FW: Nothing Personal

[Karen Watters Cole]

The former Presidential advisor and retired Admiral suggests a follow-up to a successful diplomatic exercise.  Note that he suggests that the US be LESS PERSONAL in its aims for the Palestinians, and that Israel must face reality on the issue of settlements.  Given Pres. Bush’s propensity to act/react in foreign policy based on his personal relationships, can this be analyzed as an older and more mature family friend giving advice to the one-dimensional?  Will it happen this way?  Once again, we have grand examples for the history books and future classrooms about whether individuals drive history or if history makes the men, so to speak.  The full article below address the US Ego-in-Charge, the excerpted article profiles the other Big Ego at odds, swords drawn, mythologies enhanced and the world awaiting the outcome.   Hussein's Obsession: An Empire of Mosques – You HAVE TO see the photo to appreciate this reporting from Baghdad.  Excerpts below.  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/international/middleeast/15MOSQ.html   True to personality and ambitions, it looks as if politics in the ME will be very personal, with Bibi set to ride on Ariel’s case like Don Nickles on Trent Lott – he’s after the job.  Buckle up.  History is about to repeat itself. KWC   Op-Ed: An Effort To Match In the Mideast By Brent Scowcroft, Thursday, November 21, 2002 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17862-2002Nov20.html The United States has just concluded a remarkable exercise in diplomacy. It has opened up a possibility for peaceful resolution of the crisis over Iraq that few would have thought conceivable only three months ago. While the process may have resembled the old adage about watching sausage being made, it has resulted in a tough, clear directive to Saddam Hussein. By credibly threatening unilateral military action to resolve an Iraqi problem that has festered for years, the administration achieved two objectives. First, it induced the United Nations Security Council to face up to its responsibilities.  Second, by declaring that the only sure solution to the Iraqi problem was regime change by military force, the administration maximized the odds that Saddam Hussein would take the United States seriously, accept U.N. authority and avoid a conflict that could well involve incalculable consequences for the region.  The result: unanimous agreement in the Security Council that an international outlaw regime must return forthwith to lawful behavior, and unmistakable determination to use military force if it does not.  A remarkable outcome, notwithstanding that the process by which it was achieved has left wide resentment and bruised feelings on the part of those who believe the United States has behaved in a unilateral and arrogant manner that failed to take their interests and concerns adequately into account. What now?  Saddam Hussein, having accepted the Security Council's resolution, has two options. He can cooperate and comply fully -- unlikely, given his past record. Or he can choose a temporizing strategy, testing U.N. resolve but cooperating just enough -- by his calculations -- to avoid military action against him. Since his most basic objective is certainly to stay in power, he is likely to try to buy time through minimal compliance, hoping that the international resolve to resort to force will wane. If so, the biggest risk is that he will miscalculate -- perhaps sooner rather than later -- what he must do and what he can get away with. This most likely course could take some time to work itself out, whatever the eventual outcome. While the inspection process is underway, the administration could launch another diplomatic initiative that could rival the triumph it just scored, and at the same time reinforce the success it has just achieved. This initiative would take the form of devoting the same kind of skill, audacity and laser-like attention to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Such a move could assuage some of the ill will stimulated in the Middle East and Europe by the hard-hitting Iraq initiative. It would show U.S. determination to deal with the one issue that is the primary lens through which the Arab world views the United States. It would also reduce the appeal of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and the negative reaction that would ensue should force against Iraq prove necessary. In sum, it would not only address a critical security problem but also strengthen and sustain the international coalition that has been forged on the Iraq issue. In so doing it would help doom a "buy time" strategy by Saddam Hussein. How might this work?  The United States has already taken a first step by developing, with its partners in the "Quartet" (the international consulting group consisting of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia), a road map for the achievement of a Palestinian state by 2005. Some will argue that it would be imprudent, even dangerous, to push further at a time when Israelis (and perhaps the Palestinians) are facing elections.  But the contrary might well be true.  With the selection of its new leader, the Labor Party has put the peace process at the top of Israel's election agenda.  The administration owes the parties a clear statement of its vision.  Presenting it at this time could provide both the Israeli and Palestinian publics a broader perspective on the most important issue facing them even as they engage in the election process. The outlines of a process are already clear.  The Palestinians need to end terrorist attacks and reform the Palestinian Authority.  To require total compliance as a precondition, however, is simply to put control of the process in the hands of those on both sides who do not want it to succeed.  Steps toward reform of the Palestinian Authority have already begun.  We should define its requirements in non-personal terms, to avoid putting ourselves in the position of supporting democracy, but only if it elects Palestinians we prefer. For the Israeli side, there must be a willingness to pull back forces from West Bank population centers short of a total cessation of violence -- which no one can guarantee.  Any type of settlement expansion must cease. For the United States and its partners in the Quartet, there should be a willingness to outline in greater detail the nature of a Palestinian state, and to provide some sort of presence -- including military personnel at least from the United States and the European Union -- as Israel pulls back from its occupation in the West Bank. None of this is new.  But a clear, high-profile U.S. effort to move with vigor to build on our Iraqi diplomatic success with progress on the region's most vexing and intractable problem could open the way for change in the region that could be revolutionary, supporting all U.S. aspirations for the area.  It could attenuate -- perhaps even reverse -- deepening anti-American feelings in the Middle East, feelings that, if left unchecked, may threaten our security. The writer is president of the Forum for International Policy and the Scowcroft Group. He was national security adviser to Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush. EXCERPTS from the article by NYT foreign correspondent Burns: Saddam’s Obsession Part of the message the Iraqi leader is sending with his mosque-building is that he, Saddam Hussein, is the natural leader of an Arab world yearning for past glories under the banner of Islam that fluttered atop the Arab armies that conquered much of the ancient world after the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632.  But the lesson encoded in the Mother of All Battles Mosque, or Umm al-Mahare, as it is called in Arabic, seems to be much narrower, and aimed like its Kalashnikov-and-Scud minarets at a more selected audience: the United States. … But along with this, there has been another message, and it is the one written in stone and marble at the Mother of All Battles Mosque: That Iraqis are natural warriors, that they search ceaselessly for what Mr. Hussein called last week "the great meanings inside themselves," and that they are like coiled springs waiting for the moment of "anger and revolt" when they can avenge the wrongs done them by their enemies.  In short, that they are ready for war, as Mr. Hussein said at a cabinet meeting this week, when he told his generals "that your heads will remain high with honor, God willing, and your enemy will be defeated. … Many who know Iraq, and the United States, and can make even a layman's estimate of their relative military strengths, would regard this as illusionism of a piece with Iraq's persistence in holding onto Kuwait in 1990 under American threats, and boasting of certain victory, until the denouement. What is harder to say, given the closed nature of Iraq under Mr. Hussein, is whether it is an illusionism like Winston Churchill's in 1940, baying at the Nazi armies in France while knowing that Britain's land forces were in no shape to repel an invasion, or whether it is something much grimmer for Iraq, the failure of a leader who lives in a tightly protected seclusion to grasp the realities that press in keenly on others. Karen Watters Cole Outgoing Mail Scanned by NAV 2002