NO NEGOTIATING WITH TERRORISTS
By Michael D. Evans
When Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently returned from his fourth trip to Iraq in seven months, he seemed to signal that the administration is preparing to cut and run in line with the Baker-Hamilton recommendations. This would not only be a mistake in Iraq, but would demonstrate to the entire world that terrorism is rewarded.
Gates appears to share the Baker Commission’s desire for direct dialogue with Islamofascist Iran and Syria, capital to the world’s terrorist organizations. If the Bush administration were to do so, it would constitute a dangerous policy reversal based on appeasement. This is kind of extortion that is guaranteed to invite suicide bomber attacks on US soil.
Any effort to negotiate with Iran and Syria is a direct repudiation of the Bush Doctrine. Either Iran and Syria are part of the Axis of Evil or they’re not. President George W. Bush’s acquiescence to dialogue with these rogue states would both undermine his own declared foreign policy and deal a death blow to his political legacy.
Given the proliferation of terrorism throughout the world today, the Baker plan is an invitation to suicide bombers to begin attacking America. Just multiply the thousands of casualties to suicide bombers suffered by tiny Israel by their proportion to the population of a much less well-guarded United States – the projected death toll in America would be in the hundreds of thousands.
Once the terrorists sent by Iran and Syria to kill our troops in Iraq see our nation at the negotiating table, they will have no incentive to agree to a cease-fire. On the contrary, they will immediately begin attacking us at home. That’s what terrorists do. The failure to hold terrorist regimes accountable is an unforgivable weakness that will inevitably lead to more atrocities.
The Iraq situation is becoming a bad play in the theater of the absurd. The same president who said that you are either with us or with the terrorists, is now extending the olive branch to two nations that have sent tons of bombs, battalions of terrorists, and bundles of money to Iraq to defeat the democracy Americans are dying to help create. It is time for President Bush to say no to Iran and Syria.
It is also time for him to reject three-party talks between Iraq and our mortal terrorist enemies, and to stand up with moral clarity in the face of our enemies and the enemies of all civilization. Anything less than this would make America look weak at a time when it, as the world’s only remaining superpower, must be strong.
No one should know better than the United States who the enemy is in Iraq. The enemy is Iran and its proxies, who are behind the intra-Arab fighting and who are killing Americans every day – and so far winning the war.
As he left Baghdad, Gates spoke of the difficult task Iraqis face in sustaining their nascent democracy, and the justice of their cause. "No country can escape its history," he told the Associated Press. "The reality here is the Shia were repressed for a long time, as were the Kurds. Saddam Hussein and most of those in his government were Sunnis ... To try to bring these three groups together along with other minorities in Iraq is a difficult endeavor."
Gates' visit coincided with the launching of what many view as the final, desperate push for victory by US-led forces. Some 30,000 additional troops began a sweeping offensive aimed at uprooting al-Qaida from Baghdad. They are operating in key al-Qaida sectors where they previously had not been able to penetrate.
This notwithstanding, the US just suffered one of its deadliest months in the five-year war, as American deaths passed 3,500. The terrorists continue to improve their deadliness with more sophisticated roadside bombs – supplied, as are most of the weapons of the insurgency, by Iran.
Mike Evans is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Final Move Beyond Iraq published by Frontline.
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