JBMoney
01-14-04, 10:03 PM
Werd!
http://www.iht.com/ihtsearch.php?id=124658&owner=(NYT)&date=20040112183021
William Safire: America is rolling back global terror
By William Safire (NYT)
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
WASHINGTON: The strategic reason for crushing Saddam was to reverse the tide of global terror that incubated in the Middle East.
Is America's pre-emptive policy working? Was the message sent by ousting the Baathists as well as the Taliban worth the cost?
Set aside the tens of thousands of lives saved each year by ending Saddam's sustained murder of Iraqi Shia and Kurds, which is of little concern to human rights inactivists. Consider only self-defense: the practical impact of U.S. action on the spread of dangerous weaponry in antidemocratic hands.
1. In Libya, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi took one look at America's Army massing for the invasion of Iraq and decided to get out of the mass-destruction business. He has since stopped lying to gullible UN inspectors and - in return for U.S. investment instead of invasion - promises civilized behavior. The notion that this terror-supporting dictator's epiphany was not the direct result of U.S. military action, but of decade-long diplomatic pleas for goodness and mercy, is laughable.
2. In Afghanistan, supposedly intractable warlords in a formerly radical Islamist, female-repressing culture of conflicting tribes and languages have come together. Under America's NATO security umbrella and with some UN guidance, a grand conclave of leaders freed by U.S. power surprised the Arab world's doubting despots with the elements of a constitution that leads the way out of the past generation's abyss of barbarism.
3. In Syria, a hiding place for Saddam's finances, henchmen and weaponry - and exporter of Hezbollah and Hamas terrorism - the dictator Bashar Assad is nervously seeking to re-open negotiations with Israel to regain strategic heights his father lost in the last Syrian aggression. Secret talks have already begun (I suspect through Turkey, Israel's Muslim friend, rather than the unfriendly European Union); this would not have happened while Saddam was able to choke off illicit oil shipments to Syria.
4. On the West Bank, incipient Israeli negotiations with Syria - on top of the overthrow of the despot who rewarded Palestinian suicide bombers - further isolates the terror organizations behind Yasser Arafat. Under the pressure of Israel's security fence, and without the active support of Egypt and Saudi Arabia (each eager to retain protection of a strong-willed Bush administration), Palestinians now have incentives to find an antiterrorist leader who can deliver statehood.
5. In Iran, the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops near the border was not lost on the despot-clerics in power, who suddenly seemed reasonable to European diplomats seeking guarantees that Russian-built nuclear plants would be inspected. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been secretly dickering with the so-called reform ayatollah for a year in hopes of being on the right side of a future revolution. The old "Great Satan" crowd has just barred four-score reformist Parliament members from seeking re-election. That panicky crackdown in Tehran is a sign of the rulers' weakness; the example of freedom in neighboring Iraq will help cause another part of the axis to fall.
6. In Iraq, where casualties in Baghdad could be compared to civilian losses to everyday violence in New York and Los Angeles, a rudimentary federal republic is forming itself with all the customary growing pains. After the new Iraq walks by itself, we can expect free Iraqis to throw their crutches at the doctor. But the United States did not depose Saddam to impose a puppet; America is helping Iraqis defeat the diehards and resist fragmentation to set in place a powerful democratic example.
7. In North Korea, a half-world away from that example, an unofficial U.S. group was shown nuclear fuel facilities at Yongbyon to demonstrate that the world faced a real threat. But the United States has given China to understand that nuclear-armed Pyongyang would lead to missile defenses in Japan and Taiwan, a potential challenge to China's Asian hegemony. America's new credibility is leading China to broker an enforceable agreement like the kind Libya has offered, with economic sweeteners tightly tied to verification.
The columnist Jim Hoagland cautions that it is too early to proclaim that nonproliferation is "spinning into control." But taken together, this phased array of fallout to America's decision to lead the world's war against terror makes the case that what the United States has been doing is strategically sound as well as morally right.
http://www.iht.com/ihtsearch.php?id=124658&owner=(NYT)&date=20040112183021
William Safire: America is rolling back global terror
By William Safire (NYT)
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
WASHINGTON: The strategic reason for crushing Saddam was to reverse the tide of global terror that incubated in the Middle East.
Is America's pre-emptive policy working? Was the message sent by ousting the Baathists as well as the Taliban worth the cost?
Set aside the tens of thousands of lives saved each year by ending Saddam's sustained murder of Iraqi Shia and Kurds, which is of little concern to human rights inactivists. Consider only self-defense: the practical impact of U.S. action on the spread of dangerous weaponry in antidemocratic hands.
1. In Libya, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi took one look at America's Army massing for the invasion of Iraq and decided to get out of the mass-destruction business. He has since stopped lying to gullible UN inspectors and - in return for U.S. investment instead of invasion - promises civilized behavior. The notion that this terror-supporting dictator's epiphany was not the direct result of U.S. military action, but of decade-long diplomatic pleas for goodness and mercy, is laughable.
2. In Afghanistan, supposedly intractable warlords in a formerly radical Islamist, female-repressing culture of conflicting tribes and languages have come together. Under America's NATO security umbrella and with some UN guidance, a grand conclave of leaders freed by U.S. power surprised the Arab world's doubting despots with the elements of a constitution that leads the way out of the past generation's abyss of barbarism.
3. In Syria, a hiding place for Saddam's finances, henchmen and weaponry - and exporter of Hezbollah and Hamas terrorism - the dictator Bashar Assad is nervously seeking to re-open negotiations with Israel to regain strategic heights his father lost in the last Syrian aggression. Secret talks have already begun (I suspect through Turkey, Israel's Muslim friend, rather than the unfriendly European Union); this would not have happened while Saddam was able to choke off illicit oil shipments to Syria.
4. On the West Bank, incipient Israeli negotiations with Syria - on top of the overthrow of the despot who rewarded Palestinian suicide bombers - further isolates the terror organizations behind Yasser Arafat. Under the pressure of Israel's security fence, and without the active support of Egypt and Saudi Arabia (each eager to retain protection of a strong-willed Bush administration), Palestinians now have incentives to find an antiterrorist leader who can deliver statehood.
5. In Iran, the presence of 130,000 U.S. troops near the border was not lost on the despot-clerics in power, who suddenly seemed reasonable to European diplomats seeking guarantees that Russian-built nuclear plants would be inspected. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been secretly dickering with the so-called reform ayatollah for a year in hopes of being on the right side of a future revolution. The old "Great Satan" crowd has just barred four-score reformist Parliament members from seeking re-election. That panicky crackdown in Tehran is a sign of the rulers' weakness; the example of freedom in neighboring Iraq will help cause another part of the axis to fall.
6. In Iraq, where casualties in Baghdad could be compared to civilian losses to everyday violence in New York and Los Angeles, a rudimentary federal republic is forming itself with all the customary growing pains. After the new Iraq walks by itself, we can expect free Iraqis to throw their crutches at the doctor. But the United States did not depose Saddam to impose a puppet; America is helping Iraqis defeat the diehards and resist fragmentation to set in place a powerful democratic example.
7. In North Korea, a half-world away from that example, an unofficial U.S. group was shown nuclear fuel facilities at Yongbyon to demonstrate that the world faced a real threat. But the United States has given China to understand that nuclear-armed Pyongyang would lead to missile defenses in Japan and Taiwan, a potential challenge to China's Asian hegemony. America's new credibility is leading China to broker an enforceable agreement like the kind Libya has offered, with economic sweeteners tightly tied to verification.
The columnist Jim Hoagland cautions that it is too early to proclaim that nonproliferation is "spinning into control." But taken together, this phased array of fallout to America's decision to lead the world's war against terror makes the case that what the United States has been doing is strategically sound as well as morally right.