- The essence of President George W. Bush's April 4 Rose
Garden performance, is that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was given
a one-week deadline to complete the Hitlerian invasion and ethnic cleansing
of the Palestinian population, and whatever may still remain of the
structure
of the Palestinian Authority. If Sharon has his way, the next week will
also see the extermination of Palestinian Authority President Yasser
Arafat.
-
- Israel will now be driven to use that window of
opportunity
Sharon has been given, to provoke a general war in the Middle East, most
likely through a provocation in Lebanon aimed at drawing Syria into the
war trap. The basic facts on the ground are: Sharon cannot sustain the
present genocidal operations against the Palestinians, either militarily
or politically. Sharon's ethnic cleansing campaign, and his tenure in
power,
are rapidly reaching a break point, as evidenced by the international
outcry
against the Israeli Defense Forces' Nazi-like operations throughout the
Palestinian territories. Sharon desperately needs a broader war to survive
politically.
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- Sharon will, thus, be driven to keep the war against
the Palestinians going, by changing the theater of operations. The past
days have seen the Israeli government focusing attention on purported
Hezbollah
operations against Israel, and against international relief agencies
operating
in southern Lebanon.
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- Although it cannot be forecast with absolute certainty,
it is highly likely, however unpleasant, that Sharon will use the brief
window of time, before the arrival of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
in Israel, to provoke the broader war, initially targeted at Syria. This
defines the immediate days ahead as a flashpoint for a major
destabilization
of the already-smoldering Middle East and Persian Gulf region.
-
- Sharon's larger goal is to provoke a war against Iraq,
preferably a United States-led war. However, if the United States
administration
balks at an attack on Iraq to commence during the immediate weeks ahead,
Sharon will likely launch such an attack on his own. Again, this is not
a certainty, but it is an immediate danger that cannot be ignored, except
at great peril. It defines the direction in which Sharon, his war cabinet,
and his IDF co-conspirators are driving the situation.
-
- The President of the United States and his leading
advisors
must recognize, that if Sharon goes ahead with his immediate war plan,
this will mean the political doom of George W. Bush. In the hours after
the President's Rose Garden speech, the entire neo-Conservative crowd of
Sharon boosters in the American media, issued celebratory endorsements,
characterizing Bush's blame-game rhetoric against Yasser Arafat as the
Palestinian Authority Chairman's "epitaph." A spokesman for
President
Arafat declared that Bush's remarks were tantamount to a green light for
Sharon to kill Arafat.
-
- Bush apologists argue, that were the President to have
sent Colin Powell immediately to the Middle East, or had Bush taken an
appropriately harsh stance against Sharon's Nazi-like conduct of the
invasions
of the Palestinian territories, "Joe Lieberman would be the next
President."
These Bush defenders whimper that only 11 of the 435 members of the House
of Representatives are not under the grip of the Israel Lobby, and that
"political expediencies" argue against a head-on confrontation
with Sharon.
-
- This is a cheap excuse. If the President does not act
immediately, the Middle East will almost certainly explode, oil prices
will skyrocket overnight, the fragile global financial superstructure will
crash, and his Presidency will be politically finished, faster than you
can say "Read my lips."
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- But, then again, George W. Bush was not selected as the
Republican Party Presidential nominee because of his genius.
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