International Affairs: June 2003 Archives

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah have all agreed to a three-month suspension of attacks against the "Zionist entity" (a.k.a., Israel), but it sounds to me as if their main motivation is to simply catch a breather. Israel has been knocking their leaders off left and right, and one of the many conditions of the cease-fire is that Israeli security forces can't continue assassinating terrorists. Meanwhile, suicide bombers can strike with impunity while these three organizations deny responsibility and association.

SDB expects another terrorist attack within 4 days, so I'll take days 5-8. Anyone else want to jump in the pool?

Interesting exchange between myself and John Callender over on this thread at Lies.com. What a great domain name!

Update:
No, I don't think Bush lied. Sigh. Try and keep up with me, people.

Bill Hobbs has a good perspective on the recent ricin discoveries, and points out that finding WMD in Iraq will be a constant trickle, not a flood. He's right, of course; it's unlikely that Saddam dug a single giant hole and threw everything in.

Update 2:
Bill Hobbs earlier post of his links to an in which he describes just how Saddam may have dug a giant hole to hide all his WMD. I knew I had that image in my mind from somewhere. Nevertheless, while it certainly would have been possible, it looks like Saddam decided not to put all his poisonous eggs into one basket and instead had his "nuclear mujahadeen" take their work home.

Glenn is a big fan of possible plans to share the revenue from Iraqi oil sales with every Iraqi citizen in a sort of "dividend" program, but I'm not convinced.

As a hypothetical scanario, what if every Iraqi is paid $1000 per year as their share of the oil wealth? First, that would grossly undermine the value of the currency, since such payments would be higher than the average Iraqi income. (The CIA gives 2001 Iraq a per capita GDP of $2500, but I suspect the median income is far less.) Would such payments really increase buying power of the recipients? I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that that it would simply raise numerical wealth.

Secondly, the proposal is very socialist at heart. I understand and sympathize with the inclination to allow "ordinary" Iraqis to share in the oil wealth that was for so long used purely for the enrichment of Saddam's thugocracy, but it seems clear that the best way to accomplish this goal is to privatize the oil industry and then allow shares to be publically traded within a free market.

Drudge points to this Observer article which claims that we might have got Saddam and one of his sons with a Hellfire missile. The article is dated tomorrow, Sunday June 22nd, 2003, and says that we struck a convoy Saddam may have been riding in late "last week" -- which probably means within the last couple days. DNA tests are in process.

As I've written before, President Bush uses Powell and Rumsfeld to good-cop/bad-cop the world into doing what he wants. Rumsfeld plays the bad cop hawk and gets everyone all in a tizzy, and then Powell comes in and makes nice. In the end, Bush takes a position somewhere between the two and everyone thinks it's a compromise, but in actuality they're all working together and Bush ends up with the exact result he wanted from the very beginning.

So, when the Palestinian Authority hears Powell call Hamas an 'Enemy of Peace' they'd better take notice.

Powell met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem and then pressed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas not just to reach a cease-fire with Hamas and other militant groups but to eliminate their capacity to attack Israelis.

"The enemy of peace has been Hamas, especially over the last two weeks," Powell told a joint news conference with Sharon. "As long as they have ... a commitment to terror and violence and a desire to destroy the state of Israel, I think this is a problem we have to deal with in its entirety."

It's significant that Powell said this during a joint news conference with Ariel Sharon. Some conservatives in the US have recently begun to question Bush's committment to Israel, but this statement should remove their doubts.

The "roadmap to peace" is just a ruse, folks, aimed solely at revealing the fact that the Palestinians really have no desire for peace. Don't believe me? President Bush pulled the exact same trick with the UN earlier this year. All the posturing at the UN wasn't meant to get the French et al on board with us, it was meant to prove once and for all that they have positioned themselves as our enemies.

It's very fashionable to decry President Bush as a moron, but I think he's shown time and time again that he plays a very subtle game, and holds his cards close to his chest.

Update:
This post by Meryl Yourish illustrates my point. She recognizes the evil of the Palestinians, but she doesn't realize that the "road map" is a red herring and isn't meant to succeed in the way most people expect. It's not meant to lead the Palestinians and the Israelis into peaceful co-existance, it's meant to highlight who the real bad guys are.

Donald Sensing quotes this BBC article which says that Israeli Army radio...

. . . has been reporting that the forces are now under orders to "completely wipe out" Hamas.

The radio said everyone from the lowliest member to Sheikh Ahmad Yassin - the crippled spiritual guide of Hamas - was a target.

In the comment thread for that post, Barry wrote:

I hope that the Israelis know the difference between actual Hamas members and their families - I know that women and children have been used and are still used as terrorists, but the fewer non-card-carrying Hamas Palestinians killed the better.

Personally, I'm not sure that hope is realistic. The Palestinian people need to have their will to fight completely broken. They're brainwashed by the Muslim death cult, and it might take quite a bit of killing to shake them out of it. I'm not saying it's a pretty thing, but it might be necessary.

Massive civilian deaths would have been counter-productive in Iraq, since most of the population didn't like Saddam and wanted him gone and was more than eager to surrender. If, however, Palestinians are more like WW2 Japanese and Germans they might require a bit more "convincing". Don't get me wrong, I'm not eager for bloodshed, but I'm trying to be realistic.

This poll of Palestinians taken in September, 2002, is not very encouraging. Here are some stats:

- 52% oppose peace negotiations with Israel. - 73% are pessimistic of a reaching a peaceful settlement to the conflict. - 66% are opposed to the Oslo agreement. - 80% support the continuation of the al-Aqsa Intifada. - 53% believe that the Intifada will achieve its object. - 65% support suicide bombing operations against Israeli civilians [the poll question specifically mentions civilians].

These poll numbers support my belief that the Palestinian people themselves are a part of the problem, and need to be cowed.

Read more of my thoughts on Arafat the terrorist and the real cost of suicide bombers.

It's not uncommon to read a news story about a suicide bombing in Israel causing something like 5 deaths and 30 injuries. Most of the time we focus on the few people that are killed without really thinking about the injured survivors, but even when victims survive their lives are often ruined.

X-rays taken from victims of suicide bombings reveal pieces of metallic fragments embedded in their skin, muscles, organs and bones, says Dr. Michael Messing, who visited the victims of suicide bombings while at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Suicide bombers pack their bombs with nails and other objects so even survivors of suicide bombings will suffer from the bomb's effects.

"They're trying to maximize the number of people they kill and injure," said Messing of the terrorists.

These bombs, which Messing says are sometimes funded by Palestinian authorities including Yasser Arafat, are packed with spikes, nails, screws, nuts, bullets, mortar, ball bearings and even rat poison. ...

"[The Palestinians'] goal is to do as much damage as possible and destroy functional life where they fail to actually kill. Their result is that often those who live and their relatives suffer much more than those who die," he said. ...

Messing said one of the victims he saw while in Jerusalem had around 300 individual metallic fragments within his body. The metal fragments, measuring from millimeters to centimeters, were imbedded in the young man literally from head to toe, he said.

"Several of the fragments penetrated into his vital organs. He sustained a punctured colon, a collapsed lung, and a lacerated liver and kidney. I could actually feel the nails under his skin where they had burrowed and lodged," Messing recalls.

Not only do survivors suffer grievous physical injury, but often worse:

Suicide bombers could be endangering the lives of people from beyond the grave by passing on hepatitis or blood-borne diseases to survivors, a science magazine reported on Wednesday.

Israeli doctors have found fragments of bone from a suicide bomber embedded in a 31-year-old woman who survived the attack. The fragments tested positive for liver disease hepatitis B. ...

"As a result of that case, all survivors of these attacks in Israel are now vaccinated from hepatitis B," Braverman told the magazine.

The biggest fear is finding HIV, which causes AIDS.

Yasser Arafat is a terrorist, and there will be no peace in Israel as long as he in alive. Here are a few illustrative quotes, mostly taken from www.iris.org.il.

"Our law is a Jordanian law that we inherited, which applies to both the West Bank and Gaza, and sets the death penalty for those who sell land to Israelis.... We are talking about a few traitors, and we shall implement against them what is written in the law books. It is our right and our obligation to defend our land."

"When we stopped the Intifada we did not stop the Jihad to establish Palestine with Jerusalem as our capital.... We know only one word: Jihad, Jihad, Jihad.... We are at conflict with the Zionist movement...."

"The Israelis are mistaken if they think we do not have an alternative to negotiations. By Allah I swear they are wrong. The Palestinian people are prepared to sacrifice the last boy and the last girl so that the Palestinian flag will be flown over the walls, the churches and the mosques of Jerusalem."

"All of us are willing to be martyrs along the way, until our flag flies over Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine. Let no one think they can scare us with weapons, for we have mightier weapons - the weapon of faith, the weapon of martyrdom, the weapon of jihad."

"I say once more that Israel shall remain the principal enemy of the Palestinian people, not only now but also in the future."

"Cooperation and understanding between the P.L.O. and the rejectionist organizations is what will lead to the speedy retreat of Israel from the occupied territories in the first stage, until the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem. Only a state like that can then continue the struggle to remove the enemy from all Palestinian lands."

"The jihad will continue... You have to understand our main battle is Jerusalem... You have to come and to fight a jihad to liberate Jerusalem, your precious shrine... No, it is not their capital. It is our capital."

"The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromise."

"You are the generation that will reach the sea and hoist the flag of Palestine over Tel Aviv."

"Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations."

"The victory march will continue until the Palestinian flag flies in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine - from the Jordan River to the Meditteranean Sea and from Rosh Hanikra to Eilat."

"Palestine is onle a stone's throw away for a small Palestinian boy or girl."

ISRAEL: The Wapo has a set of pictures up from Israel today, where a Palestinian terrorist blew up a bus full of Israelis, and then the Israeli army fired a couple missiles at some Hamas leaders who were stopped in traffic. It's an awful thing to have open warfare in the streets, but I find it very hard to muster any sympathy for the Palestinians. There's a big difference between Israel attacking terrorist leaders and operators and Palestinians blowing up busloads of innocent civilians.

I do know that if I looked out my window and saw this every week, I'd be scared as hell.

Zimbabwean President for Life Robert Mugabe is beginning to sound a little like someone else we know.

Some news reports in southern Africa had suggested the 79-year-old despot, who has run Zimbabwe since independence 23 years ago, was considering standing down and handing over power to a government of national unity as part of a deal brokered by South Africa.

But Mr Mugabe scotched any such suggestion.

"I don't want to retire in a situation where people are disunited and where certain of our objectives have not been achieved," he said.

"It would be nonsensical for me, a year after my election, to resign."

So obvious was the electoral fraud in last year's presidential election that the poll has been dismissed as flawed by the United States, the European Union and MPs from the southern African region.

But Mr Mugabe said: "As long as there is that fight, I am for a fight . . . And I can still punch." ...

Mr Mugabe mocked the claim of the MDC [opposition party] that it was organising the "Final Push".

"The Final Push has failed totally if it was meant to be a push at all . . .," he said.

"On the contrary it has been a push in reverse.

"So who has pushed who? It was just some drama staged for the G8, but a drama in which the main characters have failed to impress anybody." ...

"The actions are blatantly illegal in that they are aimed at an unconstitutional removal of the country's head of state," he said.

"I hope . . . the British and the United States embassies realise that as they sponsor the MDC and instigate it, they are doing so in order to achieve an illegal objective . . . and I warn their instigation cannot be tolerated forever by my government."

This guy is as brutal as the come, and I hope there's a JDAM with his name on it.

Here's a great picture of some Palestinian peace protesters:

Washington Post
Oh no wait, they're protesting against peace. My mistake.

Donald Sensing points out that the Palestinians have a bomb that can potentially destroy Israel as a Jewish state, and it's attached to their kids! Yes, that's right, the dreaded population bomb.

Right now there are four million Muslims in Israel/West Bank/Gaza. Jews outnumber them by a mere 800,000. At current growth rates of each (see end notes), in 14 years the ratio will be reversed: 6.7 million Muslims and 6 million Jews.

One problem with projections based on growth rate is that they often don't take into account the fact that growth rates change a great deal over time, particularly as overall wealth increases and decreases.

If a workable peace is established in the region, I expect that Palestinian growth rates will decrease as their standard of living increases. It's also hypothetically possible that the Jewish growth rate would increase with added security (more people might have kids), but that's pure speculation.

Additionally, growth rates tend to drop as population density increases, so there will be a leveling-off effect over time.

So yes, I do agree that there is a population issue that the Jews must face, but I'm not convinced it's as dangerous as many make it out to be. Demographics is a tricky subject, and it's hard to make accurate projections.