It seems like David Warren is publishing more often. If so, that’s a win for all of us.
In his latest work, he takes a look at Sharon’s strategy for dealing with the barbarian bombers. I looked at the same thing yesterday, and came up with a cruel Robert McNamara analogy.
After reading Warren, I think I might have come down slightly too hard on Sharon. Here’s the meat:
Most significant is the intelligence haul from Mr. Arafat's compound. The IDF soldiers have been at pains to secure and remove files, documents, and communications records; the mission to Ramallah was in some sense planned like the commando raid on the Karine A in the Red Sea in January. There is presently a large traffic of intelligence "content" between the Israeli government and the CIA, Pentagon, State Department, and White House in Washington. Connexions between the Palestinian Authority and international Islamist terror organizations including Al Qaeda are being established, chapter and verse.
It is this intelligence haul that will keep the operation going. It is in effect Prime Minister Sharon's repayment to President George Bush for understanding as Israel proceeds with -- judging from the reported call-up of some 31,000 reserves -- its largest single military operation since the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. On this scale, it must be assumed that the IDF will go through the entire West Bank and Gaza, rounding up suspects, weapons, and documents in the most thorough clean-out of terrorist nests yet attempted.
I’m still not sure I buy it, however.
Earlier in the column, Warren compares Sharon’s tactics to baling water – so long as you bale faster than the water comes in, the boat won’t sink.
But that still doesn’t do anything to fix the leak.
And that’s why I think Sharon is doomed to failure. The rules changed for us on 9/11, and they changed for Israel on 3/27. This is not a time to bale water. This is not a time to think small.
This is a time for solutions as bold, as daring, and perhaps as horrific as the 9/11 attacks themselves.
