I dare say Israel doesn't really need to worry about becoming Czechoslovakia. However deserved it sometimes may be, the US will not abandon them at this point. We will not tell the terrorists, "Go ahead, take the country." It's an utterly ludicrous statement.
"There is no good terrorism and bad terrorism," Sharon said. "It is worse than murder. We have been fighting terrorism for over 100 years...."
OK, see, two problems with that statement: (1) terrorism IS murder -- that's part of the point, making people fear random attacks and death -- and (2) Israel's only been around since 1948. It's kind of hard to fight against guerilla attacks on the state for 100 years when the state is only 53.
One of Mr Sharon's aides quickly said that the prime minister had not meant to imply that the United States was acting in a "dishonourable way".
Um ... right. You compare the US to pre WW2 Britain, imply that we're telling the terrorists to partition up the country, we won't mind, and then you say that you didn't mean to say that we're acting in a "dishonorable way." Yeah. Right. Sure.
You'd think that Dubya and friends could have said something slightly stronger than that the remark was "unacceptable", though. (You wonder exactly how Fleischer said what he did to provoke the staid Beeb into talking about "White House fury." It sounds like a pretty mild response to me.)
But as long as the US needs Israel's superior Central Asian intelligence, then, no, they don't need to worry about being abandoned. We won't say a word about anything they should choose to do.
No matter how "unacceptable."
One wonders exactly who is appeasing whom.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!