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Alan Keyes is Making Sense
Alan KeyesApril 2, 2002
Welcome to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes.
Once again tonight, we're going to focus on the ongoing difficulties with the Middle East. Also, the relationship between the policy confusion that to a certain extent seems to have emerged in the articulation of U.S. policy towards the Middle East and the overall war on terror.
Events in the Middle East continue to increase and intensify. Israeli tanks are entering the West Bank towns of Jenin and Salfeet tonight. And we are going to be talking about one of the key issues that has emerged over the course of the last little while. Is Yasser Arafat a terrorist?
This is a question that has been raised because the administration spokesmen appear to be, well, shall we say, a little confused about this. We know that Yasser Arafat's so-called martyrs, the suicide bombers who have been committing these acts of terrorism are, in fact, associated with the PLO, have received the approval of Yasser Arafat. He has called them martyrs. Even said that he would be honored to join their ranks.
And yet, yesterday, when the question was directly put to him, as we pointed out on the show yesterday, this is what President Bush had to say in response to a question about Yasser Arafat's status as a terrorist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: Under your doctrine, a terrorist or someone who aids a terrorist is the equivalent of a terrorist. So, what's keeping Chairman Arafat — what's keeping you from labeling Chairman Arafat?
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, Chairman Arafat has agreed to a peace process. He's agreed to the Tenet Plan. He's agreed to the Mitchell Plan. He's negotiated with parties as to how to achieve peace. And of course, our hope is that he accepts the Tenet Plan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: See, the great problem with that is, don't actions make a terrorist? I mean, the fact that I sign on or did sign on in the past to some peace process, if I then try to influence that process by going out and killing innocent people, by asking that others go out and kill innocent people in large numbers, that I'm not a terrorist because I'm participating in the process I am seeking with that violence to subvert? What sense does this make?
This is the problem. It's also a problem because yesterday, a press conference was held in which high-level Bush administration officials stigmatized Iran, Iraq, others who are supporting the suicide bombers, supporting these so-called Martyr Brigades. Their support for the suicide bombers was stigmatized as terrorism. And yet, Arafat's welcoming of those bombings, his possible support, even funding, because the Israelis have now found a cache of intelligence that indicates clearly and directly that maybe there was a PLO involvement in the funding of these bombers.
Well, tonight, we are going to be addressing these questions. First up, is Arafat a terrorist? If not, then who is a terrorist? Are we back to the days when one man's terrorist is another man's resistance fighter, another man's freedom fighter, another man's this or that? Will this kind of confusion undermine the war on terrorism, as we get away from the kind of clarity that closely characterized American policy in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks?
Well, joining us now to discuss this, in the first instance, Clovis Maksoud, a former Arab League ambassador to the United States and the United Nations. Also with us, Arnaud DeBorchgrave, editor in chief of the “Washington Times” and United Press International and senior adviser at the Center of Strategic and International Studies. Gentlemen, welcome to MAKING SENSE.
ARNAUD DEBORCHGRAVE, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Former editor, please.
KEYES: Former editor, sorry.
First up, I would like to ask Ambassador Maksoud, we have had a report today that the Israelis claim to have found a cache of documents that indicate that there was direct PLO funding for the suicide bombers in the terror attacks that, of course, Yasser Arafat has characterized as martyrdom and, in that sense, welcomed.
With that kind of evidence in front of us, don't you think it would make sense for the United States to stigmatize Yasser Arafat as a terrorist? I mean, after all, we have said that those who sponsor and facilitate terrorism are themselves terrorists. Why shouldn't we step forward and apply this label to Yasser Arafat?
CLOVIS MAKSOUD, FORMER ARAB LEAGUE AMBASSADOR TO U.S. & U.N.: Well, because Yasser Arafat is the head of the Palestinian Authority. He's the head of the PLO. He has been recognized and continues to be recognized by the international community, even by the United States, although reluctantly and sometimes grudgingly. He remains the symbol of the unity of the Palestinian people. He has participated in a resistance movement. When the occupation is clear, he has to resist. He has tried the peace option, which has not succeeded.
The important thing to realize that in many instances, this Palestinian resistance did have certain desperate acts which is wrong and has been condemned by Yasser Arafat and by the resistance movement. There is a fundamental and qualitative difference between resistance to occupation and between terrorism. Terrorism is an act of despair. Resistance is an act of hope and the ultimate outcome of a liberation of the independence of Palestine.
KEYES: Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador, I don't quite understand what you're saying.
MAKSOUD: Well, let me explain.
KEYES: Let me finish, please. In the light of what we have actually seen going on, Yasser Arafat has praised what you call these acts of despair. He has praised the martyrs involved with them, both in English and in Arabic, so that there would be no ambiguity about it.
Today, the Israelis came across documents that indicated quite clearly, here's what the documents said. The cost that they were being asked or “the cost of supplying electronic and chemical components for explosive devices and bombs — this was our largest expense.” This is now an official of the PLO writing. “The cost of preparing a bomb is at least 700 shekels. We need to equip five to nine bombs each week for our cells in various locations.”
Now this from a document in which those who are putting together these bombs are requesting funding from the Palestinian Authority. Now You Say he's head of the Palestinian Authority and so forth and so on. Well, don't we have to judge a terrorist by what he does, not by what position he holds?
MAKSOUD: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, First of all, let us assume, which is not proven at all, that this document is authentic. And secondly, I mean, if you want to have for one week, five, six bombs, imagine that Israel, the nuclear power, is worried about that and keeping its occupation and worried about this level of armaments by the Palestinian people. This is absolutely double standard applied.
KEYES: Oh, come on. Mr. Ambassador, I am sorry. I am sorry. I'm losing my patience with folks who miss the point here. The point is — no, the point isn't how many of these suicide bombs you have or make. The point is that when you send these bombers out consciously to target innocent civilian lives, you have crossed the line between war and terrorism, war and evil. And it seems to me that's what clearly is taken.
Let me first, before we continue though...
(CROSSTALK)
MAKSOUD: That has been condemned.
KEYES: Let me go to Arnaud DeBorchgrave. Arnold DeBorchgrave, I'm getting a little impatient, I guess, with this situation on all sides. We have an administration that appears to be unwilling to look the actions in the face and call them and the individuals sponsoring them what they are. What sense do you make of this?
DEBORCHGRAVE: Alan, by accident of birth, I've been reporting for over half a century. I covered the mau-maus (ph) in Kenya, Jo Mo Keniyata (ph) and his followers launched all sorts of acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. I also covered Ben Bella's (ph) rebellion in Algeria beginning in November of 1954 which went on for eight years. And there were terrible massacres that took place there. Then Bella emerged as a hero throughout the third world. I can give you countless examples like that. Terrorism is the weapon of the weak against the strong.
KEYES: But the weapon of the weak against the strong is nonetheless an objectively evil instrument. Are we now to embrace it because of the fact that there are those out there willing to tolerate it?
DEBORCHGRAVE: No. We're not — I'm just trying to explain why people do resort to terrorism. What do the Palestinians have against tanks, Apache helicopters and so forth? They have terrorism, or what we are calling terrorism.
KEYES: Well, I'm sorry. It seems to me, Arnaud, that what they had was a process whereby they could sit down at a negotiating table, get the Palestinian Authority, come to some understanding that might actually lead to the kind of state that they are looking for. That's what they had. And are we now to say that having that, and in spite of that, having launched this kind of attack against the innocent, we're going to sit back and continue to play games about what we call it?
DEBORCHGRAVE: No, I'm not suggesting that. I'm trying to explain to you, for eight years in Algeria, they resorted to terrorism while negotiations were going on. In a French town called Avion, you had terrorism and negotiations at the same time. There are countless such examples during the past 50 years.
KEYES: But the examples, I think, don't relieve us of responsibility for the present situation. All those examples would suggest that this policy of terrorism has in the past for some folks been successful, that therefore it may be successful for the Palestinians today. That would seem to me a conclusion that would fuel further violence, further destruction of innocent life, especially if it is tolerated by a U.S. administration. Is that the position we're going to put ourselves in?
DEBORCHGRAVE: No, I don't think it is being tolerated. I'm trying to explain or give it a little bit of historical perspective. Obviously, everybody is outraged when poor Israeli civilians who have absolutely no part in this dispute get killed by a suicide bomber. I'm simply trying to explain that many such objectives have been achieved in the past with similar measures.
KEYES: But it seems to me that if the objective is, in fact, peace rather than simply the fulfillment of whatever may be Yasser Arafat's agenda, it is incumbent on the United States to be consistent in its application of our understanding of terrorism. How can we condemn the people who are funding the martyr bombers, funding the suicide bombers, and funding the institutions of organizations that ordered them to commit these atrocities, and say that they are terrorists for funding these actions, but those who are actually ordering and approving of them are not terrorists. What sense does this make?
DEBORCHGRAVE: It doesn't make any sense at all. It depends entirely on the perspective that you use to examine what is going on. It seems to me that you can not lose sight of the fact that there is a Palestinian state in the making that is presently occupied by Israel. And these people are fighting against the occupation. As we've seen in many cases, again, throughout the last 50 years. Occupation is resisted. And if you don't have the same weapons as the occupiers, you resort to terrorism.
KEYES: Sad to say Arnaud, I think we are in fact forgetting even the most recent history. Because the level of death that was being inflicted on innocent Israelis was high before Israel moved back into the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, in order to respond to the continuing level of violence.
The idea that you sit down at a negotiating table, come to a conclusion, start that process, hand over authority — try to work, in fact, with the Palestinian Authority to establish cooperation, and yet against the backdrop of that violence continued day after day until they were finally forced to move. We're supposed to forget that history and pretend that they never pulled out of the West Bank. Next we'll be pretending they never pulled out of Lebanon.
MAKSOUD: Mr. Alan Keyes, may I ask you a question?
KEYES: Go right ahead.
MAKSOUD: Do you consider Israel in the occupied territories of '67 an occupying power?
KEYES: No. As a matter of fact, I think the whole notion that we are looking here at some kind of illegitimate occupation utterly disguises and falsifies history. The '67 war was, in fact, started by the Arab states. Israel moved into the West Bank and Gaza after giving the king of Jordan plenty of opportunity to stay out of that war. And when he finally refused to do so, they moved in. What everyone now seems to be blaming them for is the fact that having their existence threatened at that time, startling the world with the success of their military response, they are now to be punished for that success, even though in return for a willingness expressed time and again to give up those territories, we have yet to see a diminution of the violence that is taking the lives of innocent civilians.
I frankly am losing patience with these lies. I am losing patience with this unwillingness to look at the real historical record.
MAKSOUD: Then if they're not occupier, then the resistance in your view is a terrorist?
KEYES: Well I think that when you have a process, and the president referred to it —
MAKSOUD: Don't hang up to the president.
KEYES: Yasser Arafat...
MAKSOUD: Answer the question. Answer the question.
KEYES: ... is part of a peace process. Instead of letting that process work, he has chosen to use the instruments of violence in order to manipulate that process for his gain.
MAKSOUD: That is your own —
KEYES: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) innocent civilians to achieve that agenda.
MAKSOUD: That is your own viewpoint, which is not shared by the international community. Thank God for that.
KEYES: Well, I've got to tell you. The international community has blinked its eyes and embraced evil more than once in the course of the 20th century and before. I don't think it's the place of the United States to make its judgments on the basis of what compromises with evil will be made by others who in the past showed themselves altogether too willing to do so.
MAKSOUD: Well, I'm glad that you have monopolized to define what is evil. I'm sorry —
KEYES: Gentlemen. Mr. Ambassador, we'll have to take this up the next time we meet. I want to thank you both for joining me this evening.
Next, we're going to continue our effort to get to the heart of this matter and to look further at what is implied by the apparent contradiction in what the administration is willing to say about Yasser Arafat, but what it does say about those who support his activities. So we'll be joined by a panel to discuss this question of whether or not this confusion, in fact, is undermining the position that the United States needs to take against terrorism in its war on terror. We'll be right back with the heart of the matter.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
Welcome back to MAKING SENSE. Now, let's try to get to the heart of this matter. The logical problem that we have here, which then translates into a policy problem. We are moving against states like Iraq, like Iran, like others who are sponsors of terrorism. Yesterday, the administration comes out and basically makes it clear we want to move against these states precisely because they are funding the terrible violence that is moving against the innocent in the Middle East.
Yet at the same time we say they are funding Arafat's minions is terrorism, the work of those minions and Arafat themselves, who commands and supports them — well, somehow or another because he's manipulating the process through this violence, we are to consider him not a terrorist. Are we back to the days when one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and we're too confused to tell the difference? I think that poses great problems for the kind of consistency and commitment we are clearly going to need to sustain our own efforts against those terrorists who is directed such a fateful blow against us last September.
To talk about this, joining us now, James Phillips, Middle East research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Also with us, Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and vice president council on foreign relations. And finally, Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, a former representative to the U.N. Security Council and a former member of Clinton's National Security Council.
Let me go first to James Phillips from Heritage. Do you see any implications in — or first, do you see the confusion? Second, do you see any implications in that confusion for our larger policies in the war against terrorism?
JAMES PHILLIPS, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, I think President Bush is trying to be diplomatic by his choice of words. And that has injected some degree of confusion. Although, I think that the administration would argue that be keeping its eyes on the struggle against the greatest threats of terrorism and by that I would say al Qaeda, Iraq, and other terrorist movements, in order to do that, the U.S. needs Arab cooperation — it would argue, the administration would argue. And therefore, it has to go easy on Arafat.
But since I'm not part of the government, I would agree with you that Arafat in the past has been a terrorist. He rose to political power through the use of terrorism. Not only against Israelis, but against Arabs. He tried to overthrow King Hussein in Jordan, after promising him that his guerrillas would not strike against the state. And he's attacked other Arab leaders and regimes.
So he has a long-standing history of using terrorism. And I'm concerned that he has drawn the conclusion that terrorism works. And terrorism works, unfortunately, in the context of a peace process even though, by the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords, he was supposed to give up terrorism.
KEYES: Let me go to Lawrence Korb. Looking at, for instance, the result of the vice president's trip around the Middle East, which was partially intended, as we all understood it from the public presentation, to try to both sound-out opinion and get support and cooperation for action we might consider necessary against Iraq.
The fallout from that seemed to be, in fact, at the last Arab Conference that the Arabs kind of kissed Saddam Hussein on the cheek, started to regard him as a good guy, declared that nobody should touch him.
Don't we find ourselves, in that respect, in a more difficult position? And if we then, as we did yesterday, continue to say, You're a terrorist-sponsoring state and we base that on your support for Yasser Arafat, how does Iraq's support for Yasser Arafat distinguish it from Saudi Arabia? Isn't this a problem?
LAWRENCE KORB: Well, there's no doubt about the fact that the president has expanded the war beyond its original target. His original target was a war against terrorists with a global reach, not against terrorists all over the world. I mean, for example, the IRA, for example, is not somebody we've gone to war with.
And the terrorists in the Middle East are not terrorists with a global reach. And so, therefore, they're not part of the war.
You need the support of the Arab nations to wage war against al Qaeda. That war is not over. And before you can think about going to Iraq, you need to deal with al Qaeda. You also need to deal with the situation between the Palestinians and the Israelis, because the Arab nations are not going to support any action against Iraq while that situation is still inflamed.
And they feel the United States has been so focused on Iraq, they've ignored the Middle East. This administration basically stayed out of the Middle East until events got so far out of control it's going to be very hard for them to put it back together again. They should have picked up where president Clinton had left off, we wouldn't be in this mess now.
And so the president has got himself in trouble by doing that, and then by giving the “axis of evil” speech in his State of the Union Address, he broadened it from a war against terrorists to a war against nations that have, or are trying to get weapons of mass destruction.
And again, that's a different conflict. You mix up all of these three things and it's bound to be confusing.
KEYES: Well, I understand the contention. And partly, I guess, see the legitimacy of saying that this is somehow not connected to, say, Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda.
And yet, Nancy Soderberg, let me address this to you. It was the case, as I recall, that Osama bin Laden precisely tied his terrorist attack against the United States to the America's stance on the Middle East. And so that is not a new element. It was an element that he — a card that he tried to play in defense of his reprehensible actions.
Don't we have to take the position, whether here or with Arafat or anybody else that the conscious targeting of innocent life to achieve your political goals is simply unacceptable, whether it's Osama bin Laden or Yasser Arafat or the IRA or whoever it might be?
NANCY SODERBERG: Well of course terrorism anywhere is unacceptable. The question is, How do you combat it?
And I think the administration has done well to topple al Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that was responsible for September 11. But you have to look beyond that.
And if you look at the administration's foreign policy beyond Afghanistan, I think it's time to realize it's been an utter disaster. And unless they get a hold of it, things are going to get much worse.
Secretary Cheney's trip to the Middle East to gain support for a war against was an utter failure. You're getting mixed messages from the administration on the Middle East. One minute the Bush administration says at the U.N. that the Israelis should withdraw from Ramallah and other areas; the next minute you've got President Bush saying, well, the Sharon administration is doing just fine.
They're really out of their league here. And I think it's time for them to get off of the phone and get engaged directly in the search for peace in the Middle East. And until they do that, things are just going to continue to spiral out of control and terrorism is going to get much, much worse.
KEYES: James Phillips, do you think that that portrait of the present state of our policy with respect to the Middle East is accurate?
If it is, given the interconnections that I think we can't deny between our freedom of action with respect to the larger problem of terrorism and our ability to sustain a coherent approach to the Middle East — given those interconnections, wouldn't a lack of clarity and effectiveness in this area have implications for our larger war on terrorism?
JAMES PHILLIPS: Well, I would agree that U.S. policy has been in collapse on two fronts, the Israeli-Palestinian front and on the front of containing Iraq.
But if you look at what caused those collapses, it's not a policy of the Bush administration, but these collapses were the legacy of the Clinton administration and the Clinton administration's failed policy in overestimating Yasser Arafat's commitment to peace and underestimating Saddam Hussein's commitment to break out of his box.
The administration was telling us for eight years that Saddam Hussein was in his box, Saddam was in his box. And, you know, I just don't buy that. Since 1998, since the ejection of the U.N. arms inspectors, we don't know what Saddam even has in his box.
He's been working on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, according to German intelligence. He's an estimated three years away from a nuclear bomb. If he gets that, it's a whole new ball game.
On the Israeli-Palestinian front, I hear a lot of criticism about how the U.S. is not sufficiently engaged. And I would just remind everybody that President Clinton's administration was extremely engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to the point where President Clinton met with Yasser Arafat more than any other leader, which is incredible.
And yet Arafat still turned around and stabbed him in the back by violating his commitments under the Oslo Accord and walking away from Camp David.
KEYES: But James, listen, I am not criticizing the administration for a wait-and-see approach, for a policy that, essentially, was willing to let the situation ripen to a certain degree. But such a policy is not a passive policy. In order to sustain it you have to be thoughtful, coherent, intelligence in your articulation and fairly active in your defense of your apparent inactivity.
I haven't, to be quite frank, seen that combination in what the administration has been doing, with the result that instead of having an effective sort of policy that allowed the situation to ripen, we seem, instead, to have allowed the situation to collapse. And there is a difference there, and I'm not sure it was intended by them.
Go right ahead, quickly.
SODERBERG: Well, one situation that has been overlooked in the crisis in the Middle East is the administration's policy towards Iraq. The rhetoric against Saddam Hussein has been way ahead of the decision-making by the Bush administration.
Number one rule in foreign policy is you don't let your rhetoric get ahead of your policy decision. The Bush administration has made it clear it wants to overthrow Saddam Hussein without deciding how it's going to do it.
If you're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein you need to make a prior commitment of a couple hundred thousand troops to do so. It is sort of hoping that it can do an Afghanistan by bombing Saddam Hussein out of power without making the commitment to put the American troops on the ground, without lining up the support of the region.
And it's been an utter failure. Cheney got completely rejected during his tour. And I think that you've got step back and say, What is the strategy here?
KEYES: Well, I think one part of the problem — and we've come, unfortunately, to the end of the time we have for our discussion — but I think that one part of the problem, precisely, has to do with a failure to think through in a strategic sense the implications of our stated policy goals and desires. What I used to call when I was involved in all of this stuff, policies of wishful thinking that in point of fact are not a substitute for policies that are based on a careful assessment of the realities of the situation and the kind of tough decisions we have to take in order to take advantage of those realities to produce the result we want to see.
That kind of coherence hasn't been there. And in part, I have to say, I know there are institutional stresses and strains and all this within every administration. But it is a president's job in the end to impress coherence on those kinds of stresses and strains. And it's going to have to be done if we're going to see a resolution of the confusion that I think is now being encouraged in U.S. policy.
Anyway, thanks for being with us everyone. Really appreciate your taking the time.
Next, we're going to be talking about another issue that has now come up in the context of the present situation. The Israelis have talked about possibly exiling Yasser Arafat. Does this make sense? Would he be more or less dangerous to peace?
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: Welcome back to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes.
Now, yesterday on our program, senior policy advisor to Ariel Sharon, Dore Gold, told us that the Israeli government has really come to the conclusion that this is somebody they can't deal with.
And that, I think, has fueled some of the suggestions and speculations about the possibility that Arafat be exiled, that he would be allowed to leave the region, but not allowed back in.
Today, is the Israelis were saying, through the Prime Minister, that if Arafat were to leave the country — and they would facilitate that leaving — that he wouldn't be coming back.
In response, Secretary of State Colin Powell on our side had this to say about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLIN POWELL, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I don't think it would help the situation.
He is in Ramallah. He is seen as the leader of the Palestinian people. Whether that is attractive to others or not, that is the role he has.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: Now, I am not sure I would say that just because he's the leader of this or that, this is a bad idea.
But at the end of the day, if you sent Yasser Arafat out of the region, and then he were wandering around the world, surely trying to continue to get support for the Palestinian in the Arab capitals and the European capitals at the same time that being away from the action, it would be kind of pointless to point at him and say, you should do something. You should control the suicide bombers, and so forth.
He might have the best of both worlds, being able to pursue a propaganda campaign, and yet, being in a position where he could disclaim all the responsibility for accomplishing anything constructive.
Would that be a better situation?
To talk about this, joining us now, Raymond Tanter, a Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and a former staff member for President Reagan's National Security Council.
And Walid Phares, Senior Fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Let me go first to Walid Phares. Do you think that this idea of exile makes sense?
WALID PHARES, FELLOW, FOUNDATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: Well, the idea of exile has been executed before by Syria in 1990, when they invaded East Beirut and exiled a Prime Minister in France, Michel Aoun, who is still in France.
So it has happened in the Middle East. But this is not the case today in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
It is true that on the one hand Yasser Arafat is seen by his followers as a national figure. But it's also true that the Israelis cannot negotiate with a leader who is endorsing suicide attacks against them.
A practical solution would be today, for the international community, to actually invite Mr. Arafat to New York to address the United Nations, and in fact, to really go back to the Madrid premise and renegotiate the whole Oslo agreement.
The Oslo agreement is gone.
There was a contract between Israelis and Palestinians, whereby Mr. Arafat will take the control of an autonomous area, but would make sure to safeguard the security of the borders with Israel. And the Israelis in return would recognize him.
This contract has failed. We are back into square one. So, he ...
KEYES: Well, ...
PHARES: ... must go address the international community again.
KEYES: But the question I think I have before I get to Raymond Tanter is very simple.
If, as you say, the Oslo regime is somehow in shambles, and you have to start from square one, doesn't the track record that exists since the time that that understanding was reached militate against sitting down at the table with the same set of leaders and, who have already proven not as good as their word?
Can Israel actually do that?
PHARES: Well, Israel sat with Mr. Arafat in the early '90s. They were the one who recognized him as a partner for peace.
And someone in Israel said, you only make peace with your enemies.
But at this point in time it's a fact that after Mr. Arafat has endorsed, helped — and with the help of other regimes in the region — the actions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad by not countering them, he has breached the actual contract, and therefore, cannot be a partner for Israel today, if he doesn't make a statement, a clear statement, and as President Bush said, in Arabic, condemning the actions of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.
KEYES: Well, let me go to Raymond Tanter before I give a thought or two on that.
What is your sense? Is this approach of exile something that you think would make sense in this situation?
RAYMOND TANTER, SENIOR FELLOW, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: Alan, exiling Arafat gives him the sense, the aura, that he is a political victim and not the terrorist that he actually is.
Exiling Arafat is a really bad idea. It seems that it's a bad idea whose time has come. And I think it's an awful idea.
It would give him a platform. He would be the flying Palestinian, like the flying Dutchman, going from port to port to port in the Wagnerian opera.
It's just not a good idea, Alan.
KEYES: Well, I must confess that I look at it myself. And I see a lot of drawbacks in terms of being able, in fact, to affix responsibility.
At one and the same time, you'd have a continuing kind of peripatetic leader who would say, I speak for the Palestinians, and you must negotiate with me.
The terror on the ground, the violence would continue, with nobody to talk to to stop it, nobody able to take responsibility for it.
I frankly don't see how this would be a step forward.
And Walid Phares, if he went to the United Nations, which I'm sure he would eventually do, and he made all kinds of declarations, I still have a problem.
Why should anybody believe that those declarations would carry any more weight, be respected to any degree more than the ones he has made several times in the course of the last decade and more?
PHARES: Well, you have a point. It's more than one decade, actually. It's two decades.
He has signed 103 agreements of cease-fires back in the days in Lebanon. He has breached three peace agreements with the Lebanese governments way before that. These are facts that we are understand.
But the point is that the party to be blamed today, in addition probably to Arafat for his endorsement of terrorism, is the Arab summit.
The international community and the United States have expected that the Arab summit in Beirut was supposed to condemn terrorism, and therefore endorse Arafat's condemnation of terrorism on the one hand, to side with the United States on the issue of Iraq.
And finally, to seriously support the Saudi proposal, which by the way condemn terrorism.
And on those three counts, the Arab summit did not deliver.
And the reason why it didn't deliver was because there was an alliance within that Arab summit, headed by Syria, Iraq, Hezbollah and others, who have sank the whole peace process, and forced Arafat to continue in this position whereby he has a choice between being encircled by the Israelis or between being taken over by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
It's not an easy situation.
KEYES: Now, very quickly, Raymond Tanter, the President says he needs to denounce terrorism in Arabic, as well as in English, because of the possible duplicity there.
But the great problem I have, whether he denounces it in Arabic or in English, if his actions don't match his words, aren't we just giving a liar another chance to put one over on the world?
TANTER: Well, very important. Words in the Arabic language are very, very important, Alan.
You want Arafat to make a declaratory statement, and you want his actions to marry those words.
But the words without the actions, as you point out, are meaningless.
KEYES: We're going to have more from our guests in just a moment.
And later, we'll have my outrage of the day.
But first, does this make sense to you? There is a group that takes wolves into the classroom to teach kids not to fear wolves.
Well, one such wolf was taken into a classroom, grabbed a 10-year-old in a supermarket parking lot, dragged the youngster 20 feet before letting go.
The boy was treated for puncture wounds, scrapes and bruises.
Do you really think that it makes sense to take a wild animal into the classroom and risk this kind of episode in order to teach kids not to be afraid of them?
It doesn't sound like you're achieving the objective.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: We're back with more of MAKING SENSE.
We're talking about the idea of whether or not it would make sense to exile Yasser Arafat from the region.
The Israeli government has in effect suggested that he would be allowed to leave and not come back, a form of exile from the region and from the situation there.
Still with us, Raymond Tanter and Walid Phares.
And first I want to go to Raymond Tanter.
If, as I think you are saying, one does not embrace this idea of exiling Yasser Arafat, and yet the Israeli government is serious about the idea that they can't at this stage work with him and negotiate with somebody who has proven so untrue to his obligations as they see them, what is the alternative?
TANTER: Well, Israel, Alan, has no choice but to keep its eye on the ball.
And the ball is to root out the terrorist infrastructure in Bethlehem, in Ramallah, in Bayt Jala. That is the focus of attention.
You don't want the focus to shift to Arafat, the flying Palestinian going from port to port to port. It changes the subject.
It is extremely important to get the organizations that send out the suicide bombers.
These suicide bombers are not some deranged individuals. They are individuals who are being manipulated by organizations dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, Alan.
KEYES: Walid Phares, what is your sense of what the alternative is?
If you — if, for instance, you can't achieve this purpose of exile, what would the alternative be in your view? What happens?
PHARES: Well, first of all, both Israel and the United States have to do some self-critique over the past 20 years, a strategic approach to all the problems in the region.
When the President, back on October 7th, and during the State of the Union address finally put his finger on the problem, that is the existence of an axis of evil, or of a bloc of regimes in the region, which is generating a strategy of complete annihilation of whomever who would oppose the establishment of their ideological state — when this is done, then we would understand that the action of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to be completely distinguished from the absolute right of the Palestinian people to have a state.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and others are nothing but arms of a longer, bigger, larger force in the region, which doesn't want peace, doesn't want to see Mr. Arafat and Prime Minister Sharon reaching an agreement.
And this is where the problem is.
KEYES: Now, are you saying then, that Yasser Arafat is not implicated with those violent terrorist elements?
And that in spite of statements and other kinds of things, one has to consider him somehow separate from that axis of evil which supports the activities that he seems to encourage?
PHARES: Mr. Arafat, because of a bad decision he made to allow this to happen, chained himself to this large entity, which start in Teheran and ends in southern Lebanon.
He should have understood, really, that there is a difference between resistance movements and terrorism.
This is why the East Timorese, for example, didn't blow up buildings in Jakarta, in Indonesia.
This is why the Lebanese and the Syrian occupation don't go to Damascus and blow up buildings there.
Not even the Muslims of Bosnia or Kosovo.
He had chosen to allow Hamas and Islamic Jihad to do the dirty job, so he could come and harvest ...
KEYES: Yeah.
PHARES: ... political agreements.
That was a big mistake.
KEYES: Now, very quickly, though, Raymond Tanter, one of my problems continually as I listen to this discussion, and either Yasser Arafat is implicated in this terrorism, or he is, as I think Walid Phares, who has just indicated, kind of a helpless prisoner of its implications.
But if he's helpless to stop the violence, doesn't that also undermine him as an interlocutor for peace?
TANTER: Absolutely, Alan.
If Arafat is helpless, then he's irrelevant. I think he's implicated.
I wrote a book called, “Rogue Regimes” in which the axis of evil states are right there.
And what Arafat has done is to become a part of this axis of evil with the Karin A affair, this Greek registered ship coming from Iran through — all the way to Gaza with 50 tons of arms.
You have Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad ...
KEYES: Well, ...
TANTER: ... and the Palestinian Authority altogether with Iran, Alan.
KEYES: Well, Raymond, I think, and in conclusion I want to thank you both for joining me tonight.
But I think we have to look at the hard challenge that's faced here.
I think you have to face the reality. Either he is implicated in the terrorism, or he's a helpless prisoner of the terrorist forces he can't control.
In any case, he can't keep the peace. He can't stop the violence. Therefore, all the talk about him making peace is a delusion.
Don't we have to honestly admit this to ourselves if we're going to move forward in this situation?
Something to think about.
Next, my outrage of the day. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: And now for my outrage of the day.
I know, for very good and patriotic reasons, we've been unwilling to get into a discussion about assessing blame for our lack of readiness on September 11th.
But today, “The Washington Times” reports that according to federal officials, the Clinton administration shut down a 1995 investigation of Islamic charities, concerned that a public probe would expose Saudi Arabia's suspected ties to a global money laundering operation that raised millions for anti-Israeli terrorists.
State Department apparently pressured federal officials, according to this report, to pull agents off the investigation.
Now, it seems to me that something like that is one of those pieces of the puzzle that we seriously need to investigate, because it would be an outrageous breach, if we're willing to ignore the truth in order to cover up for those who are funding the network of terrorism that has hurt us so badly.
Obviously, it's the sort of thing that we ought to be asking our folks in Congress to take a serious look at, so that we can understand how we got ourselves into this situation.
That's MY SENSE of it.
Thanks for being with me tonight.
The news with Brian Williams is up next. I'll see you tomorrow.
Once again tonight, we're going to focus on the ongoing difficulties with the Middle East. Also, the relationship between the policy confusion that to a certain extent seems to have emerged in the articulation of U.S. policy towards the Middle East and the overall war on terror.
Events in the Middle East continue to increase and intensify. Israeli tanks are entering the West Bank towns of Jenin and Salfeet tonight. And we are going to be talking about one of the key issues that has emerged over the course of the last little while. Is Yasser Arafat a terrorist?
This is a question that has been raised because the administration spokesmen appear to be, well, shall we say, a little confused about this. We know that Yasser Arafat's so-called martyrs, the suicide bombers who have been committing these acts of terrorism are, in fact, associated with the PLO, have received the approval of Yasser Arafat. He has called them martyrs. Even said that he would be honored to join their ranks.
And yet, yesterday, when the question was directly put to him, as we pointed out on the show yesterday, this is what President Bush had to say in response to a question about Yasser Arafat's status as a terrorist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: Under your doctrine, a terrorist or someone who aids a terrorist is the equivalent of a terrorist. So, what's keeping Chairman Arafat — what's keeping you from labeling Chairman Arafat?
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, Chairman Arafat has agreed to a peace process. He's agreed to the Tenet Plan. He's agreed to the Mitchell Plan. He's negotiated with parties as to how to achieve peace. And of course, our hope is that he accepts the Tenet Plan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: See, the great problem with that is, don't actions make a terrorist? I mean, the fact that I sign on or did sign on in the past to some peace process, if I then try to influence that process by going out and killing innocent people, by asking that others go out and kill innocent people in large numbers, that I'm not a terrorist because I'm participating in the process I am seeking with that violence to subvert? What sense does this make?
This is the problem. It's also a problem because yesterday, a press conference was held in which high-level Bush administration officials stigmatized Iran, Iraq, others who are supporting the suicide bombers, supporting these so-called Martyr Brigades. Their support for the suicide bombers was stigmatized as terrorism. And yet, Arafat's welcoming of those bombings, his possible support, even funding, because the Israelis have now found a cache of intelligence that indicates clearly and directly that maybe there was a PLO involvement in the funding of these bombers.
Well, tonight, we are going to be addressing these questions. First up, is Arafat a terrorist? If not, then who is a terrorist? Are we back to the days when one man's terrorist is another man's resistance fighter, another man's freedom fighter, another man's this or that? Will this kind of confusion undermine the war on terrorism, as we get away from the kind of clarity that closely characterized American policy in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks?
Well, joining us now to discuss this, in the first instance, Clovis Maksoud, a former Arab League ambassador to the United States and the United Nations. Also with us, Arnaud DeBorchgrave, editor in chief of the “Washington Times” and United Press International and senior adviser at the Center of Strategic and International Studies. Gentlemen, welcome to MAKING SENSE.
ARNAUD DEBORCHGRAVE, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Former editor, please.
KEYES: Former editor, sorry.
First up, I would like to ask Ambassador Maksoud, we have had a report today that the Israelis claim to have found a cache of documents that indicate that there was direct PLO funding for the suicide bombers in the terror attacks that, of course, Yasser Arafat has characterized as martyrdom and, in that sense, welcomed.
With that kind of evidence in front of us, don't you think it would make sense for the United States to stigmatize Yasser Arafat as a terrorist? I mean, after all, we have said that those who sponsor and facilitate terrorism are themselves terrorists. Why shouldn't we step forward and apply this label to Yasser Arafat?
CLOVIS MAKSOUD, FORMER ARAB LEAGUE AMBASSADOR TO U.S. & U.N.: Well, because Yasser Arafat is the head of the Palestinian Authority. He's the head of the PLO. He has been recognized and continues to be recognized by the international community, even by the United States, although reluctantly and sometimes grudgingly. He remains the symbol of the unity of the Palestinian people. He has participated in a resistance movement. When the occupation is clear, he has to resist. He has tried the peace option, which has not succeeded.
The important thing to realize that in many instances, this Palestinian resistance did have certain desperate acts which is wrong and has been condemned by Yasser Arafat and by the resistance movement. There is a fundamental and qualitative difference between resistance to occupation and between terrorism. Terrorism is an act of despair. Resistance is an act of hope and the ultimate outcome of a liberation of the independence of Palestine.
KEYES: Excuse me, Mr. Ambassador, I don't quite understand what you're saying.
MAKSOUD: Well, let me explain.
KEYES: Let me finish, please. In the light of what we have actually seen going on, Yasser Arafat has praised what you call these acts of despair. He has praised the martyrs involved with them, both in English and in Arabic, so that there would be no ambiguity about it.
Today, the Israelis came across documents that indicated quite clearly, here's what the documents said. The cost that they were being asked or “the cost of supplying electronic and chemical components for explosive devices and bombs — this was our largest expense.” This is now an official of the PLO writing. “The cost of preparing a bomb is at least 700 shekels. We need to equip five to nine bombs each week for our cells in various locations.”
Now this from a document in which those who are putting together these bombs are requesting funding from the Palestinian Authority. Now You Say he's head of the Palestinian Authority and so forth and so on. Well, don't we have to judge a terrorist by what he does, not by what position he holds?
MAKSOUD: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, First of all, let us assume, which is not proven at all, that this document is authentic. And secondly, I mean, if you want to have for one week, five, six bombs, imagine that Israel, the nuclear power, is worried about that and keeping its occupation and worried about this level of armaments by the Palestinian people. This is absolutely double standard applied.
KEYES: Oh, come on. Mr. Ambassador, I am sorry. I am sorry. I'm losing my patience with folks who miss the point here. The point is — no, the point isn't how many of these suicide bombs you have or make. The point is that when you send these bombers out consciously to target innocent civilian lives, you have crossed the line between war and terrorism, war and evil. And it seems to me that's what clearly is taken.
Let me first, before we continue though...
(CROSSTALK)
MAKSOUD: That has been condemned.
KEYES: Let me go to Arnaud DeBorchgrave. Arnold DeBorchgrave, I'm getting a little impatient, I guess, with this situation on all sides. We have an administration that appears to be unwilling to look the actions in the face and call them and the individuals sponsoring them what they are. What sense do you make of this?
DEBORCHGRAVE: Alan, by accident of birth, I've been reporting for over half a century. I covered the mau-maus (ph) in Kenya, Jo Mo Keniyata (ph) and his followers launched all sorts of acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. I also covered Ben Bella's (ph) rebellion in Algeria beginning in November of 1954 which went on for eight years. And there were terrible massacres that took place there. Then Bella emerged as a hero throughout the third world. I can give you countless examples like that. Terrorism is the weapon of the weak against the strong.
KEYES: But the weapon of the weak against the strong is nonetheless an objectively evil instrument. Are we now to embrace it because of the fact that there are those out there willing to tolerate it?
DEBORCHGRAVE: No. We're not — I'm just trying to explain why people do resort to terrorism. What do the Palestinians have against tanks, Apache helicopters and so forth? They have terrorism, or what we are calling terrorism.
KEYES: Well, I'm sorry. It seems to me, Arnaud, that what they had was a process whereby they could sit down at a negotiating table, get the Palestinian Authority, come to some understanding that might actually lead to the kind of state that they are looking for. That's what they had. And are we now to say that having that, and in spite of that, having launched this kind of attack against the innocent, we're going to sit back and continue to play games about what we call it?
DEBORCHGRAVE: No, I'm not suggesting that. I'm trying to explain to you, for eight years in Algeria, they resorted to terrorism while negotiations were going on. In a French town called Avion, you had terrorism and negotiations at the same time. There are countless such examples during the past 50 years.
KEYES: But the examples, I think, don't relieve us of responsibility for the present situation. All those examples would suggest that this policy of terrorism has in the past for some folks been successful, that therefore it may be successful for the Palestinians today. That would seem to me a conclusion that would fuel further violence, further destruction of innocent life, especially if it is tolerated by a U.S. administration. Is that the position we're going to put ourselves in?
DEBORCHGRAVE: No, I don't think it is being tolerated. I'm trying to explain or give it a little bit of historical perspective. Obviously, everybody is outraged when poor Israeli civilians who have absolutely no part in this dispute get killed by a suicide bomber. I'm simply trying to explain that many such objectives have been achieved in the past with similar measures.
KEYES: But it seems to me that if the objective is, in fact, peace rather than simply the fulfillment of whatever may be Yasser Arafat's agenda, it is incumbent on the United States to be consistent in its application of our understanding of terrorism. How can we condemn the people who are funding the martyr bombers, funding the suicide bombers, and funding the institutions of organizations that ordered them to commit these atrocities, and say that they are terrorists for funding these actions, but those who are actually ordering and approving of them are not terrorists. What sense does this make?
DEBORCHGRAVE: It doesn't make any sense at all. It depends entirely on the perspective that you use to examine what is going on. It seems to me that you can not lose sight of the fact that there is a Palestinian state in the making that is presently occupied by Israel. And these people are fighting against the occupation. As we've seen in many cases, again, throughout the last 50 years. Occupation is resisted. And if you don't have the same weapons as the occupiers, you resort to terrorism.
KEYES: Sad to say Arnaud, I think we are in fact forgetting even the most recent history. Because the level of death that was being inflicted on innocent Israelis was high before Israel moved back into the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, in order to respond to the continuing level of violence.
The idea that you sit down at a negotiating table, come to a conclusion, start that process, hand over authority — try to work, in fact, with the Palestinian Authority to establish cooperation, and yet against the backdrop of that violence continued day after day until they were finally forced to move. We're supposed to forget that history and pretend that they never pulled out of the West Bank. Next we'll be pretending they never pulled out of Lebanon.
MAKSOUD: Mr. Alan Keyes, may I ask you a question?
KEYES: Go right ahead.
MAKSOUD: Do you consider Israel in the occupied territories of '67 an occupying power?
KEYES: No. As a matter of fact, I think the whole notion that we are looking here at some kind of illegitimate occupation utterly disguises and falsifies history. The '67 war was, in fact, started by the Arab states. Israel moved into the West Bank and Gaza after giving the king of Jordan plenty of opportunity to stay out of that war. And when he finally refused to do so, they moved in. What everyone now seems to be blaming them for is the fact that having their existence threatened at that time, startling the world with the success of their military response, they are now to be punished for that success, even though in return for a willingness expressed time and again to give up those territories, we have yet to see a diminution of the violence that is taking the lives of innocent civilians.
I frankly am losing patience with these lies. I am losing patience with this unwillingness to look at the real historical record.
MAKSOUD: Then if they're not occupier, then the resistance in your view is a terrorist?
KEYES: Well I think that when you have a process, and the president referred to it —
MAKSOUD: Don't hang up to the president.
KEYES: Yasser Arafat...
MAKSOUD: Answer the question. Answer the question.
KEYES: ... is part of a peace process. Instead of letting that process work, he has chosen to use the instruments of violence in order to manipulate that process for his gain.
MAKSOUD: That is your own —
KEYES: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) innocent civilians to achieve that agenda.
MAKSOUD: That is your own viewpoint, which is not shared by the international community. Thank God for that.
KEYES: Well, I've got to tell you. The international community has blinked its eyes and embraced evil more than once in the course of the 20th century and before. I don't think it's the place of the United States to make its judgments on the basis of what compromises with evil will be made by others who in the past showed themselves altogether too willing to do so.
MAKSOUD: Well, I'm glad that you have monopolized to define what is evil. I'm sorry —
KEYES: Gentlemen. Mr. Ambassador, we'll have to take this up the next time we meet. I want to thank you both for joining me this evening.
Next, we're going to continue our effort to get to the heart of this matter and to look further at what is implied by the apparent contradiction in what the administration is willing to say about Yasser Arafat, but what it does say about those who support his activities. So we'll be joined by a panel to discuss this question of whether or not this confusion, in fact, is undermining the position that the United States needs to take against terrorism in its war on terror. We'll be right back with the heart of the matter.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
Welcome back to MAKING SENSE. Now, let's try to get to the heart of this matter. The logical problem that we have here, which then translates into a policy problem. We are moving against states like Iraq, like Iran, like others who are sponsors of terrorism. Yesterday, the administration comes out and basically makes it clear we want to move against these states precisely because they are funding the terrible violence that is moving against the innocent in the Middle East.
Yet at the same time we say they are funding Arafat's minions is terrorism, the work of those minions and Arafat themselves, who commands and supports them — well, somehow or another because he's manipulating the process through this violence, we are to consider him not a terrorist. Are we back to the days when one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and we're too confused to tell the difference? I think that poses great problems for the kind of consistency and commitment we are clearly going to need to sustain our own efforts against those terrorists who is directed such a fateful blow against us last September.
To talk about this, joining us now, James Phillips, Middle East research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Also with us, Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and vice president council on foreign relations. And finally, Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, a former representative to the U.N. Security Council and a former member of Clinton's National Security Council.
Let me go first to James Phillips from Heritage. Do you see any implications in — or first, do you see the confusion? Second, do you see any implications in that confusion for our larger policies in the war against terrorism?
JAMES PHILLIPS, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, I think President Bush is trying to be diplomatic by his choice of words. And that has injected some degree of confusion. Although, I think that the administration would argue that be keeping its eyes on the struggle against the greatest threats of terrorism and by that I would say al Qaeda, Iraq, and other terrorist movements, in order to do that, the U.S. needs Arab cooperation — it would argue, the administration would argue. And therefore, it has to go easy on Arafat.
But since I'm not part of the government, I would agree with you that Arafat in the past has been a terrorist. He rose to political power through the use of terrorism. Not only against Israelis, but against Arabs. He tried to overthrow King Hussein in Jordan, after promising him that his guerrillas would not strike against the state. And he's attacked other Arab leaders and regimes.
So he has a long-standing history of using terrorism. And I'm concerned that he has drawn the conclusion that terrorism works. And terrorism works, unfortunately, in the context of a peace process even though, by the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords, he was supposed to give up terrorism.
KEYES: Let me go to Lawrence Korb. Looking at, for instance, the result of the vice president's trip around the Middle East, which was partially intended, as we all understood it from the public presentation, to try to both sound-out opinion and get support and cooperation for action we might consider necessary against Iraq.
The fallout from that seemed to be, in fact, at the last Arab Conference that the Arabs kind of kissed Saddam Hussein on the cheek, started to regard him as a good guy, declared that nobody should touch him.
Don't we find ourselves, in that respect, in a more difficult position? And if we then, as we did yesterday, continue to say, You're a terrorist-sponsoring state and we base that on your support for Yasser Arafat, how does Iraq's support for Yasser Arafat distinguish it from Saudi Arabia? Isn't this a problem?
LAWRENCE KORB: Well, there's no doubt about the fact that the president has expanded the war beyond its original target. His original target was a war against terrorists with a global reach, not against terrorists all over the world. I mean, for example, the IRA, for example, is not somebody we've gone to war with.
And the terrorists in the Middle East are not terrorists with a global reach. And so, therefore, they're not part of the war.
You need the support of the Arab nations to wage war against al Qaeda. That war is not over. And before you can think about going to Iraq, you need to deal with al Qaeda. You also need to deal with the situation between the Palestinians and the Israelis, because the Arab nations are not going to support any action against Iraq while that situation is still inflamed.
And they feel the United States has been so focused on Iraq, they've ignored the Middle East. This administration basically stayed out of the Middle East until events got so far out of control it's going to be very hard for them to put it back together again. They should have picked up where president Clinton had left off, we wouldn't be in this mess now.
And so the president has got himself in trouble by doing that, and then by giving the “axis of evil” speech in his State of the Union Address, he broadened it from a war against terrorists to a war against nations that have, or are trying to get weapons of mass destruction.
And again, that's a different conflict. You mix up all of these three things and it's bound to be confusing.
KEYES: Well, I understand the contention. And partly, I guess, see the legitimacy of saying that this is somehow not connected to, say, Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda.
And yet, Nancy Soderberg, let me address this to you. It was the case, as I recall, that Osama bin Laden precisely tied his terrorist attack against the United States to the America's stance on the Middle East. And so that is not a new element. It was an element that he — a card that he tried to play in defense of his reprehensible actions.
Don't we have to take the position, whether here or with Arafat or anybody else that the conscious targeting of innocent life to achieve your political goals is simply unacceptable, whether it's Osama bin Laden or Yasser Arafat or the IRA or whoever it might be?
NANCY SODERBERG: Well of course terrorism anywhere is unacceptable. The question is, How do you combat it?
And I think the administration has done well to topple al Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that was responsible for September 11. But you have to look beyond that.
And if you look at the administration's foreign policy beyond Afghanistan, I think it's time to realize it's been an utter disaster. And unless they get a hold of it, things are going to get much worse.
Secretary Cheney's trip to the Middle East to gain support for a war against was an utter failure. You're getting mixed messages from the administration on the Middle East. One minute the Bush administration says at the U.N. that the Israelis should withdraw from Ramallah and other areas; the next minute you've got President Bush saying, well, the Sharon administration is doing just fine.
They're really out of their league here. And I think it's time for them to get off of the phone and get engaged directly in the search for peace in the Middle East. And until they do that, things are just going to continue to spiral out of control and terrorism is going to get much, much worse.
KEYES: James Phillips, do you think that that portrait of the present state of our policy with respect to the Middle East is accurate?
If it is, given the interconnections that I think we can't deny between our freedom of action with respect to the larger problem of terrorism and our ability to sustain a coherent approach to the Middle East — given those interconnections, wouldn't a lack of clarity and effectiveness in this area have implications for our larger war on terrorism?
JAMES PHILLIPS: Well, I would agree that U.S. policy has been in collapse on two fronts, the Israeli-Palestinian front and on the front of containing Iraq.
But if you look at what caused those collapses, it's not a policy of the Bush administration, but these collapses were the legacy of the Clinton administration and the Clinton administration's failed policy in overestimating Yasser Arafat's commitment to peace and underestimating Saddam Hussein's commitment to break out of his box.
The administration was telling us for eight years that Saddam Hussein was in his box, Saddam was in his box. And, you know, I just don't buy that. Since 1998, since the ejection of the U.N. arms inspectors, we don't know what Saddam even has in his box.
He's been working on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, according to German intelligence. He's an estimated three years away from a nuclear bomb. If he gets that, it's a whole new ball game.
On the Israeli-Palestinian front, I hear a lot of criticism about how the U.S. is not sufficiently engaged. And I would just remind everybody that President Clinton's administration was extremely engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to the point where President Clinton met with Yasser Arafat more than any other leader, which is incredible.
And yet Arafat still turned around and stabbed him in the back by violating his commitments under the Oslo Accord and walking away from Camp David.
KEYES: But James, listen, I am not criticizing the administration for a wait-and-see approach, for a policy that, essentially, was willing to let the situation ripen to a certain degree. But such a policy is not a passive policy. In order to sustain it you have to be thoughtful, coherent, intelligence in your articulation and fairly active in your defense of your apparent inactivity.
I haven't, to be quite frank, seen that combination in what the administration has been doing, with the result that instead of having an effective sort of policy that allowed the situation to ripen, we seem, instead, to have allowed the situation to collapse. And there is a difference there, and I'm not sure it was intended by them.
Go right ahead, quickly.
SODERBERG: Well, one situation that has been overlooked in the crisis in the Middle East is the administration's policy towards Iraq. The rhetoric against Saddam Hussein has been way ahead of the decision-making by the Bush administration.
Number one rule in foreign policy is you don't let your rhetoric get ahead of your policy decision. The Bush administration has made it clear it wants to overthrow Saddam Hussein without deciding how it's going to do it.
If you're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein you need to make a prior commitment of a couple hundred thousand troops to do so. It is sort of hoping that it can do an Afghanistan by bombing Saddam Hussein out of power without making the commitment to put the American troops on the ground, without lining up the support of the region.
And it's been an utter failure. Cheney got completely rejected during his tour. And I think that you've got step back and say, What is the strategy here?
KEYES: Well, I think one part of the problem — and we've come, unfortunately, to the end of the time we have for our discussion — but I think that one part of the problem, precisely, has to do with a failure to think through in a strategic sense the implications of our stated policy goals and desires. What I used to call when I was involved in all of this stuff, policies of wishful thinking that in point of fact are not a substitute for policies that are based on a careful assessment of the realities of the situation and the kind of tough decisions we have to take in order to take advantage of those realities to produce the result we want to see.
That kind of coherence hasn't been there. And in part, I have to say, I know there are institutional stresses and strains and all this within every administration. But it is a president's job in the end to impress coherence on those kinds of stresses and strains. And it's going to have to be done if we're going to see a resolution of the confusion that I think is now being encouraged in U.S. policy.
Anyway, thanks for being with us everyone. Really appreciate your taking the time.
Next, we're going to be talking about another issue that has now come up in the context of the present situation. The Israelis have talked about possibly exiling Yasser Arafat. Does this make sense? Would he be more or less dangerous to peace?
You're watching MSNBC, The Best News on Cable.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: Welcome back to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes.
Now, yesterday on our program, senior policy advisor to Ariel Sharon, Dore Gold, told us that the Israeli government has really come to the conclusion that this is somebody they can't deal with.
And that, I think, has fueled some of the suggestions and speculations about the possibility that Arafat be exiled, that he would be allowed to leave the region, but not allowed back in.
Today, is the Israelis were saying, through the Prime Minister, that if Arafat were to leave the country — and they would facilitate that leaving — that he wouldn't be coming back.
In response, Secretary of State Colin Powell on our side had this to say about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLIN POWELL, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I don't think it would help the situation.
He is in Ramallah. He is seen as the leader of the Palestinian people. Whether that is attractive to others or not, that is the role he has.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: Now, I am not sure I would say that just because he's the leader of this or that, this is a bad idea.
But at the end of the day, if you sent Yasser Arafat out of the region, and then he were wandering around the world, surely trying to continue to get support for the Palestinian in the Arab capitals and the European capitals at the same time that being away from the action, it would be kind of pointless to point at him and say, you should do something. You should control the suicide bombers, and so forth.
He might have the best of both worlds, being able to pursue a propaganda campaign, and yet, being in a position where he could disclaim all the responsibility for accomplishing anything constructive.
Would that be a better situation?
To talk about this, joining us now, Raymond Tanter, a Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and a former staff member for President Reagan's National Security Council.
And Walid Phares, Senior Fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Let me go first to Walid Phares. Do you think that this idea of exile makes sense?
WALID PHARES, FELLOW, FOUNDATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: Well, the idea of exile has been executed before by Syria in 1990, when they invaded East Beirut and exiled a Prime Minister in France, Michel Aoun, who is still in France.
So it has happened in the Middle East. But this is not the case today in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
It is true that on the one hand Yasser Arafat is seen by his followers as a national figure. But it's also true that the Israelis cannot negotiate with a leader who is endorsing suicide attacks against them.
A practical solution would be today, for the international community, to actually invite Mr. Arafat to New York to address the United Nations, and in fact, to really go back to the Madrid premise and renegotiate the whole Oslo agreement.
The Oslo agreement is gone.
There was a contract between Israelis and Palestinians, whereby Mr. Arafat will take the control of an autonomous area, but would make sure to safeguard the security of the borders with Israel. And the Israelis in return would recognize him.
This contract has failed. We are back into square one. So, he ...
KEYES: Well, ...
PHARES: ... must go address the international community again.
KEYES: But the question I think I have before I get to Raymond Tanter is very simple.
If, as you say, the Oslo regime is somehow in shambles, and you have to start from square one, doesn't the track record that exists since the time that that understanding was reached militate against sitting down at the table with the same set of leaders and, who have already proven not as good as their word?
Can Israel actually do that?
PHARES: Well, Israel sat with Mr. Arafat in the early '90s. They were the one who recognized him as a partner for peace.
And someone in Israel said, you only make peace with your enemies.
But at this point in time it's a fact that after Mr. Arafat has endorsed, helped — and with the help of other regimes in the region — the actions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad by not countering them, he has breached the actual contract, and therefore, cannot be a partner for Israel today, if he doesn't make a statement, a clear statement, and as President Bush said, in Arabic, condemning the actions of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.
KEYES: Well, let me go to Raymond Tanter before I give a thought or two on that.
What is your sense? Is this approach of exile something that you think would make sense in this situation?
RAYMOND TANTER, SENIOR FELLOW, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: Alan, exiling Arafat gives him the sense, the aura, that he is a political victim and not the terrorist that he actually is.
Exiling Arafat is a really bad idea. It seems that it's a bad idea whose time has come. And I think it's an awful idea.
It would give him a platform. He would be the flying Palestinian, like the flying Dutchman, going from port to port to port in the Wagnerian opera.
It's just not a good idea, Alan.
KEYES: Well, I must confess that I look at it myself. And I see a lot of drawbacks in terms of being able, in fact, to affix responsibility.
At one and the same time, you'd have a continuing kind of peripatetic leader who would say, I speak for the Palestinians, and you must negotiate with me.
The terror on the ground, the violence would continue, with nobody to talk to to stop it, nobody able to take responsibility for it.
I frankly don't see how this would be a step forward.
And Walid Phares, if he went to the United Nations, which I'm sure he would eventually do, and he made all kinds of declarations, I still have a problem.
Why should anybody believe that those declarations would carry any more weight, be respected to any degree more than the ones he has made several times in the course of the last decade and more?
PHARES: Well, you have a point. It's more than one decade, actually. It's two decades.
He has signed 103 agreements of cease-fires back in the days in Lebanon. He has breached three peace agreements with the Lebanese governments way before that. These are facts that we are understand.
But the point is that the party to be blamed today, in addition probably to Arafat for his endorsement of terrorism, is the Arab summit.
The international community and the United States have expected that the Arab summit in Beirut was supposed to condemn terrorism, and therefore endorse Arafat's condemnation of terrorism on the one hand, to side with the United States on the issue of Iraq.
And finally, to seriously support the Saudi proposal, which by the way condemn terrorism.
And on those three counts, the Arab summit did not deliver.
And the reason why it didn't deliver was because there was an alliance within that Arab summit, headed by Syria, Iraq, Hezbollah and others, who have sank the whole peace process, and forced Arafat to continue in this position whereby he has a choice between being encircled by the Israelis or between being taken over by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
It's not an easy situation.
KEYES: Now, very quickly, Raymond Tanter, the President says he needs to denounce terrorism in Arabic, as well as in English, because of the possible duplicity there.
But the great problem I have, whether he denounces it in Arabic or in English, if his actions don't match his words, aren't we just giving a liar another chance to put one over on the world?
TANTER: Well, very important. Words in the Arabic language are very, very important, Alan.
You want Arafat to make a declaratory statement, and you want his actions to marry those words.
But the words without the actions, as you point out, are meaningless.
KEYES: We're going to have more from our guests in just a moment.
And later, we'll have my outrage of the day.
But first, does this make sense to you? There is a group that takes wolves into the classroom to teach kids not to fear wolves.
Well, one such wolf was taken into a classroom, grabbed a 10-year-old in a supermarket parking lot, dragged the youngster 20 feet before letting go.
The boy was treated for puncture wounds, scrapes and bruises.
Do you really think that it makes sense to take a wild animal into the classroom and risk this kind of episode in order to teach kids not to be afraid of them?
It doesn't sound like you're achieving the objective.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: We're back with more of MAKING SENSE.
We're talking about the idea of whether or not it would make sense to exile Yasser Arafat from the region.
The Israeli government has in effect suggested that he would be allowed to leave and not come back, a form of exile from the region and from the situation there.
Still with us, Raymond Tanter and Walid Phares.
And first I want to go to Raymond Tanter.
If, as I think you are saying, one does not embrace this idea of exiling Yasser Arafat, and yet the Israeli government is serious about the idea that they can't at this stage work with him and negotiate with somebody who has proven so untrue to his obligations as they see them, what is the alternative?
TANTER: Well, Israel, Alan, has no choice but to keep its eye on the ball.
And the ball is to root out the terrorist infrastructure in Bethlehem, in Ramallah, in Bayt Jala. That is the focus of attention.
You don't want the focus to shift to Arafat, the flying Palestinian going from port to port to port. It changes the subject.
It is extremely important to get the organizations that send out the suicide bombers.
These suicide bombers are not some deranged individuals. They are individuals who are being manipulated by organizations dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, Alan.
KEYES: Walid Phares, what is your sense of what the alternative is?
If you — if, for instance, you can't achieve this purpose of exile, what would the alternative be in your view? What happens?
PHARES: Well, first of all, both Israel and the United States have to do some self-critique over the past 20 years, a strategic approach to all the problems in the region.
When the President, back on October 7th, and during the State of the Union address finally put his finger on the problem, that is the existence of an axis of evil, or of a bloc of regimes in the region, which is generating a strategy of complete annihilation of whomever who would oppose the establishment of their ideological state — when this is done, then we would understand that the action of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to be completely distinguished from the absolute right of the Palestinian people to have a state.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and others are nothing but arms of a longer, bigger, larger force in the region, which doesn't want peace, doesn't want to see Mr. Arafat and Prime Minister Sharon reaching an agreement.
And this is where the problem is.
KEYES: Now, are you saying then, that Yasser Arafat is not implicated with those violent terrorist elements?
And that in spite of statements and other kinds of things, one has to consider him somehow separate from that axis of evil which supports the activities that he seems to encourage?
PHARES: Mr. Arafat, because of a bad decision he made to allow this to happen, chained himself to this large entity, which start in Teheran and ends in southern Lebanon.
He should have understood, really, that there is a difference between resistance movements and terrorism.
This is why the East Timorese, for example, didn't blow up buildings in Jakarta, in Indonesia.
This is why the Lebanese and the Syrian occupation don't go to Damascus and blow up buildings there.
Not even the Muslims of Bosnia or Kosovo.
He had chosen to allow Hamas and Islamic Jihad to do the dirty job, so he could come and harvest ...
KEYES: Yeah.
PHARES: ... political agreements.
That was a big mistake.
KEYES: Now, very quickly, though, Raymond Tanter, one of my problems continually as I listen to this discussion, and either Yasser Arafat is implicated in this terrorism, or he is, as I think Walid Phares, who has just indicated, kind of a helpless prisoner of its implications.
But if he's helpless to stop the violence, doesn't that also undermine him as an interlocutor for peace?
TANTER: Absolutely, Alan.
If Arafat is helpless, then he's irrelevant. I think he's implicated.
I wrote a book called, “Rogue Regimes” in which the axis of evil states are right there.
And what Arafat has done is to become a part of this axis of evil with the Karin A affair, this Greek registered ship coming from Iran through — all the way to Gaza with 50 tons of arms.
You have Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad ...
KEYES: Well, ...
TANTER: ... and the Palestinian Authority altogether with Iran, Alan.
KEYES: Well, Raymond, I think, and in conclusion I want to thank you both for joining me tonight.
But I think we have to look at the hard challenge that's faced here.
I think you have to face the reality. Either he is implicated in the terrorism, or he's a helpless prisoner of the terrorist forces he can't control.
In any case, he can't keep the peace. He can't stop the violence. Therefore, all the talk about him making peace is a delusion.
Don't we have to honestly admit this to ourselves if we're going to move forward in this situation?
Something to think about.
Next, my outrage of the day. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: And now for my outrage of the day.
I know, for very good and patriotic reasons, we've been unwilling to get into a discussion about assessing blame for our lack of readiness on September 11th.
But today, “The Washington Times” reports that according to federal officials, the Clinton administration shut down a 1995 investigation of Islamic charities, concerned that a public probe would expose Saudi Arabia's suspected ties to a global money laundering operation that raised millions for anti-Israeli terrorists.
State Department apparently pressured federal officials, according to this report, to pull agents off the investigation.
Now, it seems to me that something like that is one of those pieces of the puzzle that we seriously need to investigate, because it would be an outrageous breach, if we're willing to ignore the truth in order to cover up for those who are funding the network of terrorism that has hurt us so badly.
Obviously, it's the sort of thing that we ought to be asking our folks in Congress to take a serious look at, so that we can understand how we got ourselves into this situation.
That's MY SENSE of it.
Thanks for being with me tonight.
The news with Brian Williams is up next. I'll see you tomorrow.