Monday,
October 29, 2001
U.S. is really alone in this war
Thomas J. Friedman, N.Y. Times
Service
SO, LET ME see if I've got this all straight now: Pakistan will allow us to use its bases Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays -- provided we bomb only Taliban whose names begin with Omar and who don't have cousins in the Pakistani secret service. India is with us on Tuesdays and Fridays, provided it can shell Pakistani forces around Kashmir all other days. Egypt is with us on Sundays, provided we don't tell anyone and provided we never mention that we give the Egyptians $2 billion a year in aid. Yasser Arafat is with us only after 10 p.m. on weekdays, when Palestinians who have been dancing in the streets over the World Trade Center attacks have gone to bed. The Northern Alliance is with us, provided we buy all its troops new sandals and give U.S. passports to the first 1,000 to reach Kabul.
Israel is with us provided we never question the lunacy of 7,000 Israeli colonial settlers living in the middle of a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Kuwait would like to be with us, it really would, since we saved Kuwait from Iraq, but two Islamists in the Kuwaiti parliament spoke out against the war, so the emir just doesn't want to take any chances. You understand. The Saudis, of course, want to be with us, but Saudis are not into war-fighting. That's for the household help. Don't worry. Prince Alwaleed has promised to rent us some Bangladeshi soldiers through a Saudi temp agency -- at only a small markup.
The Saudi ruling family would love to cooperate by handing over its police files on the 15 Saudis involved in the hijackings, but that would be a violation of their sovereignty, and, well, you know how much the Saudis respect sovereignty -- like when the Saudi Embassy in Washington rushed all of Osama bin Laden's relatives out of America after September 11 on a private Saudi jet, before they could be properly questioned by the FBI.
Then, there's my personal favorite: All our Arab-Muslim allies would love us to get bin Laden quickly, but the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is coming soon and the Muslim "street" will not tolerate fighting during Ramadan. Say, do you remember the 1973 Middle East war, launched by Egypt and Syria against Israel? Remember what that war was called in the Arab world? "The Ramadan War" -- because that's when it was started. Oh, well. I guess the Arab world can launch wars on Ramadan, but not receive them.
My fellow Americans, I hate to say this, but except for the good old Brits, we're all alone. And at the end of the day, it's U.S. and British troops who will have to go in, on the ground, and eliminate bin Laden.
Unfortunately, killing as many as 5,000 innocent Americans in New York just doesn't get the rest of the world that exercised. In part we're to blame. The unilateralist message the Bush team sent from its first day in office -- get rid of the Kyoto climate treaty, forget the biological treaty, forget arms control, and if the world doesn't like it that's tough -- has now come back to haunt us.
My advice: Try not to focus on any of this. Focus instead on the firefighters who rushed into the World Trade Center towers without asking, "How much?" Focus on the thousands of U.S. reservists who have left their jobs and families to go fight in Afghanistan without asking, "What's in it for me?" These young Americans know that September 11 is our holy day -- the first day in a just war to preserve our free, multi-religious, democratic society. And I don't really care if that war coincides with Ramadan, Christmas, Hanukkah or the Buddha's birthday -- the most respectful and spiritual thing we can do now is fight it until justice is done.