the nightboy wrote:
> I am surprised that noone has spoke about the attrocity at all on this list.
>
> please forgive me for the OT but it is important.
>
> I am forwarding this
Well, I received this interesting article about what happened.
THE GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE COMPANY
The Israeli Dimension
By George Friedman
The big winner today, intended or not, is the state of Israel.
Israel has been under siege by suicide bombers for more than a
year. It has responded by waging a systematic war against
Palestinian command structures. The international community,
particularly the United States, has pressured Israel heavily to
stop its operations. The argument has been made that the threat
of suicide bombings, though real, does not itself constitute a
genuine threat to Israeli national security and should not
trigger the kind of response Israel is making.
Today's events change all of this.
First, the United States no longer can argue that Israel should
endure the bombings. Moving forward, the domestic American
political mood simply won't tolerate such a stance.
Second, Israel now becomes, once again, an indispensable ally to
the United States. The United States is obviously going to launch
a massive covert and overt war against the international radical
Islamic movement that is assumed to be behind this attack. Not
only does this align U.S. and Israeli interests but it also makes
the United States dependent on the Israelis -- whose intelligence
capabilities in this area as well as covert operational
capabilities are clearly going to be needed.
There is no question, therefore, that the Israeli leadership is
feeling relief. Given that pressures for Israel to restrain
operations against the Palestinian Authority and other
Palestinian groups will decline dramatically, it might be
expected that Yasser Arafat, anticipating this evolution, will
rapidly change his position on suicide bombings and become more
accommodating to Israel. In effect, today's events have wrecked
Arafat's nearly successful drive to split the United States from
Israel.
Given that the bombers are not fools, they undoubtedly understood
that this would be a consequence. Their reasoning appears to be
that of Lenin: "Better fewer, but better." In other words, they
see Arafat and many others in the Arab world as weak and
indecisive. They are prepared to split the Arab world between two
camps in which they -- though smaller and weaker -- hold the
imagination of the Islamic masses as well as control the tempo of
events.
The greatest question right now is this: Which Islamic state was
involved in the attack? We suspect that there was such
involvement. The sophistication required means of communication
and transport available only to states. Afghanistan does not have
the international facilities needed. We assume that Sudanese and
Iraqi diplomatic communications and transport are both too
closely monitored to be useful. If that is true, what other
nation provided support facilities for this operation? Answering
that question speaks to the future of the region.
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