Prize with Arafat. A third, "Bibi" Netanyahu, had handed over Hebron to Arafat. A fourth,
Ehud Barak, had offered Arafat 95 percent of the
West Bank and a capital in Jerusalem. Yet, Sharon not only made his policy stick, he got George W. Bush to sign on to it.
Where Arafat had been to the Clinton White House more times than Bob Dole, he was blackballed by the Bush White House.
Sharon's distaste of Arafat was visceral and real. He would not shake hands with him. But it was also politically astute. As security analyst Michael Vlahos has written, nations often declare adversaries "terrorists" to delegitimize them and absolve themselves of any obligation to talk peace with them. They fall back on the time-tested formula: "We do not negotiate with terrorists!"
And it is surely true that Arafat's
Fatah, as well as his PLO, had committed acts of terror: the killing of the innocent for political ends, not only Israelis but U.S. diplomats. Yet, Sharon, in 1953, led a force called Unit 101 into the West Bank village of Kibya to avenge the Arab slaying of an Israeli woman and her children. Sixty-nine Palestinians were massacred, mostly women and children, as their homes were dynamited. Sharon was also the army commander when the IDF let the Phalangists into Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, and fired flares to light the night so the killers could get on with their work.
What of us Americans? Do we negotiate with terrorists?
At Tehran and Yalta, FDR ceded Eastern Europe to the Great Terrorist he called "Uncle Joe." Truman at Potsdam affirmed the grant to Stalin. Three years after Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian Revolution, Eisenhower invited the "Butcher of Budapest" to Camp David and had him escorted on a 10-day U.S. tour.
In the year the Viet Cong perpetrated the massacre at Hue, going door-to-door with lists and executing 3,000 South Vietnamese, U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman sat down with the VC and North Vietnamese at Paris.
In 1972, Nixon went to Peking to shake hands with the greatest terrorist of the century, Mao Tse-tung, even as Mao's Gang of Four, including his wife, carried out the Chinese pogrom known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Donald Rumsfeld visited
Saddam Hussein on behalf of
Ronald Reagan, and we aided Saddam's
Iraq in its war of aggression on
Iran. Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad was said to be a state terrorist. Yet, in 1991, Bush I made him an ally in the
Gulf War.
Khadafi is responsible for the air massacre of American schoolkids over Lockerbie. Yet, Bush let Khadafi out of the sanctions box for giving up his nuclear program and making res ution to the families of the murder victims on Pan Am 103. After early careers in which each was accused of terrorism, o, Begin, Shamir and Mandela were honored guests at the White House.
Which brings me to the point. America is a world power with a broader interest in the Middle East than Israel's, and if we are to protect those interests and play the role history has assigned us, we cannot allow any nation to exercise veto power over whom we talk to. While most Americans wish to maintain our commitment to the security and survival of Israel, we must declare our political and diplomatic independence of Israel, as Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan all did.
Ike ordered Ben-Gurion out of Sinai. Nixon saved Israel in the Yom Kippur war with the 1973 airlift, then told Golda Meir Israel must let Egypt resupply its Third Army on the east bank. Reagan backed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, then ordered Israel to stand down, and sold F-16s to Saudi Arabia.
It is preposterous that, at the behest of Israel, we do not talk to a
Palestinian Authority led by Hamas, after an election in which Bush himself demanded Hamas be included. And while
Syria and Iran have been distant and hostile, neither appears to want war with the United States, and neither has attacked us in at least 10 years.
If we can talk to Khadafi, who has the blood of Americans on his hands, why cannot we talk to Bashar al-Assad and Ahmadinejad? Neither of them has slaughtered hundreds of Americans in a terror attack.
Before he launched his democracy project, Bush was warned that free elections would advance the fortunes of Islamic militants. At his insistence, the elections were held. Results:
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 60 percent of the seats it contested. Hezbollah swept south Lebanon. Hamas recorded a stunning victory on the West Bank and Gaza. These were the freest and fairest elections ever held in those nations. But Bush refused to engage the winners.
The painful truth is that, in the Middle East, democracy will produce, as it does in the West, two dominant parties. One will be a state party, and the other is going to be a party rooted in the Islamic faith.
Time to recognize reality -- and stop isolating America.
Who's a terraist anymore? We invade Afghanistan, the afghan mujahadeen and Taliban are terraist, we invade Iraq, the republican guard and nationalist Iraqis defending the homeland are terraist. You see how this works? We invade a country and anyone who tries to stop us is automatically labeled a terraist. It's intentionally done that way so that the WH doesn't have to adhere to the Geneva Conventions rules.
Asia Times sums up quite neatly what cons utes a terraist to the U.S.
Asia Timesin essence, this is how it works. Armchair gurus in Washington and New York theorize on the so-called five wars of globalization - terrorism, trafficking, money laundering, piracy and migration - and the Pentagon sends the Special Forces posing as cleaners to make it all proper for the "free" world. The underlying assumption is that Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda - "in sum, terror" - are profiting like mad from the so-called five wars.
The "new threats of the 21st century recognize no borders", according to the Pentagon. Ergo, everyone may be a terrorist, at least a potential one. Not accidentally, General Craddock hates "anti-globalization and anti-free-trade demagogues". Sunni or Shi'ite, Marxist or anarchist, ruralist or existentialist, the Russian mafia, the Hong Kong triads, the Nigerian mafia, the Ukrainian mafia - they are all in cahoots. And for the Pentagon, Hezbollah is selling pirate video discs of Christina Aguilera to finance more Katyusha rockets.
(SIC)
Anyway, the latest annual State Department terrorism report explicitly regards the Triple Border as a main source of financing for both Hamas and Hezbollah, even though it admits "there's no confirmed information" either Hamas or Hezbollah has "an operational presence" on the ground.
See, a terrrorist is anyone we want it to be.
militants, insurgents, terrorist, revolutionaries, combatants, freedom fighters, "rebels" etc….
What differentiates them is their politics not their murderous acts………
So what is a terrorist to you?
You sound lunatic, i don't think you actually believe half the stuff you post.
That probably has to do your inability to think for yourself but then you don’t need to, you got smart ppl to tell you what to think……….
It's not who or what is a terraist is to me which is important, it's who's a terraist according to the Neocons WHICH IS...
Newt Gingrich Considers Political Opposition, American Citizens, to be an ''Insurgency''
A. Alexander, August 7th, 2006
PROGRESSIVE DAILYSome have expressed concern over Newt Gingrich's use of the term "insurgency", while referring to Ned Lamont supporters in Connecticut. From a personal perspective, Gingrich was correct in obliquely referring to America's blogosphere and directly Lamont supporters, as being an "insurgency". Gingrich, of course, meant the term to be derogatory and a means of linking those that oppose Bush's war follies with terrorists. Still, Crazy Newt the serial divorcer was correct in more ways than he fully understands and, too, revealed the Neo-Conservative agenda in a clear and yet, unintended way.
That Gingrich would openly refer to those who oppose Bush-Republican Neo-Conservative madness as being an "insurgency" is, in a very real sense, the first public admission that the Bush regime and Republicans are at war with the American people. It is a blatant confession of the ultimate Neo-Conservative agenda, i.e. a deliberate and swift movement toward a very real Executive dictatorship wherein those who dissent or disagree are "the enemy" or members of an "insurgency". Gingrich's use of the term "insurgency" when referring to fellow Americans reveals in no uncertain terms the reality that the Neo-Cons recognize a movement forming that consists of the American people and that is designed to directly challenge their drive toward a nationalist imperialistic dictatorship.
Open and truly democratic governments don't view their political opponents as "enemies" whose opposition is looked upon as an "insurgency", and they certainly don't feel a need to be at war with the people they govern. For Gingrich, Bush, Republicans and the entire Neo-Conservative movement; however, the reality is that the American people are increasingly questioning their "right to rule" and are, therefore, considered enemies or, as Newt Gingrich more aptly said, an "insurgency".
The fact of the matter is that Newt Gingrich is right! There is no better way of defining and describing those American citizens who have formed and continue forming a direct and spirited opposition to the Neo-Conservatives' madness, as being anything other than an "insurgency". Bush and Republicans have busied themselves at the task of disregarding American laws; International laws; have committed war crimes; lied to the American people in order to engage in war with Iraq; unilaterally exempted themselves from the Cons ution; committed treason by revealing an undercover CIA agent's name; undermined a free press; illegally spied upon American citizens; ins uted a policy of merging church and state; stacked the courts with nefarious individuals that would knowingly and willingly support an Executive dictatorship; provided their crony pals with government appointments and large government contracts that have resulted in grotesque profits without services being provided; raped the nation's treasury; supported big oils' obscene profit taking at the expense of the American people; left New Orleans to rot and refused to help while more than 1,300 citizens perished, and through stygian deception refused to hold anyone to account.
The red-staters/right/Repugs sliming any and all opposition as traitors and terrorists?
yawn.
Disgraced criminal Repug Nixon did exactly the same thing 35 years ago. Repug slimebags never change, they just keep on sliming, because the sheeple fall for it.
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