A momentous occasion was had last night, slicing into Brothers & Sisters for a full hour or so of news. Well some of it was news and the rest was idiots babbling about things they know nothing about. Once I picked up the basics, I flipped over to re-runs of Ugly Betty and wished the Economist had shown up on time on Friday. American news is idiocy writ large, at least the televised version. CNN insults my intelligence, and local news is far, far worse.
It is good to catch a killer, and I can see the argument for death in battle, as I can see no other outcome, and to ask our men and women in arms to change the rules on the ground with an enemy that does not respect the laws of war is a step too far. Yet I am not naive enough to believe that the death of one man, whose ability to rally people to his cause diminished every minute since his greatest act of destruction. He never took to his own the seminal cause that actually unites a disparate and contentious Umma or Arabs of any confessional orientation, that of Palestine. He barely flirted with the idea, which was to Palestine’s benefit and his own organization’s detriment.
The “Arab Spring” gives me hope. Israel never had truly peaceful neighbors, it had neighbors bought off, or dictators bought off. It’s hard for Americans to understand, but even its own allies and friends become extremely prickly when bullied or their governments seen to be responsive to 1600 Penn more than their own people. It is well past time to engage as an honest partner.
It is not where we now find ourselves, in the midst of winding down a war that was ill-advised and foolish, one that we (all of us, ISAF included) could have brought farther along, to a better end, and one we are only somewhat engaged in, but rather where we go from here. It is well past time to engage on the question of Palestine. I believe that that Gordian knot’s solution would rid us both of the oxygen that feeds much of the terrorism the US and the West faces, but also the kindling that supports repressive dictatorships. We must still juggle Afghanistan, we cannot leave with matters half finished, even as frustrating as the leadership is. We must continue to enforce, as best we can, a support for good governance and driving corruption out; corruption is what feeds the Taliban, and in truth any movement that has a brand of “swift justice” as its selling point. I believe one must always finish what one starts, no matter how difficult and painful it is.
