What Would Harry Do?
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THE THREE STATE SOLUTION?
By
Jay B. GaskillWhat would Harry do?
Mr. Truman
One good thing can be elicited from the last month’s sorry developments on Israel’s border: No one in his or her right mind can any longer deny that Iran’s proxy malevolent trouble maker, Hamas, is the sort of irreconcilable enemy that can never be accommodated to Western democratic values.
Palestine could never have formed a viable state as long as it represented the unholy shotgun marriage of the corrupt remnants of Arafat’s Fatah and the tightly disciplined homicidal cohort, Hamas.
The first stage of reality accommodation (among the devotees to the “peace process”) was the recognition that Arafat was a completely disingenuous, duplicitous, corrupt and ineffectual leader who would never be the path to peaceful coexistence with Israel. We now have arrived at the second grim epiphany: Hamas is the implacable obstacle that must be discredited as well as destroyed before peaceful coexistence can ever be achieved.
So the forces of Western civilization confront a fragile and transient “three state solution” on the ground: Israel, West Bank Palestine, and Existential Hell. All are within easy driving distance of each other.
Just as the West Bank is now to be fed economic support, Hamas must be starved. This will require a hard edged, functional approach. It cannot be done without the US government’s proactive involvement.
Nerves of steel will be needed.
Egypt, Syria and Iran are (in ascending order of mischief) covertly and overtly supporting Hamas in Lebanon and Palestine. So the task of shutting down these lines of support becomes the first priority if peace is ever to be achieved. I believe that Egypt and Syrian will follow Iran. The Hamas’ jugular vein begins in Teheran.
If the West (principally the US) is willing to step on the Hamas jugular, then Israel (under say, a Netanyahu led campaign or some other realist government coalition) can do the rest at the borders.
In a separate posting, “A modest Proposal”, I outlined one possible approach based on Iran’s desperate dependence on its oil revenue.
See http://www.jaygaskill.com/ModestProposal.pdf .
An economic war against Iran, really a paramilitary one directed at contracting its revenue stream and disabling its economy, will open the door to larger dangers.
The remaining question is whether the current administration, floundering as it is, can possibly initiate any meaningful action between now and the last few weeks of its term. I am reminded of Eisenhower’s secret plan to unseat Fidel Castro, hatched by the CIA in 1958. Its implementation was delayed for various reasons until the new Nixon Administration was to take power. But JFK was elected. Had the invasion of Cuba actually worked (and this is hardly the space to talk about whether the CIA was right and Kennedy wrong), there would have been no Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.
If “W” postpones meaningful action on Iran (even covert action) until the new administration takes office, we now have to ask ourselves: What will Hillary do? Or Rudy? Or Barack? Or Mitt? Or John? Or Fred?
As a Truman Democrat, my biggest problem with this administration is not its policy mistakes, because, truth be told, no prior administration from FDR forward has failed to make similar errors. My issue is with the administration's almost perverse inability to cogently and credibly explain to the American people the scope and seriousness of the stakes.
The jihad is important to us precisely because, in the modern globalized economy, weapons technologies first travel to find the money – anywhere in the world, then they travel to targets chosen by the paymasters, anywhere in the world.
We didn’t choose this war against us; we can’t avoid participating in it by pretending we are at peace; and we cannot afford to lose. It will be a welcome, if overdue change, when more members of my party wake up in time to be part of the solution…
JBG
