A Second Look
Readers noticed that JINSA appeared to have no reaction to the three big news events of the past week: the precision elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, the completion of the Iraqi cabinet and the death of nine Gaza civilians in an explosion on the beach. In fact, JINSA’s 24th Flag & General Officers Trip was in Israel and we were away from the computer. But had we been at our desks, it probably would have been a good idea not to comment on any of the stories as they broke. They are better stories now.
Readers noticed that JINSA appeared to have no reaction to the three big news events of the past week: the precision elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, the completion of the Iraqi cabinet and the death of nine Gaza civilians in an explosion on the beach. In fact, JINSA’s 24th Flag & General Officers Trip was in Israel and we were away from the computer. But had we been at our desks, it probably would have been a good idea not to comment on any of the stories as they broke. They are better stories now.
Gaza: Israel was denounced for blowing up a picnicking Palestinian family – complete with truly awful scenes of a horror-stricken girl shrieking and rolling in the sand by the body of her father. (Don’t you wonder why the person with the camera didn’t put it down and comfort the child?) But in a fairly short time, physical evidence emerged that changed the picture: there was no crater where an artillery shell would have hit; timed video indicated that Israel’s shelling (of another area, not where the family was) had ended earlier; and shrapnel from one of the children treated in an Israeli hospital did not match Israeli munitions – Palestinian doctors tried to remove all of the metal before transferring the patients to Israel, but they missed some. PA forces quickly cleared the beach and sequestered any munitions they found. If they had evidence that there was an Israeli shell, don’t you think they might have shown it to CNN?
The likely culprit, it seems, was a Palestinian land mine buried on the beach to stop presumed Israeli infiltration by sea, although Israeli has not reentered Gaza since the disengagement and does most of its security-related work from the air and offshore.
What can one say about a Palestinian government that mines its own beaches and then lets its citizens picnic there? There is an enormous international effort to ban landmines, even in such useful and clearly defined circumstances as the DMZ in Korea. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, for example, calls itself an “international coalition of 1,400 NGOs in 90 countries, working for a global ban on landmines.” It regularly castigates the U.S., but has said nothing about a government that was mining its own beaches against a threat that does not exist.
The Zarkawi and the Iraqi Cabinet stories. Zarkawi started, rightly, as the lead story and the later details only increase our respect for the capabilities of American (and apparently Jordanian) intelligence and security forces. But the ignominious death of Zarkawi provided the moment for Iraq’s Prime Minister to present his cabinet to the Parliament and have it approved. That, over time, will be the greater story – the cabinet that wasn’t supposed to be completed by the government that wasn’t supposed to be elected under the constitution that wasn’t supposed to be ratified by the people who weren’t supposed to vote. Zarkawi himself wrote that an Iraqi government chosen by the people could fatally undermine the ability of al Qaeda to foment civil war in the country.
President Bush’s very brave visit to Iraq to assure the Prime Minister of America’s ongoing commitment will be a greater story also, paying dividends by supporting not only Iraq, but also advocates of consensual government elsewhere in the region.