Attention must be paid
America's message: `You're either with us or you're not'
Peace push. Holding on to Arab support may require Bush to accept Arab calls to actively mediate Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. The Bush team's passivity--relative to the Clinton administration's frenetic mediation efforts--has led Arabs to blame Washington for backing Israel amid bloody Israeli-Palestinian clashes, fueling support for anti-U.S. militants. "Americans are nice people," says Cairo TV commentator Rafat Soudy, "but their government's policies have made them hated by the Arab world." But renewed U.S. activism in brokering Mideast peace must be handled delicately--lest Bush be seen as altering his policy in response to terrorism. For that reason alone, attacks on terrorist havens are likely to occur before any new peace initiative is opened.
U.S. retaliation will strain Arab support if antiterror strikes kill civilians--or if Saddam Hussein's intelligence services are found to have had a hand in the attacks and Iraq becomes a target. The risk is that creating new martyrs ensures future suicide bombers. "Revenge for its own sake is not going to solve this," warns Joseph Nye, a former Pentagon official who now is dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Nye and other experts believe that anything that smacks nervous allies as a rush to judgment--or a disproportionate punishment that kills many innocent civilians--will weaken a new coalition. Restraint won't be easy. But it may mean the difference between a crusade that's global and one driven by America alone.
With Philip Smucker
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