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November 16, 2005
Wild Hits on Jordan
By William
F. Buckley
Not everyone has come up with a formula for ending U.S. occupation
of Iraq, but many have done so. The play is on the theme of announcing
dates of partial -- or contingent, or unmodifiable -- withdrawal.
They are all lacking, of course, complementary roles for the insurgents.
One plan calls for withdrawal of one-half of our forces by the end
of 2006, the remaining half by the end of 2007. The author of that
plan left out only a commitment by the insurgents to reduce their
activity by one-half in 2006, and what's left over in 2007.
But there is unprogrammed good news on the scene, which is the hyperactivity
of the terrorists in areas of little direct concern to the United
States. We can crank up a good snort of disapproval over the bombing
of nightclubs in Bali. Commuter trains blown up in Madrid are practically
enough to go to the United Nations to complain about. The costly
bombings in Jordan are so deranged in terms of acceptable strategic
arrangements as to cause great, opportunistic glee in Washington.
To bomb Jordan while everything else is going on would seem imbecile
in design. The dangerous attractiveness of the insurgency in Iraq
has been its anti-American vector. Much of the world has become
progressively more anti-American in the last two years, and the
hostility has been fanned by our involvement in Iraq.
Hold that analysis!
We are in Iraq, the president has several times said, because we
are engaged in a war against terrorism, and Iraq is the epicenter
of terrorism, or at least one of the epicenters. Critics have from
almost the beginning pounced on that proposition as simply false.
They began by a fierce ex parte proceeding to separate Saddam Hussein
from al-Qaida. The two were -- are -- unrelated. True, Saddam used
terrorist weapons and indeed weapons of mass destruction against
various people, including his own citizens, and neighboring countries,
such as Iran and Kuwait. But it was al-Qaida, unrelated to Saddam
Hussein, that flew the killer missions into the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon.
What seemed the collective voices of half the advocates in the world
disposed with relish of the allegation that Mohamed Atta, one of
the planners of 9/11, had actually consulted with an Iraqi intelligence
agent in Prague, but it was never proved.
So, let us cede that they are distinct entities. But ask then a
question that certainly commends itself as relevant, namely, do
they have a common purpose? Dillinger Inc. and Barker Inc. can be
correctly set down as distinct entities, but they were also entities
that robbed banks. That was what mattered when the time came for
the FBI to coordinate its efforts. In the present case, when Congress
sought to enact appropriate legislation, it was the common activity
of Saddam and al-Qaida, rather than any organizational unity, that
mobilized our defenses.
If an organized body is bent upon engaging in terrorism, the United
States is the main target because ours is the outstanding pillar
of organized strength. But the purity of the terrorist soul is evidenced
by the willingness to take on a country, especially in the Mideast,
which isn't regarded as a U.S. colony. Jordan is as free as any
country in the entire Mideast of subordination to U.S. interests,
indeed conspicuously so since it is Jordan, lying alongside Israel,
which most resents U.S. single-mindedness on the matter of Israeli
survival.
The upshot is that the terrorists' attack on Jordan has the effect
of lending credence to President Bush's major proposition, which
is that the war we are engaged in is against the genus terror, not
the species Iraq. The violation of Jordan presents grave problems
to polemicists who argue that the United States is stumbling along
in a confused war with Iraq affecting to be concerned with terrorism,
but actually concerned only with its private war against insurgents
who want the United States out of the Mideast.
We don't know how the terrorist command units connect with one another,
but there has to be a lot of furious resentment being generated
by terrorists who feel that much has been lost, and nothing at all
gained, by the attack on Jordan. They run also the awful risk that
some, viewing the strategic scene, will dare to think that maybe
President Bush is on to something.
Copyright
2005 Universal Press Syndicate
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