FOUR TIDDLERS IN THE BAG
Christopher Hitchens on the
extraordinary confusion of America's Middle East policy
Washington IT'S always a good sign when people say what they really think. 'We insist,' shouted Ambassador Nicholas Veliotis over an open line in Cairo, 'that they prosecute these sons of bitches.' We finally won one,' bellowed Senator Daniel Moynihan, his great frame quivering with bipartisan fervour. 'We finally got some of those bastards.' Both epithets appeared con- tinually on all editions of the nightly news, and were recycled into tabloid headlines only slightly more demure. The New York Post did its best to fill a front page with S.O.Bs, while the Daily News went for alliteration and the family readership with `We Bag the Bums'. In other words, gotcha. It was like Grenada without the nagging about international law. To shoot an old Jew in the face while he sits in a wheelchair, and to dump him like refuse over the side, is evidently to do something that no specialist in grievance can explain away.
But there is always a post-coital tristesse on these occasions. Even as Ronald Reagan was saying: 'You can run, but you can't hide,' events were proving him euphoric. From Beirut, the report of a single shot marked the end for William Buckley, long-term hostage of Islamic Jihad, murdered in revenge for the raid on Tunis. And from Santa Anna, California, came the sound of a bomb blast as Alex Odeh, a local Arab-American community leader, was killed by persons unknown. After an unpardonable lapse of time, the networks and the White House agreed that this last was terrorism too.
The main contrast, though, was between the nerve and co-ordination of the military and aerial command, and the oscillation and incompetence of the political lead- ership. The preceding fortnight had seen American Middle East policy unhinging itself as seldom before. When the Israelis bombed Tunis, killing numerous Tunisians as well as several PLO cadres, the Presi- dent came before the cameras and gave an unqualified thumbs-up. This was so shat- tering to the Tunisians, who are loyally pro-American, and to the Egyptians, who are ditto but in a slightly more tight-lipped way, that the State Department was soon working hard on yet another exercise in explaining what the President really meant. Clarifying statements were issued in drifts and blizzards, and when the matter came up at the United Nations, the US delegation failed to take the view that Israel can bomb whoever it likes. The explanation given to angry Israeli diplo- mats was that Washington had privy in- formation. Apparently, the friendly Bour- guiba government would have been over- thrown as an American and Israeli puppet if some distance between America and the raid was not established. This prompted the question why, in that case, the Israelis had not been warned off in the first place. Ah, but we didn't know about the raid until we read about it in the newspapers. Two former ambassadors wrote to the press ridiculing this reasoning. If the Sixth Fleet can't pick up the Israeli air force on a thousand-mile expedition, it is in grave danger of a Pearl Harbor. The success in tracking a single, furtive Egyptian airliner a few days later adds point to this criticism.
So the United States went through three Tunisia policies in as many days, and ended up looking foolish and friendless.
One trembled when the Achille Lauro was taken. And once again the President
seemed to fumble. Asked at Chicago air- port whether he would accept Arafat's offer to discipline the terrorists, he replied: `Well, if — I would like — I would think that if he believes that their organisation has enough of a — sort of a kind of a national court set-up, like a nation that they can bring them to justice and — carry that out, all right.'
So great was the consternation at this that the chief executive was kicked off the aircraft at the next stop in Deerfield, Illinois, and made to say some other things. To be exact: 'I did not mean to imply that I favour them giving a trial or attempting to do justice to the hijackers. What I — I really believe that the PLO, if the hijackers were in their custody, should turn them over to a sovereign state . . . I should not have made a statement of that kind. I think that I was thinking, kind of, as mad as I am, vengeance instead of justice.'
How he can have forgotten that, almost alone, of the major countries of the world, the USA refuses even to speak to the PLO, nobody knows. The Palestinians may be a nation, but they are famous for not having a state. Some even believe that to be the problem. In fairness to the President, should point out that he had just under- gone another treatment for the skin cancer in his nose. (Incidentally, it is now a month since the White House said that it would release the results of his last medical examination. No word yet. Someone's got to mention these things.) For the moment, everything has been set right by the heartening effects of a bold and bloodless combined operation. If the Middle East was a problem of law and order, the satisfaction would be more durable. But in point of fact, we find the Egyptians hurt and miffed, the Tunisians bombed and baffled, the Italians and Yugoslays insisting on their sovereignty, and only four tiddlers in the bag. The fact that the Soviet Union has called for them to be executed does not, somehow, cheer anybody up.
Meanwhile, the Jordanian option is in shards. Until a few weeks ago, the adminis- tration was tentatively pressing the chalice to Israel's lips. The King was held to have made enough concessions to earn himself a congressionally-sanctioned arms deal. The search was on for some certified moderate Palestinians (consistent, of course, with the determined pretence that there is no such thing as the PLO). This was probably going nowhere at all, but it gave the mediating classes something with which to occupy their time, and it preserved the appearance of even-handedness. Now Israel will be able to fold its arms and refuse even indirect negotiations. This may or may not be what Mr Klinghoffer's murderers wanted, but it is what they have got. Meanwhile, because it ain't true that ter- rorists can run but not hide, the general good feeling is sapped by the unspoken question: What — or who — next?
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