Stardate 20020922.0952

(Captain's log): I read the news today, oh boy...

Israel's back surrounding Arafat's HQ in Ramallah and they've torn down every building except one, which he's in. That one's already been badly damaged. There are fifty men in with Arafat that Israel wants. Arafat is defiant. Arafat says he'll shoot himself before he surrenders. Arafat spent all of yesterday on the phone calling everyone he knows who'd accept his call in order to beg them to save him. Bush wasn't one of the people he talked to, though whether that's because Bush refused to talk to him or because Arafat didn't even bother trying isn't known.

But Arafat did talk to Mubarek, and now Mubarek is calling on the US to end the siege.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has sent an urgent message to President Bush to make Israel end its siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's offices, Egyptian media said Sunday.

"In his message, the president said Israeli actions endanger stability and security in the region as a whole," the main state-owned daily al-Ahram said.

"He called on the U.S. administration to intervene effectively and immediately to halt the Israeli actions and secure the safety of the legitimate Palestinian leadership to avoid possibly grave consequences," it added.

Safeguard the legitimate Palestinian leadership, you say? (Did he really say that?) That lets Arafat out. Seems to me that the best way for us to intervene to safeguard the legitimate Palestinian leadership would be with one of these carried by one of these.

If anyone doubts that there are things in the Arab culture with which we can work, I cite the tale of a woman in Jordan. Fed up with being verbally harassed by three young punks, she threw off her cloak and proceeded to kick the crap out of all three of them. After they all ate a bit of the ground, they got up and fled. She then put her cloak back on and left the area with dignity. And the crowd cheered for her. Folks, there's hope. I wonder if she'd like Mubarek's job? (Maybe we should convert the Arab nations into gynecocracies.)

Would that Europe had that kind of backbone. (Or balls.) The Bush administration released a document stating that the US now considers preemptive attack a legitimate way to protect ourselves from those we think are planning to attack us. This replaces fifty years of reliance on deterrence, which failed a year ago.

The hand wringing has already begun.

Made official on Friday, the dramatic change in the decades-old strategy of deterrence and containment puts an option into play that could be effective against rogue states, according to experts. But they warned that the shift to preemption also risks establishing a precedent for countries whose motives or timing the U.S. government may not support.

Just as Russia, India and Israel cited last year's U.S.-led assault on Afghanistan to justify aggressive measures against opponents they labeled terrorists, a preemptive attack by the United States on another country could prompt other governments to bypass the United Nations and launch a unilateral strike against a foe.

"What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," said Oxford University professor Adam Roberts. "I have to say it puzzles America's allies that that danger doesn't seem to be fully grasped."

Apparently Adam Roberts thinks that no one in the world in the last fifty years has actually launched a war without asking for UN permission first. I don't recall the UN actions which authorized the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, or, indeed, virtually any of the wars I can think of. During that period I don't think that the UN actually authorized more than five such actions, but there have been in excess of a hundred military actions, big and small.

I have to say that it puzzles me that "America's Allies" don't understand that you don't bring a knife to a gunfight. It's not that our formal acceptance of preemption will set off a wave of preemption all over the world, it's that we're tired of being the only military power that doesn't use it.

And the military would have to strike with precision, as the danger of retaliation would be great, defense analyst Harlan Ullman said.

"You don't get a second chance," said Ullman, author of "Unfinished Business -- Afghanistan, the Middle East and Beyond," an assessment of international threats. "Preemption assumes a quick, decisive, relatively inexpensive victory. If that does not happen, you may not have the necessary logic and rationale for a long-term campaign."

Not hardly. Preemption means you get him before he gets you. That's all. There's nothing in there about "fast" and no reason why "logic and rationale" are issues at all. (Logistics is a different question, but our friend Ullman is talking about moral persuasion, not supply of bullets and bombs.)

Yet, to some observers, the very act of one country preemptively attacking another carries troubling echoes of vigilante justice when much of the world is working toward common understandings about the use of force.

"It's a violation of the U.N. Charter. It's a violation of the NATO charter," said Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who has taught strategy at the National War College. If preemption as a policy takes hold, Gardiner asked, "where does it stop?"

It stops when our enemies realize that they don't get an unimpeded first blow against us. That's where it stops. Then they'll seriously reconsider even trying to attack us at all.

Fortunately, that's just chattering heads speaking, and what they say doesn't matter. Unfortunately, the German voters spoke today, and what they say does matter.

Exit polls indicate a razor-thin victory for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Red-Green coalition in the German general election.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn!