2003 Column Archives
Wing and a Prayer
By John Sammon
Sep 15, 2003, 14:44

I’m giving up criticizing George Bush over Iraq because it gets tiresome.

Bush is no longer alleging weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and is now calling it the “Central Front” against terrorism. There’s no front line. That’s World War Two thinking. International terrorism is mobile, it can hide in a basement, get on a plane, take a cab across a border, operate on a shoestring. It can disappear and reshape itself somewhere else.

The 9-11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. If the front’s anywhere, it’s in Saudi Arabia, our buddies.

This is a new kind of war, and it takes a new kind of thinking out of the box to fight it. Bush doesn’t have it.

These are my own solutions. They will be immediately dismissed out of hand without a thought by all you closed-minded flag-waving fanatics out there who think you know it all, have your minds already made up, and never give the possibility of the doubt that someone else might have a valid point.

In other words, you’re stupid.

I’m going to call my plan, not the “Road Map for Peace” (the Road Map’s a dead-end). I’m going to call my plan, “A Wing and a Prayer,” because that’s a more realistic honest assessment given the religious and political animosities that have festered in the Middle East for decades.

1. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the driving engine behind the trouble. It must be ended. The Palestinians must be given their own sovereign country. I propose a two-mile demilitarized zone similar to that separating North and South Korea (it’s worked for 50 years), to separate the new Palestinian State from its Jewish counterpart. Access would be severely restricted to check points, the DMZ to be manned by UN countries that share the burden on a rotating basis (one year per country).

2. Appoint Yasser Arafat as new president. Yes, we have to face it (like we had to accept Charles De Gaulle as leader of France). He’s the leader whether we like it or not. Human nature being what it is, if he’s president of a new state, he might act more statesmanlike, less like a bandit.
   
   
3. Release Palestinians currently languishing in Israeli jails according to a timetable (if peace continues, the releases continue).
   
   
4. Find a president of our own who is not an oil company executive, who’s willing to develop alternative sources of fuel, ending the drug dependency of Middle Eastern Oil. Bush won’t, because he makes a fortune off your gas tank. It’s time to put what’s best for the country before greed.
   
   
5. Develop an international police force similar to the European Interpol, with greater intelligence sharing between countries. Base the amount of American financial aid on the willingness to cooperate. Develop quick-moving strike teams using tactics similar to the terrorists, like the Israeli group who plucked Adolf Eichmann out of South America. More emphasis on moving fast, rather than ponderous, wasteful overwhelming force (pull American troops out of Iraq).
   
   
6. Greater use of Arab involvement in intelligence gathering and a wider range of monetary rewards for successful tips, rather than just offering money for Bin Laden.
   
   
7. Finally, say a prayer.