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This afternoon press secretary Fleischer delivered a pretty one-sided announcement about the situation in Israel and pretty much condemned Arafat, with little if any condemnation of Israel. In the past US pronouncements have tried to at least give a token appearance of condemning both sides and calling on both to work to solve the problem. All pretense of that was dropped today, and Fleischer put blame for the situation wholely on Arafat. So Israel is going to begin regular military operations in the occupied territories very soon and the US is supporting that. Arafat is now This is also a major slap in the face for "moderate" Arabs who have been calling on the US for the last couple of weeks to apply pressure on Israel to force it to make serious concessions. We aren't going to. Those demands have now been publicly and totally repudiated, which means that Bush has written off Arab cooperation. This will instantly polarize most of them against us, and I don't think that Bush would let this happen if he still thought he needed support from most of the Arab nations. Which makes me think something else: I think I was wrong about Iraq. I think that Iraq is definitely next on the list and I think Bush is pretty much planning on actual war there. That would have alienated the other Arab nations anyway, so if that was his plan then he loses little by letting Sharon go ahead. In fact, if that's the plan then doing it this way is savvy. It means that it will be Sharon who causes the Arabs to polarize against us, which means that afterwards "Antagonizing the Arabs" will no longer be a valid argument against armed intervention in Iraq. The Arabs must be seething, but they must also be terribly frightened. This means, among other things, that the government of the US no longer gives a damn what they think. It means that they have absolutely no sway with Washington. It means that Bush is not afraid of them. It means that the world's most powerful military power is disdainful of them. It means that they are in big trouble. It's going to take a while for them to figure out what to do, because this is really rather unexpected. This is the bind they're in: The US is clearly a winner, based on the progress in the war in Afghanistan. The US clearly has no intention, none whatever, of stopping the war after Afghanistan; it's blatantly clear now that Bush definitely intends to continue to prosecute military operations in other places. Arab attempts to limit the war only to Afghanistan and to convince the US to go back to the ineffectual path of diplomacy are a failure. So do they swallow their pride and continue to buddy-up with us? Or publicly condemn us and align with our very-likely-doomed enemies? Is it better to be on the winning side or to be ideologically pure? (And pure about what?) It will be very interesting to see how each one lines up on this. (Hey, number one, did engineering ever fix the subspace crystal ball? No?) Let me go out on a limb and make some guesses. First, Oman and Qatar will stay silent and continue to support us. Egypt will equivocate. The US has bought Mubarek's soul and pays $3 billion per year for it, and he cannot survive without that money any more. So he'll issue a token condemnation, then keep his head down and try to survive, while trying to control unrest inside Egypt. Saudi Arabia is a loose cannon; it's almost impossible to predict what's going to happen there. Syria will forthrightly condem it, and offer aid to the Palestinians in the form of smuggled arms. Jordan will tepidly condemn it and then do its best to stay out of the struggle. I think Kuwait will stay silent. Iraq will seize on this and push it for all the propaganda value they can wring out of it: "See, this proves it! It's really war against all the Arabs!" This line hasn't been working and probably still won't work, though it will have some success. And Europe. Ah, our good friends in Europe. Expect condemnations all around from most of the press there (ahem). Major handwringing, condemnations, fears trumpeted to the skies, concerns about how this will break apart "the coalition", threats to not support -- and none of it will actually amount to anything or have any effect on events as they unfold. Bush has clearly decided to go it alone and has already written off "the coalition". (discuss) We only really need one nation in a coalition against Iraq, and that's Turkey. Turkey is Muslim but not Arab, and despite the shared religion is no friend to the Arabs. Oddly e
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