Motivation

The September 11 killers began planning their attacks in 1999 and settled on their targets in early 2000. I hope this ends the ridiculous accusation that somehow the “disengagement” of the United States in the Palestinian issue drove the bombers to attack us in despair that we would ever solve the problem. Indeed, as the United States desperately sought to bring the Israelis and the PLO together in a deal that even now Arafat says he would accept, nobody raised a motion to cancel the plans given the unprecedented engagement of the United States as it sought to compel an agreement before 2000 ended.

Their hate had nothing to do with the Palestinian issue except as a useful means of whipping up already existing hatred even further. So let us at least agree that solving the Palestinian problem before we take on Iraq is hardly necessary. Certainly, Saddam thinks so, which is why he pays the families of suicide bombers a princely sum to kill civilians. Why support his plan to stall us and support his incitement to murder by agreeing with him? Our enemies (and I am not talking about the entire Islamic world here) hate us and nothing we can do will make them like us. Kill the Islamist terrorists and take down the terror states. Maybe if we put out our own counter proposal that we will only deal with the Palestinian issue until Iraq is freed of that Tikriti madman, we would get the support the current “PLO-firsters” insist on getting.

On to Baghdad.