"The Politics of Murder"

David Ignatius has an interesting, albeit naïve, opinion piece in today's Washington Post.

He tackles the "troubles" in the Middle East.

He thinks he has isolated the problem and come up with some potential solutions regarding the the United States' role in the Middle East.

I think he's wrong.

Ignatius writes:

A disease is eating away at the Middle East. It afflicts the Syrians, the Iraqis, the Lebanese, even the Israelis. It is the idea that the only political determinant in the Arab world is raw force -- the power of physical intimidation. It is politics as assassination.

This week saw another sickening instance of this law of brute force, with the murder of Pierre Gemayel, a Lebanese cabinet minister who had been a strong critic of Syria. Given the brutal history of Syria's involvement in Lebanon, there's an instant temptation to blame Damascus. But in this land of death, there are so many killers and so few means of holding them to account that we can only guess at who pulled the trigger.

I fell in love with Lebanon the first time I visited the country 26 years ago. Part of its appeal, inevitably, was the sense of living on the edge -- in a land of charming, piratical characters who cherish their freedom. Lebanon has great newspapers, outspoken intellectuals, a wide-open democracy. It has almost everything a great society needs, in fact, except the rule of law.

And thus Ignatius identifies the problem in the vibrant land of Lebanon and the Middle East in general -- no rule of law.

As is so common today, he uses the disease paradigm to illustrate what's happening in the violent region.

The assassination, the murder, the use of force are all symptoms of the "sick" society.

A cure is needed, desperately.

...The sickness must end. The people of the Middle East are destroying themselves, literally and figuratively, with the politics of assassination. So many things are going right in the modern world -- until we reach the boundaries of the Middle East, where the gunmen hide in wait. Those who imagined they could stop the assassins' little guns with their big guns -- the United States and Israel come to mind -- have been undone by the howling gale of violence. In trying to fight the killers, they began to make their own arguments for assassination and torture. That should have been a sign that something had gone wrong.

Did the U.S. and Israel think that they could stop the "politics of assassination" and the terrorists' little guns with their big guns?

That's being very simplistic.

In the first place, neither the U.S. nor Israel have unleashed the truly big guns.

If we've been undone by the Middle Eastern brand of violence, it's precisely because we're fighting a war while trying to be politically correct. If we're bogged down, it's because we're permitting ourselves to be.

Ignatius dismisses U.S. efforts to compromise and to empower the people of the Middle East, to establish a framework by which freedom-loving people can seek a better life via the rule of law rather than by the barrel of a gun.

...The Middle East needs the rule of law -- not an order preached by outsiders but one demanded by Arabs who will not tolerate more of this killing. Any leader or nation who aspires to play a constructive role in the region's future must embrace this idea of legal accountability. That is what the United Nations insisted this week, with a unanimous Security Council resolution demanding that the murderers be brought to justice.

Ignatius has solved the problem!

The Middle East needs the rule of law.

No kidding!!!

In case he hasn't noticed, there are maniacs standing in the way of satisfying that need. God is supposedly telling them to destroy the infidels (that's us).

The real problem is far too many Arabs ARE tolerating the killing. They support it. They teach it. They want it.

Legal accountability?

The Middle Eastern suicide bombers, murdering in the name of Allah, are on a holy mission. Do you think these people care about legal accountability?

Moreover, Ignatius seems to think that there is a separation of church and state in the Middle East.

That's absurd.

Of course, there are citizens in the Middle East who want to have an ordered and civilized society. These oppressed people need help to fight the tyrants and the terrorists. We're helping them.

What's the alternative? Just stand by and let the hatred for Israel and America continue to be taught to Middle Eastern children, and wait for the next 9/11?

That's not an option.

Ignatius seems to forget that WE were attacked repeatedly throughout the 90s. And it's as if he can't remember the grand scale of the acts of war on September 11, 2001, when nearly three thousand innocents were slaughtered on American soil.

Now the United Nations must find a way to make the rule of law real. It has chartered a special investigator, Serge Brammertz, to gather the facts and has called for an international tribunal to try the cases. It must make this rule of law stick.

With all due respect, this is ridiculous. It's meaningless.

How is the UN, that savior worshipped by libs, going to make the rule of law stick?

It's nuts to think that special investigator Brammertz will supply the magic bullet to end the politics of murder.

...The idea that America is going to save the Arab world from itself is seductive, but it's wrong. We have watched in Iraq an excruciating demonstration of our inability to stop the killers. We aren't tough enough for it or smart enough -- and in the end it isn't our problem. The hard work of building a new Middle East will be done by the Arabs, or it won't happen. What would be unforgivable would be to assume that, in this part of the world, the rule of law is inherently impossible.

This paragraph is pure crap.

America isn't aiming to save the Arab world from itself. It's assisting Arabs save themselves from the hostile forces of Islamic extremists.

Ignatius slaps our military and our country when he says we aren't tough enough or smart enough (echoes of John Kerry) to deal with the extremism that brought down the World Trade Center and destroyed a section of the Pentagon and murdered all aboard United Airlines Flight 93.

And it certainly is our problem.

How incredibly stupid to suggest otherwise!

The terrorists and nutcase Middle Eastern leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have clearly stated their goals -- to destroy Israel and do as much damage to the U.S. as possible.

Of course it's our problem. OF COURSE.

I agree with him that building a new Middle East must be done by the Arabs. But just as the reconstruction of Europe happened after World War II, the civilized people need the help of other civilized people to build a democracy and a better life.

Ignatius ends with the lame claim that it would be wrong to assume that the rule of law can't be achieved in the Middle East.

That's just fine and dandy, but what's so frustrating is that Ignatius wants to bail out, redeploy, cut and run, whatever you want to call it.

If he believes that the rule of law can reign supreme, ending the politics of murder, then why would we not lend a hand in establishing it?

Obviously, the forces of good need our help. I'm sure the loved ones of those in the mass graves of Iraq, those brutalized and tortured, those children murdered by Saddam's WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, want to see justice.

What would Ignatius like to do?

Does he think that the U.S. should buy ad time on Arab TV and run some slick commercials telling Arab kids to "just say no" to Islamic extremism?

We can't possibly eradicate the Islamic extremists' desire to kill us, but we can help to bolster the civilized Arab world.

Think of it this way:

Just because it's impossible to permanently rid a garden of weeds doesn't mean that it's a mistake to pull out as many weeds as possible. It would be wrong to ignore the weeds and give up.

Is it better to let the weeds strangle the flowers and overtake the garden?

More importantly, can the flowers themselves kill the weeds that threaten their existence?