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Jewish World Review July 5, 2005 / 28 Sivan, 5765 Teatime for the terrorists By Diana West
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
When asked to verify a British account of meetings at a summer villa
north of Baghdad between American officials and "some members of the
insurgency," as NBC's Tim Russert fashionably put it, Donald
Rumsfeld disputed only one assertion: the number of meetings said to
have taken place. The Times of London counted two, but "there have
probably been many more than that," the secretary of Defense
replied, launching into a secretarial defense of "reaching out to
the people who are not supporting the (Iraqi) government."
Can we take a roll call of these "people" who are "not supporting"
the Iraqi government? According to the Times report — which, again,
Rumsfeld let stand, correcting only that one small detail — it
seems that an American delegation, including senior military and
intelligence officers, a congressional staffer and an employee of
the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, has met probably multiple times with
non-supportive people, including representatives of Ansar al-Sunna,
the Islamic Army in Iraq, the Iraqi Liberation Army, Jaish Mohammed,
Thawarat al-Ishreen, the Shoura Council of Mujahideen and "other
smaller factions." In other words, some number of U.S. officials
have sat down to tea with some number of Islamic terrorists — or,
as they are now officially known, "people who are not supporting the
government."
There are two absolutely mind-boggling aspects to this story. The
first is that such meetings even took place. Aren't we the people
who don't negotiate with terrorists? The ones who voted George W.
"You're-Either-with-Us-or-Against-Us" Bush back into office?
Apparently not. Or, if we are, something has changed to the point
that such lines in the sand don't matter anymore. Additionally
mind-boggling is the fact that practically no one in the world has
noticed the change, or considered its disastrous ramifications.
After all, who are these groups we apparently had in for tea? They
may not exactly register with the Chamber of Commerce, but Ansar
al-Sunna, for example, is known to be either an offshoot of or an
alias for Ansar al-Islam, a post-9/11 jihadist group believed to
have ties with Iran and Al-Qaeda. Moreover, Ansar al-Sunna, which
officially opened shop in 2003, is said to be linked to the Zarqawi
network. Among the many bestial acts it is believed to have
committed in the name of Allah are last year's murders of 12
Nepalese laborers — one beheaded with a knife and 11 shot in the
back of the head, with their point of death on perpetual Internet
display — as well as 22 American servicemen, Iraqi soldiers and
civilian contractors, suicide-bombed to death as they sat down to
lunch in a Mosul mess tent a few days before Christmas.
Islamic Army in Iraq has achieved its own measure of bloody infamy:
the murder last August of Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni. It also
claims the shoot-down of a civilian helicopter that killed 11
passengers earlier this year, including six Americans. The lone
survivor, a Bulgarian pilot, emerged from the videotaped crash
injured but alive before being shot dead to cries of "Allahu akbar"
(Allah is great).
In other words, that was some tea party the United States of America
threw. If this guest list is legit, it represents a ghastly
capitulation to terrorists and a strategic victory for terrorism —
living proof that it's possible to kill and behead and hack and
dismember and terrify your way to a peace parlay with the U.S.A.
This suggests that we may now be seeking an accommodation with
Islamic terror networks rather than their obliteration or even
containment. And that suggests a sea change in strategy, vision and
soul.
But maybe, after almost four years into this brutal war, that sea
change is already behind us. For what is also remarkable about these
no-longer-secret talks is how unremarkable their revelation has
been. Talking with terrorists is no longer taboo. Come Hamas, come
Hezbollah, come Ansar al-Sunna: America is pouring tea.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Diana West |
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