Ode to Sharon

As many of you know, Sharon and Ben Lum have been in Washington, D.C. for the last couple years. I always felt honored to know both Ben and Sharon while we were in college. They have not been idle while residing in our nation’s capitol. Sharon is constantly on the move. As Ben will soon be moving back to his native California and Sharon will be coming to visit, I thought I would take this opportunity to bring you all up to speed on what Sharon has been doing. Sharon sure has been in the headlines a lot lately! The headlines formed such a coherent story that I simply integrated them right into my narrative, putting them in bold text so you can see how many headlines track Sharon’s every movement and action.

Background:
Sharon was born at Kfar Mala on February 27, 1928. During the 1948 War of Independence, she commanded an infantry company in the Alexandroni Brigade. These two things are obvious. Anyone who knows Sharon knows them already. But let’s get on to what’s happening now – today.

Sharon’s deadly gamble:
Sharon woos UTJ. This, understandably, made Ben very angry. But when he confronted Sharon about this, Sharon firm on negotiations. He waited about an hour for her to cool off, but Sharon won't be pushed into new talks. Ben’s anger grew and grew. It culminated when Sharon’s minority government ‘slapped.’ Sharon’s immediate, domestic response was seen by many as heavy handed. She stopped doing the dishes. Sharon, Labor Alliance Apparently Off. Ben knew that he was Sharon’s leading lady, but lately he sure didn’t feel like it. He wondered why she was doing all these confrontational things.

Then he found out, Sharon bribe inquiry may reopen. Then it all made sense. Ben started to feel bad that he had slapped Sharon. He knew she was a good person because Sharon Shows Concern for the Elderly. Unfortunately Ben’s machinations against Sharon could not be unstarted. His plan was already in the works. Everyone realized this when Former official targets Sharon. But Sharon wasn’t alone in her resistance. Sharon faces fight to fortify his party, but Jewish Agency Decides to Help Sharon. Eventually, and despite the fact that: Evidence clearly shows that Sharon took bribes, Ben decided that Sharon needs new friends. He immediately solicited a pair of guys he knew from work. Bush and Sharon Should Work With Arafat. Ben immediately recognized that this was working. He found out that Sharon won’t be charged and this staved off Sharon’s Disengagement Plan. Finally the good news came: Sharon’s bribery charges dropped.

One soap operatic struggle of Sharon’s life was drawing to a close, but Sharon still had many important things on her plate. For example, Sharon Wants a Better Presence in Front of High Court Bench. Also, recently, Bush, Chirac, and Sharon are winners of “Islamophobia Awards 2004.” Knowing Sharon is an honor, indeed!

Naivite => Arrogance

I saw a bumper sticker today that said, "Terrorism is a symptom, not the disease."

I would like to argue that this is an arrogant way of thinking. Here are some building blocks:

1) The idea that terrorism is a symptom implies a belief that terrorism is an understandable reaction to something, be it a policy, cultural imperialism, or whatever. This is not an obviously unreasonable thing to think. At some times terrorism is a very legitimate response. The French Resistance was undoubtedly viewed as "terrorism" of a sort, but few people around today question the legitimacy of blowing up bridges to slow the Nazi advance. The key is that terrorism is seen as a response to an external stimulus.

2) External stimuli ALWAYS exist. Unless you live in the only country in your known universe, you are affected by your neighbors. Sometimes they attack you outright. Sometimes you trade with them and have petty disagreements about tariffs.

3) No policy on the part of a country could ever make all people outside that country happy. No country that I know of comes anywhere close to keeping all of its own citizens happy. The US comes the closest in many ways. Despite disagreements, people seem still to be glad they live in the US instead of somewhere else - at least most people most of the time.

Let's take these three premises in reverse order and see where they lead. Since no country's actions will always make its neighbors happy, and those actions will undoubtedly reverberate in, and be felt by, other countries, terrorism is an understandable and basically inevitable response, on the part of the "losers" in any given situation.

I assert that believing this shows a fundamental arrogance on the part of the believer. If they believe that the terrorism going on now is justified, they must believe that it is a legitimate response to the policies of the US (or some other Western countries). If this terrorism is a legitimate response, then the US should presumably have pursued a different policy which would not have "created" terrorism abroad. But therein lies the rub. What policy wouldn't create terrorists? Supporting Saddam Hussein, even tacitly, would encourage Islamic Revolutionaries who want to supplant him to attack the US. Supporting the opposition to Saddam Hussein makes the US a target for his supporters (read: insurgents). Lest you think that we could have stayed out of this altogether, think about this problem:Before the first gulf war, Saddam killed innocent allies of the US (Kuwaitis). After the Gulf war, he tried to assassinate the former US President. Vladimir Putin has recently revealed that in the last several years Russian intelligence has gotten wind of multiple plots by Iraqi agents to attack targets in the United States. We didn't go to Iraq for fun to steal their oil. We had little choice but to deal with the situation there.

EITHER WAY SOMEONE IS GOING TO BE PISSED OFF.

If you believe that there are actions that the US could take which would somehow stave off terrorism against us, you are failing to take into account the multidude of differences between people OUTSIDE the United States. Some of them are diametrically opposed to one another. Peaceniks are mad when we encourage rebel insurgencies and they're mad when we try to counter them. This is naive and stupid. You can't have it both ways. The only way I can see that someone can believe that radical Islamist, anti-American terrorism is justified is to essentially say they Iraq was right and Iran was wrong, or vice versa. It's to say that the Palestinians are right and the Israelis are wrong, or vice versa. Many people have called me arrogant, but I don't pretend that I understand the Israel-Palestine problem so well that I know who's "right" and who's "wrong." But to believe there are choices the US could make which would prevent terrorism is to assume that there is one right answer to the Israel-Palestine problem.

According to dictionary.com, arrogant means "Marked by or arising from a feeling or assumption of one's superiority toward others". For someone living in the United States to think that some certain policy is so "right" that no one would rebel against it and be driven to terrorism seems quite arrogant to me.

To the person with the bumper sticker: I guess terrorism is a symptom. It's a symptom of a diseased mind that believes problems are solved by bombing innocent people riding the bus. Arrogance is a disease, too. Believing that you know better and everyone else out there just doesn't get it is arrogant. Maybe there's a reason why you're not the president of the United States, you idiot.

Israeli Disengagement

For several months I have been very undecided about Sharon's disengagement plan. I was unsure how it fit in with the "roadmap", whether it was simply a land grab, and how it could ever pass muster in the Likud party. Obviously the referendum has shown it didn't, in fact, carry a majority of Likud support. After reading about it and thinking about it for a long time, I have decided to tentatively support the disengagement plan.

The tipping point for me came from reading "Does Sharon Have a Plan?" by Hillel Halkin in the June, 2004 issue of Commentary. While the article is neither very detailed nor particularly well researched, it does make a powerful common-sense argument.

Four years of intifada has increasingly forced me to agree with the cynics that a peaceful, negotiated, two-state compromise seems about as unlikely as a peaceful single state for Jews and Arabs to share.

My dad pointed out that the disengagement plan still doesn't really solve the problem of what to do with Jerusalem, ever a sticking a point. I wonder if, even if the disengagement were to succeed, it would not simply re-focus terrorist attacks on Jerusalem.

Even though it may not solve the Jerusalem issue, the disengagement plan is necessary because it will begin to acclimate Israeli hardliners to the evacuation of settlements, which is inevitable.