Terrorists, like investors, base their present investment decisions on what they believe the return on their effort is going to be. If the al-Qaeda on the Arabian peninsula believed that the prospects for terrorism in the future were poor, then relatively fewer of them would return to the life of Jihad. But if on the other hand, the Men in the Business believed that the future would be conducive to acts of terror and that they could safely return to their old trades, then relatively more of them would.
The next few years will provide an empirical test of whether “reaching out” and going after Osama bin Laden in Southwest Asia turns out to be a strategically sound move. Every new administration has a right to try a new approach out, but they should also be alert to signs indicating whether their new strategy is working or not. George Bush is gone and Hope and Change are in office, but al Qaeda doesn’t seem too worried. So far.
No, they are not particularly worried. Neither is Iran, whose leaders "so far" have responded to those "outreach" efforts by demanding that the US apologize for how terribly we've treated the mullahs' regime. Isn't that nice? They can expect no less from us, since our new messianic President has already gone on Al-Arabiya TV and trashed America (and Bush) even as he praised tyrants in the Middle East for their "courage".
Then, in Caroline Glick's op-ed yesterday, there's this little tidbit, which was never reported in the MSM:
According to a report in Aviation News, last week the US Navy prevented Israel from seizing an Iranian weapons ship in the Red Sea suspected of carrying illicit munitions bound for either Gaza or Lebanon. A week and a half ago, the US Navy boarded the ship in the Gulf of Aden and carried out a cursory inspection. It demurred from seizing the ship, however, because, as Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained on January 27, the US believed it had no international legal right to seize the vessel.
In inspecting the ship the US was operating under UN Security Council Resolution 1747, which bars Iran from exporting arms. The US argued that it lacked authority to seize the ship because 1747 has no enforcement mechanism. Yet the fact of the matter is that if the US were truly interested in intercepting the ship and preventing the arms from arriving at their destination, the language of 1747 is vague enough to support such a seizure.
And that's the point. The US was uninterested in seizing the ship because it was uninterested in provoking a confrontation with Teheran, which it seeks to engage. It was not due to lack of legal authority that the US reportedly prevented the Israel Navy from seizing the ship in the Red Sea, but due to the administration's fervent wish to appease the mullahs.
If you want to understand why there is no possibility of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict using appeasement and diplomatic "outreach", you need to understand the unbelievable hatred and bigotry that is daily directed toward Israel by the terrorist group Hamas, funded ans supported by Iran. These are our new "partners" in peace.
Here we can listen to HAMAS leaders in their own voices:
And here is a powerful video that gives some context to the provocations that led to the recent Israeli attack on Gaza:
So far, in a mere 2 weeks, the Obama Administration has definitely managed to bring hope and change...at least to the terrorists.
For the first time in my adult life, I am ashamed of my country. And I owe it all to President Obama. What has America done???
UPDATE: Do you begin to suspect that the new hopeychangey goal in Afghanistan is now to lose? Back in September, 2008, I wrote:
Barack Obama still wants to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He wants to say the Surge has worked beyond our wildest dreams, so let's declare defeat and leave. Let's ignore the sacrifice of our troops and move on. Now he says we have to focus on Afghanistan (which we do), but who realistically believes that any Democrat (except Lieberman) has the guts to win there either?
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