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Leading Israeli Statesman
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THE FOG OF FOG
Michelle Malkin
National Review, May 6, 2011
The official White House account of Osama bin Laden’s demise has seen more slapdash cosmetic surgery over the past week than your average Real Housewives reality-show star. President Obama’s allies attribute the bungled “narrative” (their word, not mine) to the “Fog of War.” But each passing day—and each new set of hapless revisions—shows that what really ails the administration is the Fog of Fog.
Errors happen. Miscommunications happen. Confusing the name of which of bin Laden’s myriad sons died (Hamza, not Khalid), for example, is no biggie.
But the hourly revamping of key details of Sunday’s raid suggests something far beyond the usual realm of situational uncertainty that accompanies any military operation. The Navy SEALs did their job spectacularly. The civilians tasked with letting the world know about the mission, however, have performed like amateur dinner-theater actors in a tragi-comic production of Rashomon Meets the Blind Men and the Elephant Meets the Keystone Kops.
Incapable of straightforward answers, Team Obama’s clarity-challenged civilians have led nauseated news-watchers through more twists and turns than San Francisco’s Lombard Street.
Take your Dramamine, and let’s review.
Take One: Bin Laden died in a bloody firefight.
On Sunday night, Obama dramatically told the world that “after a firefight,” our brave men in uniform “killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”
Embellishing the story the next morning, White House deputy national-security adviser John Brennan said at his briefing that bin Laden “was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in…and whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don’t know.… It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight.”
Take Two: Bin Laden did not engage in a firefight.
The day after Brennan disclosed these vivid details, White House press secretary Jay Carney walked them back Michael Jackson–style. Bin Laden, he said in version 2.0, “was not armed.” Brennan had clearly implied that bin Laden “resisted” with arms. Carney amended the narrative by insisting that “resistance does not require a firearm.” How exactly bin Laden resisted, Carney would not say.
It’s been all downhill, uphill, K-turns, and 180s ever since. Fasten your seatbelts:
Take Three: Bin Laden’s wife died after her feckless husband used her as a human shield.
Take Four: Bin Laden’s wife did not die, wasn’t used as a human shield, and was only shot in the leg. Someone else’s wife was killed, somewhere else in the house.
Take Five: A transport helicopter experienced “mechanical failure” and was forced to make a hard landing during the mission.
Take Six: A top-secret helicopter clipped the bin Laden compound wall, crashed, and was purposely exploded after the mission to prevent our enemies from learning more about it.
Take Seven: The bin Laden photos would be released to the world as proof-positive of his death.
Take Eight: The bin Laden photos would not be released to the world because no one needs proof, and it’s more important to avoid offending the peaceful Muslims who supposedly don’t embrace bin Laden as a true Muslim in the first place.
Take Nine: Bin Laden’s compound was a lavish mansion.
Take Ten: Bin Laden’s compound was a glorified pigsty.
Take Eleven: Bin Laden’s compound had absolutely no television, phone, or computer access.
Take Twelve: Bin Laden’s compound was stocked with hard drives, thumb drives, DVDs, and computers galore.
Take Thirteen: Er, remember that statement about bin Laden’s being armed? And then not armed? Well, the new version is that he had an AK-47 “nearby.”
Take Fourteen: A gung-ho Obama spearheaded the “gutsy” mission.
Take Fifteen: A reluctant Obama dithered for 16 hours before being persuaded by CIA director Leon Panetta.
Take Sixteen: Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and close advisers watched the raid unfold in real time—“minute by minute,” according to Carney—and a gripping insider photo was posted immediately by the White House on the Flickr picture-sharing website for all to see.
Take Seventeen: Er, they weren’t really watching real-time video “minute by minute,” because there was at least nearly a half-hour during which they “didn’t know just exactly what was going on,” Panetta clarified. Or rather, un-clarified.
Take Eighteen: Stalwart Obama’s order was to kill, not capture, bin Laden.
Take Nineteen: Sensitive Obama’s order was to kill or capture—and that’s why the SEAL team gave him a chance to surrender, upon which he resisted with arms, or actually didn’t resist with arms, but sort of resisted without arms, except there was an AK-47 nearby, sort of, or maybe not, thus making it possible to assert that while decisive Obama did tell the SEALs to kill bin Laden and should claim all credit for doing so, Progressive Obama can also be absolved by bleeding hearts because of the painstakingly concocted post facto possibility that bin Laden somehow threatened our military—telepathically, or something—before being taken out.
Take Twenty: “We’ve been as forthcoming with facts as we can be,” said an irritated Carney on Wednesday.
And they wonder why Americans of all political stripes think they’re blowing smoke.
CRACKS IN PALESTINIAN ARAB “UNITY”:
ABBAS AND MESHAL NEVER SIGNED THE AGREEMENT!
Eldad Tzion
NewsReal Blog, May 5, 2011
On Wednesday, Khaled Meshal of Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah came together in Cairo and publicly signed a historic reconciliation agreement, in front of a room filed with supporters from the Arab world and the international community.
Didn’t they?
Actually, they didn’t.
Al Quds al-Arabimentions, almost in passing: “Notably, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not sign the agreement, as expected, and neither did Mr. Khaled Meshaal of the Islamic Resistance Movement ‘Hamas.’”
The New York Times noticed this as well: “In what appeared a sign of lingering friction, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal did not share the podium with Abbas and the ceremony was delayed briefly over where he would sit. Against expectations, neither signed the unity document.”
That wasn’t the only weird thing that happened at the ceremony that was meant to signify a new chapter in harmonious intra-Palestinian Arab relations. There were actual public disagreements on stage, concerning who was to speak, where people were to sit, and how Mahmoud Abbas should be described (as the “president of Palestine” or as the leader of Fatah.) In fact, from all appearances, Hamas is not recognizing Abbas as the real president of the “unified” leadership!
Put all of this together and the real picture begins to emerge: the entire “unity” agreement is a facade meant to placate Westerners.… In reality, Hamas and Fatah hate each other as much as ever.…
Why is the Western world believing–and supporting!–this sham that is meant to ultimately create a terror state, one that will not compromise in the least on its major goal of destroying Israel?
THE LAWS OF WAR AND ISRAEL
Evelyn Gordon
Contentions, May 6, 2011
The international response to the Fatah-Hamas unity deal provides yet another example of a troubling development. Alone among the nations, Israel is increasingly denied the protections of the laws of war.
Thus, for instance, the West denounces Israel’s targeted killings of Hamas leaders even as it correctly deems America’s targeted killing of Al-Qaida’s leader perfectly legitimate (a double standard skewered by Alan Dershowitz this week).
Now the same double standard is being applied to Israel’s suspension of fund transfers to the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. and Europe have both demanded that Israel resume the transfers. Even the usually sensible Tony Blair, the Quartet’s Middle East envoy, echoed this demand. “The money is Palestinian money so it must be transferred,” Blair told Haaretz. “That is a Quartet position. Hillary Clinton made the same point.”
The money is indeed Palestinian: customs duties that, under a 1994 agreement, Israel collects on the PA’s behalf at its ports to spare importers the hassle of dealing with two separate customs offices. But under the laws of war, this fact is totally irrelevant.
The laws of war permit a country at war to freeze enemy assets in its territory lest they be used to finance the enemy’s campaign. And all countries do so. For instance, the U.S. and other NATO countries now bombing Libya have all frozen Libyan government assets.
No reasonable person would deny that Israel is at war with Hamas. Missiles are routinely fired at Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza, and the Islamist organization still refuses to recognize Israel’s existence. Contrary to Washington’s wishful thinking, the Hamas-Fatah accord hasn’t softened this position, as senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar made clear on the very day it was signed. According to the Jerusalem Post, he told Al Jazeera that his organization “will never recognize Israel,” as Palestinians reject “the rule of Poles and Ethiopians in their land.”
Nor can Hamas be part of a new PA government without benefiting from PA funds. No matter what mechanisms are created to prevent direct transfers from the PA to Hamas, money is fungible. The very fact that the PA will now finance governmental outlays in Gaza for which Hamas previously had to foot the bill frees up funds for Hamas’s war on Israel.
Thus the moment the deal was signed to bring Hamas into the PA government, Israel was entirely justified under the laws of war in freezing fund transfers to the PA. Indeed, none of the Western countries now sanctimoniously protesting the freeze would hesitate a moment to freeze the assets of any government that included a terrorist organization committed to their own destruction.
As far as the West is concerned, though, the laws of war don’t apply to Israel. Unlike other nations, it has no right to take reasonable, legal steps in its own defense. The West may preach equality before the law, but it [is an Orwellian] definition of equality: Some countries are clearly more equal than others.
BIN LADEN, ISRAEL, AND OBAMA
Martin Peretz
New Republic, May 5, 2011
It was already deep into Yom Hashoah, the day that Israel had designated some 60 years ago as the time to memorialize the Jewish catastrophe perpetrated by the Nazis, when news leaked out and then was corroborated by President Obama that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a secured mansion hide-out in Pakistan, actually not far from the country’s capital. Apparently, the mansion was not secured nearly enough: The intelligence and defense forces of the United States had located it eight months before, and it was over that period that the United States—yes, the U.S. alone—had mobilized and meticulously carried out the operation that brought this long sought after mass murderer to justice. We should also not misrepresent and deceive ourselves about the manner in which the ultimate penalty was achieved. This was a “targeted killing,” all at once reasonable, righteous, required.…
Bin Laden’s prime targets were other than the Jews or, for that matter, the State of Israel. He had larger objectives: America itself, the world’s democracies, science, even Christianity, schismatic Muslims, many as jihadist as he. But Jewry and the Jewish nation have a special place in the poisoned hearts of his Muslim followers and in the hearts of many who aren’t quite his followers. So the redemption of Zion is a fact that nags at those who live angrily with their own cultural self-humiliation, rebukes them, haunts them. How could it be, they may ask themselves, that nearly 80 percent of the 7.5 million Jews in occupied Europe (and others elsewhere) were murdered and yet the promise of Jerusalem in the broadest sense has been fulfilled?
Nazism was the first ideology in modernity to aim at killing an entire civilization, Jewish civilization. The Turks, after all, were content to murder the Armenians on their own turf. Not so the Germans. Make no mistake about it. Almost no one wished to recognize that somber fact. The shabby excuses for why the Roosevelt administration refused to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz (it would make it seem too much like a war for the Jews which, Lord knows, it wasn’t) make this clear.…
For nearly a decade the Reich disguised its ultimate intentions for the Jews. Dr. Ahmadinejad has no such tricks in his hat. He is as plain as day, and is an applauded figure at Columbia University, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the [UN] General Assembly. Something has changed. In fact, there are two features of the world that were not present when the terrible homicide of the Jews occurred. The first is that there is a Jewish state.
This Jewish state literally rescued and paid ransom for at least two million Jews who would otherwise have disappeared. From the Soviet Union, from Poland, from Rumania, from Ethiopia, from Argentina, from other little pockets here, there, everywhere. Of course, another million, maybe more from the Arab countries earlier on in Israel’s history. There is a place for Jews to go, a place that is their own, their home. But this place is also a temptation to the new genocidalists who happen also to be candid genocidalists. One percent of the Jewish population of Palestine was killed in the War of Independence. Those are added to the Jewish nakba of less than half a decade earlier, except that this time the Jews (just like the Arabs) had guns.
Now more than guns. And no, not just nuclear weapons of their own. But, more important, an ingrown scientific temperament and its extraordinary consequences which produced a technological universe of defense and assault.…
The new parameters of war—to take care not to attack innocents, which was hardly a consideration by either the Axis or Allied countries during the Second World War—are quite scrupulously adhered to by Western military establishments, especially including Israel. But, while “underdog” fighters often employ quite sophisticated technologies, they have no compunctions about killing at random. Often without specific targets, like Hamas against Israel. Or, as has been apparent these last three months in sequential bloodlettings in the Arab world, the very states of Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen. To say nothing of a motley assortment of butchers in Pakistan and Afghanistan, some official, mostly not.
Osama bin Laden brought this butchery to America, and he spooked the American people for nearly a decade. His ghostly and ghastly presence in the shadows of time and geography had transformed him into an ubermensch, at least to those millions (and more millions) who saw the mass murderer as a message and messenger of the Prophet.… Still, in some places, many places, the violent seer remains the incarnation of hate-filled hope, not just by some wretched of the earth but also those pampered Arabs who contributed to his till.
In his dignified address to the nation and the world, the president cut him down to size. But he was no pollyanna. Osama is dead. His movement, not entirely one movement, in any event, still lives and may be reinvigorated by the resentments of his followers and hangers-on. Nonetheless…we are all more liberated now, and this lift from fear was also experienced in Israel as Holocaust memorial ceremonies drew to a close and the news sunk in that bin Laden was no more.
Yet there were a few elements in Obama’s address that trouble me. It’s not exactly that he iterated and reiterated, as he has been doing since the start of his presidency, that “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam…our war is not with Islam.” No one wants a war with the Muslim religion or with the Muslim world. No one and certainly no American.…[Yet], Obama reverts to his trope so often that it seems, at least to me, that he is trying to convince himself that there is no space between Islam and the USA.…
Obama is certainly among those few who almost tactilely experience the politics of the Muslim faith in Pakistan. Yes, there are also tribal differences. But Islam is a great motivator. After all, it’s what motivated the Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan to provide Iran and Libya (plus North Korea) with atomic materials and intelligence. Alas, Pakistan is also less an ally against Muslim terrorism than its protector. Steven Lee Myers and Jane Perlez have written a story in [the] New York Times about the deceptions practiced by the country’s intelligence elites against American efforts to close down terrorism in the country. After bin Laden was killed, “the Pakistani government issued a defiant statement calling the raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader ‘an unauthorized unilateral action.’” That’s an ally for you. No one has ever really come clean about Pakistan.
The Washington Posthas an astute column by Richard Cohen which states precisely the president’s predicament with one of his Muslim allies. (The other Muslim allies pose similar predicaments, poor man: Turkey, for instance.) He seized the spotlight, as he did the moment, offering us a crescendo of the word ‘I’—‘I directed’ and ‘I was briefed’ and ‘I met repeatedly’ and ‘I determined.’ But what he did not mention was that he decided to go it alone. Our nominal allies in the fight for Afghanistan, the unreliable and unpredictable Pakistanis, were kept in the dark. Their sovereignty was violated, they lost face, and the United States, as a consequence, lost some cover. It cannot be said that Osama was killed by another Muslim. A martyr has been made.
For too long now the Obama administration has shown a touching but sometimes counterproductive sensitivity for the sensitivities of the Muslim world. It has proceeded as if it was more important to be liked than to be feared and as if some differences were not fundamental but always a product of misunderstanding.… This is not the case. The U.S. can do little to mollify Islamists and others who seek the obliteration of Israel and the return of holy Jerusalem to the Muslim fold. It can do little with bigots who loathe America’s culture of tolerance.…
It was as if Obama thought he could charm these guys, reason with them—that their antipathy toward him was based on some sort of misunderstanding and not, as it was and remains, their ideology. Obama attempted something similar with Iran. He wanted accommodation, less belligerence. They know very well who we are, and we should know who they are. The same holds for Syria.… By the way, does Obama still want Israel to relinquish the Golan Heights to Assad which, of course, might strengthen him? Or to wait until the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power when Assad falls?
And now Obama faces “Palestine.” It is a new Palestine, to be run (if a phantom can truly be run) by a reunion of Fatah (or the Palestinian Authority) and Hamas, a certified terror organization which was sired by the Muslim Brothers of Egypt. Bin Laden’s is not a popular death. After all, he had brought cheer from Jenin to Gaza after September 11, as he had in every Arab state and the tiniest and wealthiest principality. No sooner had Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyah announced their organizational nuptials—an occasion on which Obama has not yet commented—than the Gazan “prime minister” denounced the assassination of a “holy warrior.” Why should he not have? They were both practitioners of random and mass death terrorism.
Bin Laden’s killing is arguably the most daring and difficult undertaking executed by the administration. Should it now accede to one of his acolytes sharing power and extending the dominion of stealth and death? If it does we will look back on this achievement as a sham.
(Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic.)
