The War on Terror Becomes 'War of the Worlds'

By Chilton Williamson, Jr.

orld War IV," a comprehensive campaign by the United States to make the Middle East safe for Israel by ridding the region of its existing governments, has not been developing as its architect, the neoconservative journalist Norman Podhoretz, envisioned it two years ago. Lately, indeed, the Fourth World War threatens to become a War of the Worlds, Muslim versus Christian and Jewish, as the East brings hostilities home to the West, rather than vice versa. Most recently, however, it has taken still another turn by reshaping itself in far more parochial terms as the Battle for Florida, Part II.

In their book An End to Evil, David Frum and Richard Perle perform a significant feat in discussing jihad out of the Middle East and the origins of the Iraqi War in a context in which the state of Israel is reduced to hardly more than a regional bystander, and an innocent one at that. The truth is that the terrorists would never have struck at the United States if it were not for its biased and one-sided support for Israel in Jerusalem's war against the Palestinian people, and that in the ensuing "war on terror" the U.S. is substantially a proxy for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in an arrangement designed by Sharon's neoconservative supporters within the Bush administration. Sharon wanted this war, and George Bush's advisors were determined that he should have it--even to the extent of conniving in the validation of false intelligence, helpfully provided by the Israelis, regarding Saddam's alleged weaponry. We now know t! hat Secretary of State Colin Powell, fearing the worst in going to war, warned the President that he risked stumbling against what he calls the Pottery Barn principle ("You break it, you own it"), only to be steamrolled by the hawkish Vice President, incited to mayhem by neoconservative advisers on his own staff and in the Pentagon. Generals Brent Scowcroft and Anthony Zinni of the Marine Corps warned of dire consequences, including a diversion of energy and resources from the war against the real terrorists. Their sage advice was ignored by more enthusiastic counsel, including Perle (a member of the Defense Department's Defense Policy Board and longtime advocate the military deposition of Saddam Hussein) who promised the administration that any bully little war against Iraq would be "a cakewalk."

A further prediction by Cakewalk Perle was that the "liberated" Iraqis would welcome the victorious American troops with thrown flowers and open arms. Another confident prediction was that toppling Saddam and ousting his Ba'athist Party from power would significantly reduce the incidence of suicide bombings in Israel, by removing one of the bombers' chief subsidizers. When the Iraqis met the American occupiers with bombs instead of roses, and the Palestinian assault on Israel continued, the U.S. Army commanders in Baghdad looked to their more experienced Israeli counterparts to learn the most sophisticated techniques of modern urban warfare. During this period, President Bush appears to have concluded that the Palestinian nationalists and the Iraqi holdouts against the U.S. occupational forces amounted to one and the same enemy.

More than a year after Bush pronounced "mission accomplished" in respect of Iraq, a powerful and ever-growing resistance movement has formed and spread throughout the country, while Al Qaeda and other enraged and emboldened Muslim terrorist groups have struck in Southeast Asia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Spain. Podhoretz's World War IV, so far as it has come to pass, is being waged against, more than by, the United States and the West. This includes Israel which, in spite of diminished bombing attacks in the past several months, scarcely finds itself in a stronger position in the Middle East a year after the fall of Baghdad than before the American military strike. Rather, in company with its North American protector, Israel is even more despised in the region than heretofore, while enjoying considerably less sympathy in Europe and the world at large. In these circumstances, President Bush chose in April to reverse historic American policy by re! cognizing Israel's de facto right to much of the West Bank occupied in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, deny the right of return to Palestinian refugees evicted from their homeland in 1948, and support Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.

From the standpoint of diplomacy, it is impossible to imagine worse timing for this aboutface. Having concluded that Al Qaeda and the Palestine Liberation Organization are interchangeable, more or less, or anyway heads belonging to the same hydra, Bush had previously either supported or failed to criticize Israel's most egregious actions in the past year, up to and including the murder of the leader (and now, two leaders) of Hamas, while rejecting every criticism of Israeli coming from various European governments or from the United Nations, which the President seemed to treat as expressions of antisemitism. Encouraged by what Paul Kennedy, the historian, calls the Wolfowitz Brigade, the Bush administration has threatened Syria and Iran (which some neonconservatives blame for the current insurrection in Iraq) as enemies of Israel, while ignoring protests from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Though for decades the world had recognized that Washington's claim to be an ! unbiased mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute was a pretense merely, the Bush administration-in need of all the cooperation it can get in the Middle East--could not have chosen a more inopportune moment to destroy that pretense entirely. It is from the standpoint of domestic politics, rather, that the Bush bombshell makes sense, spelled in two ways: R-O-V-E and F-L-O-R-I-D-A.

Florida, as everyone knows, is not populated solely by born-again Christians and immigrants from Haiti and Cuba. The state has as well a large Jewish population, mostly transplanted from the Northeast, and much of it retired and wealthy, with time on its hands to pay attention to politics and money to contribute to political causes. Doubtless the Bush team has not forgotten that three and a half years ago, during the 36-day Battle for Florida, one of the many electoral cliff-hangers was provided by the fact of a significant number of Florida voters holding dual citizenship in the United States and Israel. The Jews, of course, are historically the property of the Democratic Party. In another close election, such as that of November 2004 is expected to be, the Jewish vote could easily decide how Florida goes; while how Florida goes might well decide whether George W. Bush is reelected to sit in the White House for another four years, or John Kerry is selected to give him th! e boot from there.

Thus, the Iraq War, on its way to becoming Wolrd War IV, has been sidetracked abruptly into a resumption of the Battle for Florida. It's only politics as usual in our diverse, pluralistic, multicultural society. "E Unum Pluribus," as Al Gore would say.