[1604] in peace2
Planning Meeting for April 20th TONIGHT 7pm
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brice C Smith)
Wed Apr 3 11:00:26 2002
Message-Id: <200204031554.KAA01413@magic-pi-ball.mit.edu>
To: peace-announce@mit.edu
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 10:54:47 -0500
From: Brice C Smith <elrond@MIT.EDU>
just to get you all in the mood, here is one of the most racist, war mongering
op-eds i have seen since that flurry right after 9/11 (and we all know how that
turned out). time is growing short to show that these ideas are not ours and
that we will not be silent. don't forget about the April 20th Anti-War March
in D.C. (this guy's home town) or our planning meeting tonight at 7pm in room
5-134. i hope to see you there.
and we all march blissfully towards the abyss...
--------------
April 3, 2002
COMMENTARY
Stop the Dream of an 'Arab Bomb'
By RANAN R. LURIE
A good friend of mine, the senior correspondent for a major
Arab newspaper, told me a joke: "I have great news for you,"
said the psychologist to his patient. "You are not suffering
from an inferiority complex. You are inferior."
We were musing about the military situation in the Middle
East. "Can you imagine," my friend said while staring at his
martini, "a people 122 million strong who couldn't militarily
beat a group less than 4% of its size? All of this repeating
itself again and again and again for 54 years?"
The drama of Arab military inferiority to Israel is entrenched
in the Arab psyche. It was underscored in the June 1982 air
battle between Syria and Israel: 94 Syrian fighter jets were
shot down; the only Israeli plane lost was downed by ground
fire. We in the West are aware of Israel's "might" and its
"victories," and we forget the insult these two words present
to the proud Arab people.
That is why the Arab nations hope that Saddam Hussein will
create the long-awaited "Arab bomb."
Vice President Dick Cheney is still unpacking his luggage from
a tour that was supposed to persuade Arab nations to support
the United States in an attack on Iraq--the only Arab nation
that has a realistic chance of creating what seems to be the
only way to bypass Israel's military superiority.
So, because the only way the Arab nations can overcome Israel
is to nuke it, and the only person who is close to this
capacity is Hussein, our effort to get other Arab leaders to
end his potential nuclear capacity is similar to training a
camel to fly.
Here is the certainty: When Iraqi scientists present their
dictator with the bomb on a given morning, it will detonate
over Israel that afternoon. For those smart, civilized
strategists who say that Hussein would not endanger his
Palestinian brethren, I would like to remind them that he
already has killed more than 100,000 of his own people in
"police actions."
In December 1977, I interviewed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat
for "The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour" on public television. After
the interview, Sadat recommended that I meet Field Marshal
Mohamed Abdel-Ghani Gamasi, commander of all of Egypt's
forces. When I met with the tall, handsome field marshal, he
said, "You, people of the West, must understand that until we
find an answer to the Israeli bomb, we won't sleep well. When
we snore, you won't sleep well either."
The U.S. can forget about any cooperation with an Arab country
in attacking Iraq.
To the contrary: We may anticipate their cooperation with Iraq
against us, not necessarily by fighting us on the ground but
by aiding Iraq with intelligence, moral support and threats of
an oil embargo. Unfortunately, Hussein's Arab bomb will be
their ticket to military equality with or even superiority
over Israel. No Arab leader would dare dampen that Arab dream.
We must get used to the idea that we are alone in this battle-
-and like it or not, the earlier we attack Iraq, the less the
chance of Israel or the United States being nuked.
*
Ranan R. Lurie, a senior adjunct fellow at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, is a
syndicated columnist and political cartoonist.
----
Generally speaking things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when
things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get
- Tom Stoppard
