Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

‘Mr. Arafat, Renounce This Map’

(Washington, D.C.): In 1987, a President of the United States confronted a great evil and found a simple, yet powerful, way to call symbolically for its undoing. Ronald Reagan — over the adamant and determined objections of his experts in the State Department — used the backdrop of Cold War Berlin’s barricaded Brandenburg Gate to call on the then-leader of the Soviet Union to put an end to the “Evil Empire.” As he put it on that occasion, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Precondition to Peace

Today, President Bush has an opportunity to sound a similar clarion call as he confronts an evil to which he is no less passionately opposed than was Mr. Reagan to Communist totalitarianism: the determination of many in the Arab world to pursue the complete destruction of the State of Israel.

Over the next few days, Mr. Bush may order his Vice President, Dick Cheney, to return to the Middle East, in the hope of giving a fresh impetus to efforts to achieve a genuine peace between the Jewish State and her foes. If so, it will be on the basis of evidence not discernable at this writing indicating that Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasser Arafat has, at last, taken steps to exercise control over terrorists operating from areas for which he is responsible. And it will be with an eye toward the Arab League summit scheduled to convene in Beirut on Wednesday and Thursday, where participants are expected to discuss a “vision of peace” being touted by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah.

The Saudi “plan” reportedly would offer Israel full normalization of relations with the Arabs if the Jewish State will relinquish all the territory on the West Bank and Gaza Strip seized in the course of its defensive operations in the 1967 Six-Day War. Arafat has signaled his support for this formulation, as have a number of other Arab leaders. Today’s State Department experts think a majority of the Arab League states might endorse this initiative, creating a new basis for a permanent, regional settlement of this long-festering conflict. Some even hope that, in this fashion, the League may become, if not actually favorably disposed towards, than less stridently opposed to America’s #1 Mideast priority: toppling Saddam Hussein.

Reality Check

Unfortunately, there is reason to believe that the Arabs are no more serious about making a genuine peace with Israel at this juncture than they have been in the past. To the contrary, many in the Arab world and among the Palestinians in particular clearly believe that the time is ripe to “liberate” not only the disputed territories captured by the Israelis in 1967, but all of the land “occupied” by the Jews — including all pre-1967 Israel. They sense that, as in Lebanon, their violence is paying off, driving the Jewish “crusaders” off disputed land and driving a wedge between Israel and her most important ally, the United States.

This was the goal of Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization when it was established in 1964 — that is, before Israel had “occupied” any territory on the West Bank or Gaza. And so it remains today. However, in the wake of the Arab armies’ 1973 defeat the last time they tried to destroy Israel, the PLO decided that the ultimate objective would have to be achieved in stages. This approach was formally adopted in 1974 and became known as the “Plan of Phases”: In the first phase, Israel would be compelled to relinquish territory that could be used subsequently to drive the Jews into the sea.

The unwavering commitment to this goal has long been reflected in a map of “Palestine” widely used by the Palestinians and other Arabs. In it, Palestine consists of not only all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but all of pre-1967 Israel, as well. Accordingly, there is no Israel at all on the maps used in Arafat’s offices, on the uniforms of his para-military “police” or on the website of the Palestinian National Authority and its agencies.
Source: Palestinian National Authority

Most insidious, perhaps, is this map’s repeated appearance in the textbooks with which the next generation of Palestinian schoolchildren are taught to think about their birthright — and shaped in their expectations about a future homeland.

A half-hearted effort has lately been made to claim this map as a depiction of an historical nation known as Palestine. This is a fabrication. In his recently re-issued and authoritative work, Islam in History, Dr. Bernard Lewis — one of the most eminent scholars of Mideast history — makes clear that there has never been a Palestine with the boundaries shown on Arafat’s map.

The Bottom Line

Under these circumstances, Israel is fully within its rights to resist appeals to surrender land its enemies have used in the past to try to destroy the Jewish State. Indeed, it would be the height of folly and possibly state-icidal to do otherwise. Neither Israelis nor Americans whose national interest is served by having a strong, secure and self-reliant democratic ally in the Middle East can responsibly ignore this reality.

Consequently, if President Bush wishes to play a constructive role at this difficult moment in the Mideast, he must insist that Israel’s adversaries stop paying lip-service in English to their desire for peace while cultivating the intolerance and destructive propensities that endanger our ally and preclude it from safely considering further territorial or other concessions. A good place to start would be by issuing a call much as Ronald Reagan did a generation ago: “Mr. Arafat: Renounce this map” — and ensure that neither the Palestinian Authority nor its friends any longer use such representations to describe an end-game for the so-called “peace process” with which Israel literally cannot live. 1

1Watch the Center’s TV ad campaign urging President George W. Bush to demand that Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat renounce the liquidation of Israel.

*See the Center for Security Policy’s Security Forum entitled: What is Wrong with Arafat’s Picture? ( No. 02-F 14, 07 March 2002).

What is Wrong with Arafat’s Picture?

Source: Palestinian National Authority

(Washington, D.C.): The editorial page of today’s Wall Street Journal features a map to which the Center for Security Policy has long called attention1: Taken from the Palestinian Authority’s website, it shows a “Palestine” comprised of not only the Gaza Strip and entire West Bank but all of pre-1967 Israel.

This image — which is reproduced widely throughout the Palestinian controlled territories (including in PA offices, on its “police” uniforms, at officially sponsored social and cultural events, on Palestinian television broadcasts and, most odious of all, in the textbooks used to teach the next generation). It conveys symbolically and unmistakably the unwavering objective which Yasser Arafat shares with his counterparts in Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad: The wholesale destruction of the State of Israel.

As the Journal observes in an editorial that accompanies Arafat’s map, “The dispute is not over a chunk of real estate, settlements or holy sites; it is over the Jewish state’s right to exist. This isn’t new, but it’s easily forgotten by those who believe peace is just a question of the right plan with the right diplomats pushing it.”

Accordingly, the Bush Administration should support Israel in making an absolute prerequisite for any consideration of the so-called Saudi peace initiative — to say nothing of demands that Arafat’s confinement to Ramallah be ended so that he might travel to Beirut for the Arab League meeting at the end of the month — an explicit renunciation of this Judenrein map by all those who would be seen as “partners for peace.” This would hardly be a sufficient condition; before further Israeli territorial concessions could be contemplated, corresponding adjustments would also have to be made to the Arabs’ demands. In particular, to be taken seriously as peacemakers, the Arabs must abandon their insistence on 1) redrawing the 2002 map in a way that would have the effect of denying Israel secure borders and 2) imposing on it what might be called “demogracide” — a “right of return” for millions of Arab “refugees” that would ineluctably end Israel’s character as a Jewish homeland.

Redrawing the Map

The Wall Street Journal, 7 March 2002

Would Winston Churchill have sat down for negotiations with an enemy whose ultimate goal was to drive the British into the North Sea? That essentially is what is being asked of Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by those who claim that the alternative to today’s escalation of violence is a “peace” plan, say along the lines of the one being promoted by Saudi Arabia.

Trawl the Palestinian Authority’s Web site and you will happen upon the map pictured nearby showing the “historical” Palestine. Some 290 miles long and 85 miles wide with a long border on the Mediterranean, it is surrounded on land by Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The message is unmistakable: This is the Palestine that we want to create. There is no room for an Israel here. Kindly look elsewhere.

The Saudi plan is more PR exercise than peace mission. It proposes returning Israel to the statelet of its 1967 borders — only eight miles wide at its middle. That would certainly complicate Israeli defenses, especially if Palestinian police keep getting rocket shipments from Iran. Then there are the small matters of the transfer of more than 200,000 settlers and the handover of Jerusalem’s Old City. But the real problem with the Saudi plan is that it will not resolve the niggling fact that denying Israel’s right to exist is still de facto Palestinian Authority, indeed pan-Arab, policy.

Israel is at war once again. The dispute is not over a chunk of real estate, settlements or holy sites; it is over the Jewish state’s right to exist. This isn’t new, but it’s easily forgotten by those who believe peace is just a question of the right plan with the right diplomats pushing it.

Mr. Sharon has done much that is right on the political side of this war. In sidelining Yasser Arafat as a bargaining partner, he has forced the Palestinian leader to declare his hand. Either he has real influence over the suicide bombers and those who send them to their deaths, or he does not. If he does, Mr. Sharon will talk. If he does not, what’s there to talk about? Mr. Arafat has responded by grasping onto the Saudi peace plan, but the suicide bombings and sniper fire continue.

Mr. Sharon’s military strategy is measured, and that causes him trouble with both Israeli hawks and peaceniks. In response to his critics, he said this week that “this will be an aggressive and continuous campaign, without letup, and when the other side understands that it can’t achieve anything through terror, it will be easier to enter negotiations.” In other words, Israel’s strategy is to ratchet up the damage until the Palestinians are ready for real negotiations.

Some critics say Israel can’t win a drawn-out war of attrition. They point to opposition from a group of Israeli reservists, the escalating divisions within the Sharon government and the growing international concern over the death toll. The suggestion is that Mr. Sharon should look for a chance for jaw-jaw instead.

No normal human being can look at the growing number of body bags and not wonder whether something might be done differently. The past week has been one of the bloodiest since the intifada resumed in September 2000. But it is too early to declare the military strategy a failure.

If the Sharon strategy can be faulted it is probably for being too cautious in pursuing the kingpins of Hamas and Arafat’s own Fatah faction of the PLO. Unless those who recruit, equip, organize and inspire terrorist attacks are arrested or killed, the danger to Israeli security will remain and the war will go on.

Mr. Sharon is now addressing this need. Yesterday Israeli forces razed the home of Issam Abu Daka, the fugitive leader of the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the man Israelis believe masterminded a deadly assault against an Israeli outpost several months ago. A Hamas activist was killed in his Gaza City home and Israeli troops destroyed several homes of suspected militants. Also yesterday Israeli F-16 warplanes flattened an office building used by the Palestinian “police” chief in Gaza.

Israel has no choice but to wage this kind of war until its enemies give up the idea of destroying Israel. A real conclusion to the violence in the Middle East requires Mr. Arafat and his followers to change the map inside their heads. Until they do, Jews and Palestinians alike will continue to suffer, and no new “peace plan” will make any difference.

1See the Center for Security Policy’s Decision Briefs entitled:

Mideast Vision Thing’: Will Powell et Al. Blind President Bush to the Palestinians’ Abiding Goal of Judenrein? (No. 01-D 74, 19 November 2001);

Bibi’s Choice: Allow The Palestinians to Acquire a Real — and Threatening — State or Just a ‘State of Mind’ (No. 98-D 126, 09 July 1998);

Clinton Legacy Watch # 24: An Odious Ultimatum to Israel (No. 98-D 78, 09 July 1998).

The Saudi Scam II: Krauthammer Warns Against Bid to Spring Arafat While He Continues to Foment Terror

(Washington, D.C.): In a characteristically brilliant essay in today’s Washington Post, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer describes the near-term objective of the so- called “peace initiative” recently alluded to by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah in a conversation with another American columnist — the New York Times’ Tom Friedman: “The peace plan turns out to be a device for springing Arafat from his confinement — without having acceded to U.S. demands to shut down the terror. His resumption of globe- trotting would publicly demonstrate his successful defiance of the American effort to stop the violence.” (Emphasis added.)

As the Center for Security Policy noted in its Decision Brief entitled “The Saudi ‘Deus ex Machiavelli‘” released on Monday, the other, transparent motivations for this initiative are no less laudable. It is not in the interests of the United States to accommodate Saudi efforts to divert attention from the kingdom’s complicity in the organizations that perpetrated the September 11 attacks. Neither will those interests be advanced by renewing expectations that the United States can be divided, diplomatically if not militarily, from its most important regional ally, Israel. Nor will they be served by the realization of the long- standing Arab objective of recovering land whose control is essential to Israel’s security and whose loss by the Jewish State would renew her enemies’ “war option” against Israel.

For all these reasons, the United States should reject — not indulge — the Saudi gambit and support Israel’s efforts to fight the war on terrorism on its front with the same vigor and legitimacy that America is fighting it on so many others.

Saudi Peace Sham
By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post, 6 March 2002

In 35 years of studying the Middle East, I have rarely seen anything to rival the Saudi “peace plan” for cynicism (of those pushing the plan) and gullibility (of those buying it). If it were not so tragic it would be comic. Israeli civilians are being blown up almost daily in restaurants, at bus stops, at prayer. Retaliatory attacks are launched by the hour. A new “peace plan” is then floated whose essence is this: When peace is achieved between the two parties killing each other on the ground, the Saudis will give it their blessing and make peace too.

Forgive me, but this is entirely beside the point. The point is not what the Arab states will do after peace dawns — And what would they do? Keep the war going after the Palestinians make peace? — but to find a way to stop the violence today.

Apart from the fact that the plan is an obvious Saudi ploy to blunt American anger at the shockingly deep Saudi role in Sept. 11 by posing as peacemakers, apart from the fact that it gives make-work to U.N., EU and other underemployed diplomats with not an idea in their heads how to stop the violence, the plan has a very specific objective: misdirection. The plan — a repetition of maximal Arab demands from which they have not budged in two decades — is a transparent attempt to take world attention away from the source of the violence.
Ever since the devastating suicide bombings of Dec. 1 and 2 in Jerusalem and Haifa that murdered 25 Israelis, world attention has been on Yasser Arafat. Shortly before Dec. 1, the Bush administration had bent to Arab demands and became seriously reinvolved in brokering peace, explicitly advocating a Palestinian state and sending a special envoy, Gen. Anthony Zinni, to lead the negotiations. Zinni arrived in Jerusalem and was greeted by an orgy of Palestinian violence.

A furious and embarrassed U.S. administration then insisted that Arafat re-arrest the terrorists he had deliberately released from jail at the beginning of the intifada and crack down on the terrorist infrastructure that he had made common cause with under the umbrella of the “National and Islamic Forces.” Even the European Union, normally a wholly owned subsidiary of the Arab League, agreed.

It is three months later and Arafat has done nothing. On the contrary. The suicide bombings are coming with increasing frequency and with ever-increasing adulation in Arafat’s media and propaganda. More ambushes, more bombings, more missiles, more bloodshed.

Everyone knows that if Arafat would call a stop, Israel would reciprocate. But for 17 months, he has refused. Why? Because he is winning. Israel is bleeding, demoralized, leaderless, economically devastated. Arafat knows that he may yet get what he wants — unilateral withdrawal. For Arafat, such an Israeli capitulation, mirroring its capitulation in Lebanon, would be the sweetest of victories: land without peace.

He has a serious obstacle, however. American pressure. How to relieve it? Change the subject. Make the issue not the Palestinian campaign of terror but newfound Saudi peacefulness.

What is the key symbol of the U.S. pressure on Arafat? Its support of Israel’s confinement of Arafat to his headquarters in Ramallah until he shuts down the terror. What then do you imagine is the newest key demand of the Saudi plan? You guessed it. On Monday, Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath, who had just met with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, revealed that the Saudis would refuse to present the plan to the Arab League meeting in Beirut on March 27-28 — unless Arafat is allowed to attend.

The clouds part. The fog lifts. The peace plan turns out to be a device for springing Arafat from his confinement — without having acceded to U.S. demands to shut down the terror. His resumption of globe-trotting would publicly demonstrate his successful defiance of the American effort to stop the violence. (President Hosni Mubarak’s invitation yesterday to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for a summit in Egypt — on condition that Arafat attend as well — dovetails perfectly with the Saudi breakout strategy for Arafat.)
It would be a spectacular diplomatic victory — a triumphal return to Beirut to a thunderous reception from his fellow Arabs — and dramatic vindication of his policy of the past two years: rejecting Israel’s Camp David 2000 peace offer, tearing up the Oslo accords, then waging terror and guerrilla war. Such success for his war policy is guaranteed to increase the violence.

The audacity of this maneuver is breathtaking. But why not? It is working. The New York Times bought the Saudi peace plan (last Sunday alone, lavishing two feature stories and nearly a dozen photographs over five pages). The Europeans bought it. The diplomatic-media complex bought it. All that stands in the way of pulling this off is for the Bush administration to buy it.

Thus far and to its credit, the administration has not. But the pressure to cave, already applied by the visiting Mubarak, is growing. It must be resisted. This phony plan will do nothing but relieve the pressure on Arafat to stop the war.

The Saudi Charm Offensive

(Washington, D.C.): Apparently, it all started with a column by the New York Times‘ Thomas Friedman in early February urging the Arab League to mount a new diplomatic initiative for Middle East peace. He proposed that the Arabs offer to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for the Jewish State surrendering the territory it seized after the Six Day War in 1967. Shortly thereafter, to Friedman’s delighted surprise, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, told the columnist that he had a similar plan “in his drawer.”

For encouraging a gullible journalist to drink his own bathwater, Abdullah has suddenly become the toast of diplomats, statesmen and peace activists around the world. Like swooning schoolgirls, many who should know better are fawning over the Crown Prince for suddenly offering to play a constructive role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Some — presumably including President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — are responding positively to the so-called “Abdullah Plan” on atmospheric, rather than substantive grounds. It can only be assumed that neither are under any illusion that this “new peace initiative” is, as Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. notes in today’s Los Angeles Times, either “new,” conducive to “peace” or an “initiative” in any meaningful sense of the word.

The grave danger is that — in the unreal world of Mideast peace-making — this “initiative” will nonetheless take on a life of its own. Already, the inveterate peace- processors are pretending that a deal that would entail even greater concessions on Israel’s part than the last Barak proposal offered at Camp David in September 2000 would not be a reward to Yasser Arafat for turning down that offer and inciting the latest round of violence. Already, they are glossing over the improbability that the Saudis, let alone the Syrians, Libyans, Iranians or Iraqis, will actually normalize relations with Israel just because the latter has given back roughly half of the land the Arabs think the Jews are “occupying” (the other half being the Jewish State’s pre-1967 boundaries).

If the long, sorry history of Mideast peace-making teaches anything, it is that unsound proposals based on the principle of Israeli territorial concessions in exchange for the promise of peace with the Arabs become more problematic, not less, as the political capital and personal prestige of American and other leaders become invested in them. Consequently, it behooves both President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon to establish at the earliest possible moment that they would, of course, welcome Saudi Arabia playing at long last a constructive role in the Arab-Israeli conflict — but that they are still waiting for the Kingdom to do so.

Land for Peace Is a Losing Trade

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Los Angeles Times, 27 February 2002

In the past week, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, has received kudos in Washington, Arab capitals and diplomatic circles around the world for what is characterized as a “new peace initiative” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, this characterization is so wildly inaccurate as to appear a deliberate fraud.

The so-called Abdullah plan–Arabs would normalize relations with Israel in exchange for the Jewish state surrendering the territory seized after 1967’s Six-Day War–is not “new” in any meaningful sense.

The idea of Israel giving up the land it conquered in the course of successive wars waged against it in exchange for a genuine peace with the Arabs has been around at least since the last of those wars ended in 1973. Various U.N. resolutions, numerous shuttle diplomacy missions and the Oslo process have all been predicated on the land-for-peace proposition. Time after time, Israel has agreed to territorial concessions. The resulting dismal experience with each of these ventures has, however, made most Israelis reluctant to buy into such a shopworn idea yet again. Even if the Abdullah plan were a genuinely new concept, it would not be conducive to a lasting peace. Over the past 30 years, Israeli governments of the right and left have recognized that areas of the West Bank have been essential to persuading the Arabs that the “war option” is foreclosed. Should strategic Israeli positions on the high ground above the Jordan Valley, many of which are secured by settlements and military outposts, be surrendered, the Arabs’ calculus surely would change.

And despite the interest expressed by President Bush this week, the Abdullah plan cannot accurately be called an “initiative” either. The Saudi king-in-waiting apparently has not decided to formally introduce his plan at an upcoming Arab League summit. There also have been differing reports of the plan’s particulars.

The real impetus behind the Abdullah plan seems to be a cynical bid to divert increasingly critical American attention from the Saudi kingdom’s double game. The Saudis have been portrayed as one of the United States’ most reliable allies in the region. At the same time, the royal family has patronized Wahhabism, the virulently radical strain of Islam that has brought the world Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist cells, most of the Sept. 11 hijackers and a worldwide network of madrasas, or religious schools, busily indoctrinating young Muslims to hate and attack Western infidels. It also has become clear that Saudi Arabia is perfectly willing from time to time to increase oil prices at the expense of world economies and to impose restrictions on U.S. use of Saudi bases.

In the months since Sept. 11, a growing chorus on Capitol Hill, in the press and even in some quarters of the Bush administration, has shown that American patience with the Saudis is wearing thin. One suspects that Abdullah saw the need for a “charm offensive” in the form of a new peace initiative for the Middle East.

To be sure, Israel has no good options at the moment. The same applies to the U.S., as one of Israel’s few friends and its principal ally. Among the worst of the available options, though, would be for either Israel or the U.S. to embrace a warmed-over–and thoroughly discredited–effort to strip the Jewish state of land it requires for its own defense.

There can be no guarantees that despotically governed Arab states–especially Saudi Arabia–would live up to their part of the bargain any more than they have in the past. Even if today’s rulers promise to do so, their successors cannot be relied upon to follow suit.

There is much that Saudi Arabia can and should do, from opening up its bases to a needed U.S.-led effort to end Saddam Hussein’s misrule, to shutting down its madrasas, to providing humanitarian relief and job opportunities to Palestinians whom their Arab brothers see fit to keep rotting in refugee centers.

As far as the Abdullah plan goes, though, the American and Israeli response should be the same: “Thanks, but no, thanks.”

Where’s O.S.I. When We Need It?

(Washington, D.C.): On the same day Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld felt obliged to shut down the Pentagon’s recently established Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), fresh evidence arrived of the urgent need for the sort of truth-telling that organization was established to perform.

According to the 27 February editions of USA Today, a new poll by the Gallup Organization has established that “most Muslims don’t believe Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and disapprove of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.” This poll, described as “the most comprehensive survey of Muslim countries taken since Sept. 11” is said to confirm “anecdotal evidence of a huge gulf between the West and Muslim nations that existed before the attacks and remains deep.”

According to Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport, “Respondents overwhelmingly describe the United States as “ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked, biased. The people of Islamic countries have significant grievances with the West in general and with the United States in particular.”

The Center for Security Policy commends Secretary Rumsfeld for appreciating that the continuing requirement for counteracting such misperceptions — many of which have been fostered and aggravated by disinformation and propaganda disseminated by America’s “friends” in the Islamic world (notably, the government-controlled press of Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the Islamist-indoctrination centers known as madrassas) that have been sponsored by the Saudis all over the world. We deeply regret, however, that the tasks associated with this challenging mission will, as a result of an extraordinarily effective disinformation campaign waged against the Office of Strategic Influence (thoughtfully discussed in the lead editorial in Wednesday’s Washington Times), almost certainly be harder to perform.

Disorganized at Defense
The Washington Times, 27 February 2002

After being relentlessly pilloried over a Feb. 19 front-page story in the New York Times suggesting that the Defense Department has been putting together an international “disinformation” campaign to help the war on terror, the Pentagon announced yesterday that it would shut down the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), the featured target of the story. While this public relations fiasco was taking place and the administration was being eaten alive by the mainstream media, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, Tori Clarke, and her minions were uncharacteristically quiet, leaving OSI’s defenders to twist in the wind and wage a desperate almost invisible back-door campaign to defend their mission.

But an article by Rowan Scarborough, published in Monday’s editions of The Washington Times, suggested that OSI, which was set up by Douglas J. Feith, the highly respected U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, and Air Force Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden, could have actually played a key role in aiding the war on terror by counteracting false, anti-American propaganda being spewed out from places like Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang. Administration officials contended that there were no plans to put out false stories, emphasizing that OSI’s draft charter made no mention of such a scheme. One source told The Washington Times that OSI was designed to “get the truth” to places like Iran and Iraq.

OSI, which was to work with the State Department, would have attempted to finance moderate clerics’ efforts to persuade students to avoid the “madrassas,” or religious schools. This was to include providing them with Internet access so that they would be exposed to more tolerant views. The office would have also provided Iraqi citizens with news reports and factual information about Saddam Hussein’s bloody regime in Iraq. Essentially all of this relevant material was omitted from the original story in the New York Times.

Why did the Pentagon do such a poor job of communicating this factual information to the public? Well, one Pentagon source told Slate magazine’s Scott Shuger that Mrs. Clarke “put the Times onto the story because she viewed the OSI as a threat to her operation.” Mrs. Clarke will surely deny that this is the case. But it is undeniably true that her shop did an awful job in telling the public the truth about OSI. And it is hardly the first time in recent weeks that the Pentagon public relations machine has provided a propaganda windfall for America’s enemies witness the mindless dissemination of photos of al Qaeda and Taliban operatives being escorted to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, sans explanation. That incident subjected the United States to mindless sanctimony and vitriol from Europe.

In short, this would appear to be the second recent page-one debacle visited on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by his PR folks. It would appear to be time for some major changes in Mrs. Clarke’s shop.

What to Do About Saudi Arabia

(Washington, D.C.): The recent law suit by an American servicewoman ordered to wear head-to-toe "cover" and submit to other indignities when going off-base in Saudi Arabia is but the latest reminder of the extraordinary lengths to which the United States government routinely goes to accommodate real or perceived Saudi sensibilities and/or dictates. Far more ominous has been the studied aversion of its gaze from official — and officially tolerated — Saudi Arabian support for radical international Islamism.

As a direct result of these Saudi efforts, untold numbers of Muslims have been induced to follow the Wahhabis’ brand of extremism, with its characteristic hostility to Western civilization in general and America in particular. Unfortunately, the ominous implications of this campaign are not confined to Islamist institutions overseas; some 80% of mosques in the United States are said to have their mortgages held by the Saudi government and/or private sector — an arrangement that surely contributes to the radical nature of the proselytizing conducted in many of them.

As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby observed recently, the war on terrorism affords an important, and long overdue, opportunity for the United States to put its relationship with Riyadh on a footing that is more in line with the global power realities. If, as seems eminently possible, the U.S. proves able to help liberate the people of Iran and Iraq — as it has recently done with their counterparts in Afghanistan — the result would likely be a seismic change in the dependence America and her allies currently have on Saudi oil supplies.

Importantly, the United States could thus give itself a free hand to effect needed changes in the U.S.-Saudi relationship — including, but not limited to, an end to the Kingdom’s exporting of radical Islamism — without ever having to exercise the option Mr. Jacoby suggests: reversing the decades-old expropriation of American and other Western oil concerns in Saudi Arabia by militarily seizing the oil fields there.

TIME TO GIVE SAUDIS AN ULTIMATUM

By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe, 13 January 2002

FOR THANKSGIVING in 1990, former President George H.W. Bush went to Saudi Arabia to visit the 400,000 American soldiers stationed there as part of Operation Desert Shield. The Saudis welcomed Bush, but made it clear that no Christian worship – including grace before the Thanksgiving meal – would be permitted on Saudi soil. It was a shocking insult, but the Americans didn’t protest. Instead, the president and his party went aboard a US ship in the Persian Gulf and said their prayers there.

As this episode suggests, the US-Saudi relationship has been dysfunctional for some time. The Saudis treat the Americans with highhandedness, and are rewarded for their disdain with military and diplomatic support. At least part of the explanation for this obsequiousness is oil, of course: They have it, we need it, and our economy would suffer badly if it were to become unavailable. The tendency to be ingratiating with the Saudis is especially pronounced in the Bush family, with its roots in West Texas oil. In a striking demonstration of this last July, the elder George Bush telephoned Crown Prince Abdullah to assure him that his son’s "heart is in the right place" and that he was "going to do the right thing" when it came to the Middle East.

That was the last thing Abdullah should have been told. The real issue is not whether we do what the Saudis want, but when the Saudis are going to begin doing what America wants. The House of Saud would be nothing without its vast oil wealth, and it would have lost that wealth long ago were it not for the American muscle that guarantees the security of the Gulf.

And what do the Saudi princes do with their wealth, besides financing luxurious lifestyles for themselves? They spend it to keep themselves in power by buying off their country’s Wahhabi religious establishment so that it will keep a lid on the discontent that seethes throughout the kingdom. And the more money they have poured into the Wahhabis’ coffers, the more they have undermined world peace and menaced the United States.

Wahhabism – radical fundamentalist Islam – is the established creed of Saudi Arabia. It is intolerant and totalitarian, and its influence is felt across Saudi society. "Anti-Western and Extremist Views Pervade Saudi Schools," read the headline on a New York Times report last fall. And not only schools: Islamic supremacism and loathing of "infidels" permeates the mosques, many government ministries, and much of the media.

The Wahhabi sheiks work tirelessly to spread their brand of Islam to Muslims everywhere. The princes’ petrodollars fund Islamist killers in Kashmir and subsidize fundamentalist subversion in the Philippines. They encouraged Al Qaeda’s savagery. They radicalized Pakistan. They spread the Wahhabis’ influence to the mosques of Europe and America. They prepared the way for Sept. 11.

"By funding religious extremists from Michigan to Mindanao," military theorist Ralph Peters writes, "the Saudis have done their best to destroy democracies, turn back the clock on human rights, and deny religious freedom to Islamic and other populations – while the United States guarantees Saudi security.."

A better policy would begin by retracting the elder Bush’s simpering message to Abdullah and restating instead what his son told the world on Sept. 20: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists."

If you are with us, we would tell Riyadh, you will immediately cut off the Wahhabis’ funds and shut down their financial pipeline. You will close the "charities" they use to finance Islamist terrorism. You will purge them from your universities, schools, and bureaucracy. You will halt the emigration of young Saudis lusting for violence and jihad. And you will order those who are abroad to return at once or lose their citizenship. We would make it clear to the Saudi princes that we expect their full cooperation no matter where the war on terrorism takes us. And if it takes us to a land war in Iraq, Saudi Arabia will make its military bases available for staging the invasion.

Will the Saudis refuse? Will they protest that complying with our demands will mean the toppling of their regime? Either way, our course will be clear: We will seize and secure the oil fields.

But our purpose would not be plunder. We would appoint a respected, pro-Western Muslim ally to run the oil industry in trust for the Muslim world. No longer would the petro-wealth of Arabia be used to advance Islamist fanaticism and terror – or to maintain a decadent royal family in corrupt opulence. It would be used, rather, to promote education, health, and democracy throughout the Middle East. The Gulf’s great riches, now a well spring of disorder and unrest, could be transformed into a force for decency, stability, and peace. Is it feasible? No question. But the first step – fixing our dysfunctional relationship with the House of Saud – will be the hardest. Let us see if if President Bush is up to the task.

What to Do About Iran

(Washington, D.C.): The front page of today’s New York Times confirms that what has been predictable — and predicted — for some time has eventuated: The Islamic Republic of Iran is not, as President Bush put it today, a “positive force” in the war on terrorism. It is, instead, part of the problem, “against us” rather than “with us.”

The Times reports how this is currently the case in Afghanistan, where Iran is seeking to exert its influence to the detriment of that war-torn nation’s interim government, regional stability and U.S. interests. It is also apparent in the seizure of a shipment of Iranian arms by Israel last week in the Red Sea — fresh evidence that Tehran continues actively to promote terrorism in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There is every reason to believe, moreover, that the same Islamist regime responsible for past attacks on Americans in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Pan Am 103 are still gunning for us elsewhere in the world, as well.

The question that can no longer be deferred is: Can the United States safely, responsibly and constructively construe Iran as a member-in-good-standing of the so- called “anti-terror coalition”? The short answer is a resounding “No.”

Fortunately, as articles in today’s Washington Post and this week’s New Republic indicate, there is an alternative: Working with the people of Iran — who have at least as much reason to detest their government and its terroristic policies as we do — to liberate their country from Islamist misrule. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah of Iran, is both inspiring and helping to animate the sort of popular opposition to the regime that led to the downfall of his father’s government in 1979. The United States should seize the opportunity to encourage and empower such opposition — and the coming to power of a democratic, pro- Western regime that respects its people’s aspirations and eschews terrorism in all its forms.

Exerpts from:

‘Beyond Khatami’ — Freedom for Iran


By Reza Pahlavi
The Washington Post, 10 January 2002

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 tragedy, new hope arose for better relations with Iran, as a few positive signals flickered out of Tehran. Ordinary Iranians genuinely shared the grief of America; Iranian youth made that sentiment clear in the streets of Tehran and several major cities.

Among the citizenry of the Islamic republic, some called openly for dialogue with the United States. This was a bid to end Iran’s pariah status and salvage its economy from catastrophic downturn. In the West, there were some who were, yet again, thrilled by the seemingly civil discourse of Iran’s president, Mohammad Khatami, as he rushed to condemn the terrorist attacks. Many Western analysts concluded that Iran might be ready to cooperate in the anti-terror campaign.

But to the astute observer of Iran it came as no surprise when, four weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, the regime’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did his best to stamp out all these high hopes. Any negotiation, much less cooperation with the United States was, he declared, inimical to the interests of the Islamic republic. His injunction was accompanied by threats to punish heretical tendencies within the political community.
Khamenei’s threats were enough to cow dissent in the government apparatus. “President” Khatami publicly acknowledged that foreign policy was the prerogative of the “supreme leader.”

Whatever Western pragmatists think, the clerical rulers of Tehran cannot become a bona fide partner in the global war against terror. Through the past 22 years, the Iranian theocracy has thrived on terror. The prime victims of this practice have of course been the people of Iran. But the regime has also championed terrorism of global reach, and since 1983 persistently tops the lists of states sponsoring terrorism…..

Behind a benign facade of electoral process and claims of an Islamic version of democracy, the Iranian regime remains one of the world’s most cynical oppressors and an enemy of democratic values. Candidates for elected office, including the presidency, are carefully screened. They are allowed to run only on proof of indisputable allegiance to the established theocracy and its leadership. And even when they are elected, their decisions on subjects that matter most are systematically reversed by nonelected bodies, with names such as the Council of Guardians and the Expediency Council…..

Khatami’s advocacy of democracy within the confines of a dogmatic state is self-defeating and ultimately doomed. Democracy is not merely the rule of the majority. It is based on free and undeterred expression of thought and respect for human rights, including full and unadulterated recognition of equal rights for women and among ethnic and religious minorities.

It is the realization of these indisputable facts that has given birth to a new political movement in Iran, called the “Third Force,” that is today chanting: “Beyond Khatami!” A new generation of alert and restive Iranians is stirring. This past fall, they were seen in their distinct colors throughout Iran during defiant street demonstrations calling for a “national referendum,” as a means to rid themselves of the regime, chanting “Death to the Taliban, whether in Kabul or in Tehran!”

In no uncertain terms, the 50 million youth of Iran want secularism, freedom, economic opportunity and modernity. They have come to the painful realization that a prerequisite for attaining these goals is a complete change of regime. Our world has witnessed the dawn of new democracies, brought about by successful nonviolent civil disobedience and mass resistance movements from Africa to Latin America and through Eastern Europe. Let there be no doubt that Iranians thirst for the same chance to restore their unalienable right to self-determination, thus restoring the civility, dignity, tolerance and sovereignty for which the land of Persians was known for so many centuries…..

Excerpts from:

Reza Pahlavi’s Next Revolution.
Success Story


By Franklin Foer
The New Republic Online, Post date 03 January 2002

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Iranian shah, closes his speeches about Iranian democracy with a signature flourish: “This is a cause I believe in and am committed to see to fruition, even if it were at the expense of my own life.” At public appearances, his plainclothes security force searches bags for bombs and stands over the crowd like guards watching the prison mess……

For years Iran-watchers have dismissed Pahlavi’s pretensions to leadership. “I don’t take him very seriously,” says Bar-Ilan University’s Barry Rubin. You can understand the skepticism: Although his father’s regime still has die-hard supporters, they don’t represent a growing fraction of the Iranian polity; many Iranians remember the shah as repressive and corrupt. But to see Reza Pahlavi as simply a restorationist underestimates his appeal. His is a story of reinvention, the tale of a prince who lost his title, fortune, and the love of his people, and in the process came to appreciate the virtues of democracy. He has bucked the crude monarchism of many of his supporters and serves up frank criticism of his father’s regime. In fact, with Khatami’s support eroding, Pahlavi’s moment may soon arrive. He’s rallying the fractious diaspora opposition and supersaturating Iran with posters and video messages calling for insurgency. Once exiled as the successor to a discredited throne, he has become Iran’s most unlikely, and most important, spokesman for democracy……

Ideologically, Pahlavi has made his message as broad as possible, focusing on the major point on which most exile opposition groups agree: a new secular constitution. “I don’t care if the referendum on Iran’s future results in a republic or constitutional monarchy,” he says. “It is simply important that believers in secular democracy come together to achieve that goal.” And one reason Pahlavi’s star is on the rise is that secular democracy is increasingly the rallying cry inside Iran as well. In 1997, when the voters elected philosopher Mohammed Khatami, the most liberal candidate the ayatollahs could stomach, the idea of an Islamic democracy–a political system that allowed greater freedom but kept Islam at its core–held great promise. With his talk of “dialogue of civilizations”–a repudiation of Khomeini’s Great-Satan attitude toward the United States–Khatami caught the imagination of the Iranian public and Western journalists. The Washington Post’s John Lancaster called him “Ayatollah Gorbachev,” predicting he would usher in Iranian perestroika.

But now Khatami really is looking like Gorbachev–a reformer, not a revolutionary. Khatami was, after all, trained in the conservative seminaries of Qum….. And even if Khatami sincerely wanted to overhaul Iran’s strange theocratic-democratic political system, the limits of his power have been made abundantly clear. The ayatollahs have aborted every one of his tentative steps toward perestroika. While Khatami promised to lift the ban on satellite television, the regime has gone door-to-door ripping dishes from roofs and balconies. Despite his pleas for tolerance, according to the Paris-based Reporters without Frontiers, Iran has more journalists in prison than any country in the world. And under Khatami’s watch, dialogue of civilizations hasn’t replaced the excoriation of civilizations. When 4,000 attended a Tehran vigil at the Swiss Embassy for victims of September 11, government-aligned militias broke it up. In November the conservative head of the powerful judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmud Shahrudi, created a committee to confront political officials “if ever they called for starting dialogue with the United States.”

Today there are indications that Khatami’s supporters are growing disillusioned. Even his deputies, like Mohammed Ali Abtahi, warn that “people will lose confidence in the system” without more substantive reforms. During the soccer riots protesters screamed, “Death to the Islamic Republic” and “Death to Khatami.” For the past two months students have gathered for anti-Khatami rallies in the sports hall at Tehran’s Amir Kabir technical university to chastise Khatami, chanting, “Moderation is a hindrance to reform.” “There’s no opinion polling,” says Michael Rubin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “but the events of the past months are a big deal.”…..

….. From America’s point of view, Pahlavi should be a deeply attractive figure. He’s a liberal who, with our help, could challenge a regime in Tehran that sponsors Hezbollah, defends Hamas, and is developing weapons of mass destruction. He calls the United States a “true beacon of freedom”; he has even quietly met with Israeli officials. When I interviewed him, he took my notebook, wrote the words “secular democracy,” and underlined them twice. Yet the risk-adverse diplomats in Foggy Bottom remain entranced by the prospect of dtente with the Khatami regime. “We have been in discussions with the Iranians at a variety of levels and in some new ways since September 11,” Colin Powell remarked last month after shaking hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi.

It’s not hard to understand Foggy Bottom’s behavior. Pahlavi doesn’t have an army, he’s been outside the country for decades, and even supporting him obliquely might wreck a dialogue with Tehran that could, perhaps, enhance America’s influence in the region. On the other hand, the regime in Tehran looks weaker today than it has in more than 20 years. And symbolically, Pahlavi has become its most potent opponent. Earlier this month I traveled with him to a basement set of the Voice of America’s (VOA) Farsi TV service. He was there for a live broadcast of “Political Roundtable,” hosted by Ahmad Baharloo, an exiled anchor with a Ted Koppel stack of hair. Pahlavi spent an hour fielding calls from Iran. Phoning Baharloo is not like dropping a line to Larry King. It’s an expensive act of resistance that could land you in the prison. (A VOA official estimated that a call to the States costs several hundred dollars.) One of Pahlavi’s aides translated the calls for me in real time. A veteran of the Iran-Iraq War announced in a teary voice that he had “nothing in my life.” A dissident cleric from Isfahan claimed, “In my city the electricity is out because they know you’re here. I’m getting you with radio and battery. Please send more of your pictures and statements. Send it to us and we’ll distribute it.” A woman pleaded, “I need to ask you to come as soon as possible. Iran is like gas, ready to blow up. Do something before we blow up.” Pahlavi stared at the camera and reprised his line: “I’ll fight until death.”

A Moment for Truth

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of three murderous attacks on Israeli civilians last weekend, Secretary of State Colin Powell was moved to declare that “It is a moment of truth, Mr. Arafat.” It would be more accurate to describe this as a moment for truth.

Necessary, But No Longer Sufficient

There really is no choice. It is not enough that the death and destruction meted out by suicide bombers intent on killing as many Jews — and, in particular, young Israelis — as possible has caused Secretary Powell and, his boss, President Bush to call on the Palestinian Authority’s Yasser Arafat for a crackdown on the people surrounding and allied with him who are responsible for this terror. Similar demands in the past have never received a serious and sustained response. The absence of any penalties for such behavior has only served to reinforce the Arabs’ contemptuous disregard of American injunctions to act.

Neither would it be sufficient if the Palestinians’ latest bloodletting in Israel had the effect of granting a reprieve — especially if it is but a temporary one — for the Jewish State from the recently intensifying American pressure for more Israeli territorial and other concessions. To be sure, President Bush deserves credit for exercising restraint during Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the White House on Sunday.

Under the circumstances, however, Mr. Bush had no choice but to eschew Secretary Powell’s campaign to euchre Sharon into abandoning his precondition that there be at least seven days without violence before committing to a renewed cease-fire with the Palestinians.

In the same way, the President should dispense with any further loose talk about a Palestinian state and official declarations that Israel should facilitate its early creation.

Speak Truth to Power

Necessary as these steps are, they are no longer sufficient. Now we need the whole truth and nothing but the truth. These are some of the harsh realities that can no longer be ignored, that need now to be publicly acknowledged and made the basis of future Mideast policy by the Bush Administration:

  • The so-called Middle East “peace process,” begun with secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Oslo, has materially contributed to the present, catastrophic situation. Successive concessions made in the name of advancing the “peace process” by both Labor- and Likud-led governments of Israel have not appeased demands for further concessions, only whetted Arab appetites for more.

    Thanks especially to the decision taken at Oslo to allow Arafat to return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to create what amounts to a proto-state there and to arm its tens of thousands of “police” with automatic weapons (and, covertly, with heavier armaments), Israel has made itself vastly less secure than it was prior to 1992. Converting the Palestinian Authority into a sovereign state, with internationally recognized borders, would do nothing to prevent suicide bombers from finding safe-haven and launching attacks from its lands — just add enormously to Israel’s costs in contending with that threat.

  • The folks who brought us the Oslo “peace process” and its progeny have been thoroughly discredited by their handiwork. The last people President Bush and Ariel Sharon should be taking advice from in the present crisis are the likes of Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, State Department Policy Planning Staff Director Richard Haass, Arabists in the Bush Administration who are hold-overs from the Clinton era and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Britain turned to new leadership after the appeasers got it into World War II; President Bush must do the same, not allow their contemporary counterparts to compound the danger they have helped to inflict on American interests in the Middle East and her most important ally in that region, Israel.

  • Yasser Arafat remains committed to the destruction of the State of Israel. This is evident in his speeches to his people in Arabic and the symbols (particularly the maps) he uses to describe his goals. He can no more be expected to end attacks on Israel by people who share his objectives than he can be relied upon to create a state of “Palestine” that will live, as President Bush put it recently, “side-by-side with Israel in peace and security.”
  • Arming some of Israel’s neighbors to the teeth — notably, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whose true colors are evident in the fact that their government-controlled media are allowed incessantly to broadcast venomous denunciations of Israel — is an inducement to renewed hostilities with the Jewish State, not conducive to a genuine and durable peace. The pending sale of lethal, land attack-capable Harpoon II missiles to Egypt is a case in point.

    • The Bottom Line

    Of course, it will appear to be easier not to acknowledge these realities or other unpleasant truths. Too many people — including past and present senior U.S. officials — have much invested in the falsehoods that invest legitimacy in Arafat and his ilk and the “peace process” that has made the latter a far more dangerous threat to Israel.

    Still, those murdered in Jerusalem and Haifa over the weekend will not have died in vain — and may even have spared many others from meeting their fate — if the terrorists who killed them really have compelled a moment for truth, one that gives rise to U.S. Mideast policies rooted in the hard facts as they are, not political expediency or wishful thinking.

    What To Do Now About Iraq

    (Washington, D.C.): A growing focus of policy debate in Washington and around the world is whether, and if so when, President Bush will launch a second phase of the war on terrorism against Iraq. While there is a growing appreciation that Saddam Hussein must be removed from power, there is considerable uncertainty about–and in some quarters adamant opposition to–the United States launching military operations for that purpose in the foreseeable future.

    Fortunately, there is much that the Bush Administration could do short of open hostilities to begin the necessary effort to liberate the people of Iraq, as has recently been done for most of the people of Afghanistan. A blueprint outlining such steps was provided to President Bush’s predecessor in February 1998 by the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf. Since many of the authors of this plan are now senior members of the Bush team– including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage–its early adoption and implementation should be accomplished without further, undue internal debate or delay.

    Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf

    Open Letter to the President

    19 February 1998

    Dear Mr. President,

    Many of us were involved in organizing the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf in 1990 to support President Bush’s policy of expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Seven years later, Saddam Hussein is still in power in Baghdad. And despite his defeat in the Gulf War, continuing sanctions, and the determined effort of UN inspectors to fetter out and destroy his weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein has been able to develop biological and chemical munitions. To underscore the threat posed by these deadly devices, the Secretaries of State and Defense have said that these weapons could be used against our own people. And you have said that this issue is about “the challenges of the 21st Century.”

    Iraq’s position is unacceptable. While Iraq is not unique in possessing these weapons, it is the only country which has used them — not just against its enemies, but its own people as well. We must assume that Saddam is prepared to use them again. This poses a danger to our friends, our allies, and to our nation.

    It is clear that this danger cannot be eliminated as long as our objective is simply “containment,” and the means of achieving it are limited to sanctions and exhortations. As the crisis of recent weeks has demonstrated, these static policies are bound to erode, opening the way to Saddam’s eventual return to a position of power and influence in the region. Only a determined program to change the regime in Baghdad will bring the Iraqi crisis to a satisfactory conclusion.

    For years, the United States has tried to remove Saddam by encouraging coups and internal conspiracies. These attempts have all failed. Saddam is more wily, brutal and conspiratorial than any likely conspiracy the United States might mobilize against him. Saddam must be overpowered; he will not be brought down by a coup d’etat. But Saddam has an Achilles’ heel: lacking popular support, he rules by terror. The same brutality which makes it unlikely that any coups or conspiracies can succeed, makes him hated by his own people and the rank and file of his military. Iraq today is ripe for a broad-based insurrection. We must exploit this opportunity.

    Saddam’s long record of treaty violations, deception, and violence shows that diplomacy and arms control will not constrain him. In the absence of a broader strategy, even extensive air strikes would be ineffective in dealing with Saddam and eliminating the threat his regime poses. We believe that the problem is not only the specifics of Saddam’s actions, but the continued existence of the regime itself.

    What is needed now is a comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime. It will not be easy — and the course of action we favor is not without its problems and perils. But we believe the vital national interests of our country require the United States to:

    • Recognize a provisional government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) that is representative of all the peoples of Iraq.
    • Restore and enhance the safe haven in northern Iraq to allow the provisional government to extend its authority there and establish a zone in southern Iraq from which Saddam’s ground forces would also be excluded.
    • Lift sanctions in liberated areas. Sanctions are instruments of war against Saddam’s regime, but they should be quickly lifted on those who have freed themselves from it. Also, the oil resources and products of the liberated areas should help fund the provisional government’s insurrection and humanitarian relief for the people of liberated Iraq.
    • Release frozen Iraqi assets — which amount to $1.6 billion in the United States and Britain alone — to the control of the provisional government to fund its insurrection. This could be done gradually and so long as the provisional government continues to promote a democratic Iraq.
    • Facilitate broadcasts from U.S. transmitters immediately and establish a Radio Free Iraq.
    • Help expand liberated areas of Iraq by assisting the provisional government’s offensive against Saddam Hussein’s regime logistically and through other means.
    • Remove any vestiges of Saddam’s claim to “legitimacy” by, among other things, bringing a war crimes indictment against the dictator and his lieutenants and challenging Saddam’s credentials to fill the Iraqi seat at the United Nations.
    • Launch a systematic air campaign against the pillars of his power — the Republican Guard divisions which prop him up and the military infrastructure that sustains him.
    • Position U.S. ground force equipment in the region so that, as a last resort, we have the capacity to protect and assist the anti-Saddam forces in the northern and southern parts of Iraq.

    Once you make it unambiguously clear that we are serious about eliminating the threat posed by Saddam, and are not just engaged in tactical bombing attacks unrelated to a larger strategy designed to topple the regime, we believe that such countries as Kuwait, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, whose cooperation would be important for the implementation of this strategy, will give us the political and logistical support to succeed.

    In the present climate in Washington, some may misunderstand and misinterpret strong American action against Iraq as having ulterior political motives. We believe, on the contrary, that strong American action against Saddam is overwhelmingly in the national interest, that it must be supported, and that it must succeed. Saddam must not become the beneficiary of an American domestic political controversy.

    We are confident that were you to launch an initiative along these line, the Congress and the country would see it as a timely and justifiable response to Iraq’s continued intransigence. We urge you to provide the leadership necessary to save ourselves and the world from the scourge of Saddam and the weapons of mass destruction that he refuses to relinquish.

    Sincerely,

    Hon. Stephen Solarz, Former Member, Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. House of Representatives

    Hon. Richard Perle, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Former Assistant Secretary of Defense

    Hon. Elliot Abrams, President, Ethics & Public Policy Center; Former Assistant Secretary of State

    Richard V. Allen, Former National Security Advisor

    Hon. Richard Armitage, President, Armitage Associates, L.C.; Former Assistant Secretary of Defense

    Jeffrey T. Bergner, President, Bergner, Bockorny, Clough & Brain; Former Staff Director, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

    Hon. John Bolton, Senior Vice President, American Enterprise Institute; Former Assistant Secretary of State

    Stephen Bryen, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense

    Hon. Richard Burt, Chairman, IEP Advisors, Inc.; Former U.S. Ambassador to Germany; Former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs

    Hon. Frank Carlucci, Former Secretary of Defense

    Hon. Judge William Clark, Former National Security Advisor

    Paula J. Dobriansky, Vice President, Director of Washington Office, Council on Foreign Relations; Former Member, National Security Council

    Doug Feith, Managing Attorney, Feith & Zell P.C.; Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy

    Frank Gaffney, Director, Center for Security Policy; Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces

    Jeffrey Gedmin, Executive Director, New Atlantic Initiative; Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

    Hon. Fred C. Ikle, Former Undersecretary of Defense

    Robert Kagan, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

    Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Director, Strategy and Doctrine, RAND Corporation

    Sven F. Kraemer, Former Director of Arms Control, National Security Council

    William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard

    Michael Ledeen, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; Former Special Advisor to the Secretary of State

    Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern and Ottoman Studies, Princeton University

    R. Admiral Frederick L. Lewis, U.S. Navy, Retired

    Maj. Gen. Jarvis Lynch, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

    Hon. Robert C. McFarlane, Former National Security Advisor

    Joshua Muravchik, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute

    Robert A. Pastor, Former Special Assistant to President Carter for Inter-American Affairs

    Martin Peretz, Editor-in-Chief, The New Republic

    Roger Robinson, Former Senior Director of International Economic Affairs, National Security Council

    Peter Rodman, Director of National Security Programs, Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom; Former Director, Policy Planning Staff, U.S. Department of State

    Hon. Peter Rosenblatt, Former Ambassador to the Trust Territories of the Pacific

    Hon. Donald Rumsfeld, Former Secretary of Defense

    Gary Schmitt, Executive Director, Project for the New American Century; Former Executive Director, President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board

    Max Singer, President, The Potomac Organization; Former President, The Hudson Institute

    Hon. Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Guest Scholar, The Brookings Institution; Former Counsellor, U.S. Department of State

    Hon. Caspar Weinberger, Former Secretary of Defense

    Leon Wienseltier, Literary Editor, The New Republic

    Hon. Paul Wolfowitz, Dean, Johns Hopkins SAIS; Former Undersecretary of Defense

    David Wurmser, Director, Middle East Program, AEI; Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

    Dov S. Zakheim, Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense

    Mideast Vision Thing’: Will Powell et.Al. Blind President Bush to the Palestinians’ Abiding Goal of Judenrein?

    (Washington, D.C.): About a decade ago, a President named George Bush dismissed criticism that he was pursuing short-sighted policies by saying he lacked the “vision thing.” Let’s hope it’s not genetic, because the son and namesake who now occupies the White House has lately begun talking about a “vision” of the Middle East that is at odds — perhaps dangerously so — with current and prospective realities in the region.

    In recent remarks, President George W. Bush and his subordinates have begun enthusing about a “vision” of Israel and a new nation called “Palestine” living side-by-side in peace and security. This initiative is reportedly a product of intense pressure for U.S. “engagement” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict coming from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other, so-called “moderate” Arab states whose help Mr. Bush believes is critical to the war on terrorism.

    On NBC’s Sunday morning talk show “Meet the Press,” the President’s National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, explained what her boss has in mind:

    Palestine is simply a term for a state that might exist for the Palestinian people. What the president was doing was to lay out a vision of where we might be, should we be able to encourage the parties to get back into a process that leads to a permanent peace in the Middle East. And in that vision, he does see an Israeli state, our good friend Israel, that is secure, where it is fully recognized and accepted that Israel has the right to exist within secure borders, where terrorism has been wiped out as a factor in the Middle East, and where the Palestinian people have a state in which they can determine their own fate and their own future.

    Arafat’s Vision

    The problem with the Bush “vision” is that it not only bears no resemblance to today’s realities. It also ignores the vision Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority (PA) have for the future of Israel.

    Despite the rhetoric Arafat has served up from time to time since the Oslo peace accords were signed nine years ago — usually in English and always for Western consumption — about recognizing Israel’s right to exist and making a “peace of the brave” with the Jewish State, Arafat has consistently communicated a very different vision to his people: The state of “Palestine” will exist instead of Israel, not side-by-side with it.

    This message is most unmistakably communicated by the PA’s official maps of “Palestine.” These images — which appear on the Authority’s web site, in its offices, at its cultural events, on its television programming, on the uniforms of its “police” and, most appalling of all, in its textbooks — show a country made up of all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and all of pre-1967 Israel.

    The Plan of Phases’

    Unfortunately, these maps are not set forth as a means of reconciling the Palestinians and others to a goal that is maximalist and deserved, but unrealizable. Rather, they are calculated to convey even to illiterate Arabs throughout the Middle East that the Palestinian leadership continues to adhere to the “Phased Plan” it first enunciated in 1974.

    At that time, the Palestine Liberation Organization and its friends were coping with their latest military defeat at Israeli hands in the “Yom Kippur” war of the previous year. Recognizing that Israel’s relative power and its conquest of strategic high ground on the West Bank and Golan Heights meant that the war option was effectively foreclosed, the Palestinians declared that they would use whatever means were available (terror, blackmail, international pressure, negotiations, etc.) to induce Israel to relinquish some territory. This first “phase” would then be followed by a second one in which the rest of the land “occupied” by Israel — including the Jewish State itself — would be “liberated.”

    The Bottom Line

    It would hardly be visionary for America to press Israel to make further territorial and other concessions in the face of such declared Palestinian ambitions. Rather, it would be more accurate to describe such pressure as an act of cognitive dissonance — the phenomenon of refusing to perceive facts that are incompatible with one’s beliefs and plans.

    For a great power like the United States, that sort of conduct would perhaps amount to little more than the latest in a series of misbegotten American Mideast peace initiatives. For a nation in Israel’s exposed position, however — in a hostile and ever-more-dangerously-armed region (a condition to which the U.S. itself has regrettably contributed with the sale of advanced weapons like the Harpoon 2 to Egypt), such behavior could give rise to a mortal peril.

    That is clearly not what President George W. Bush has in mind. His commitment to the security and prosperity of a democratic Israel that shares our values and interests seems as authentic and firm as it is laudable. He will not be able to realize his vision for the Middle East, though, by allowing his administration to pursue policies that are blind to the present and predictable realities — realities that endanger Israel and that will render any “peace process” a formula for renewed war, not secure regional tranquility.