Ding, Dong, the Wicked Which Is Dead?

The Head of the Snake or Just a Big Snake?

“We’ve cut off the head of the snake.”  – James Warlick, U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria.

In “War and Peace,” Tolstoy suggests that if Napoleon had never lived, France would have invaded Russia anyhow in 1812. It’s as if all kinds of forces had come together to that end, and Napoleon somehow found himself on a horse in a funny hat in front of the French army.

The surgical assassination of Osama bin Laden was celebrated raucously Sunday night in Washington and many other cities across the country with shouts and signs and spirits, both high and distilled. There were expressions of great relief on all sides along with congratulatory handshakes and shoulder-pounding.

Indeed, the ferreting-out and killing of this despicable person after almost ten years of searching was good for our national psyche. It was like a sore tooth finally pulled.

But Osama bin Laden was not the sole source of the enmity that resulted in the 9-11 tragedies. He was charismatic, I’m told, and a source of inspiration to his followers, but he was not their only inspiration. His death doesn’t change their minds.

There are many in the Islamic world – and elsewhere about the planet – who think of the United States of America as the “Great Satan.” We returned the favor by giving that title to bin Laden.

Both are wrong.

Had Osama bin Laden never lived, the Twin Towers might not have fallen, but the hatred that is borne against our country would have found some expression, some outlet. And it still exists.

There are many causes of that hatred, some going back to the time of the Bible, some from the era of the Crusades, some from the heavy-handed imperialism of Great Britain. But the biggest problem today is Israel/Palestine.

“This land is mine. God gave this land to me.” Those are the opening words of the theme song of the 1960 movie, “Exodus,” which chronicled the establishment of Israel and was a big event at the time. “Next year in Jerusalem” is the way Jews conclude both their Yom Kippur and Passover Seder celebrations. The “return to Zion” was eagerly anticipated for centuries, and after the Second World War, newly-freed Jews from all over Europe and elsewhere flocked to what was then called Palestine to make that dream a reality.

The United Nations voted to accept the partition of Palestine in 1947, the year I was born. The enmity toward Israel, and to a great extent toward the United States, which has supported Israel from the beginning, is just as gray-haired as I am. During those decades, many Arab countries have become fantastically wealthy supporting the worldwide demand for petroleum, but that hasn’t reduced the hatred. It has just made it possible for the haters to buy lots of weapons.

We can kill all the bin Ladens we can find, but the hatred will continue – and the danger to our homeland will continue – until the problem of Israel and Palestine is finally solved. God may have given Israel to the Israelis, but the people who lived there before that happened see it differently: “This land is mine. The Israelis stole it from me.”

A day will dawn when it no longer matters. That day is far in the future, and Israel and the Arab factions that vie for control of the land around it are doing little to bring it closer.

The best thing our country could do to secure its homeland is to work with Israel and its neighbors to establish the pre-1964 borders as permanent, create a Palestinian state with some real measure of economic stability, and demand every nation in the area accept the result. We and our allies have a lot of economic and diplomatic power we can wield to that end, and wield it we should.

Some would say that now is not the time, given the current disruptions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and even Saudi Arabia. I would argue that this is the perfect time. Osama bin Laden is dead. We’re moving troops out of Iraq and we really want to move troops out of Afghanistan.

Israel must be pressured to give up its extraterritorial building projects and accept the pre-1964 boundaries, but it will not do so until the factions in Palestine stop shooting missiles into its territory. The reverse is true as well. It’s time for everyone in the region to lean on the two sides and promise to support and defend the result.

Until that happens, we can look for more terrorism here and across the world. I really think now is the time to do something about it besides making everyone take off his shoes at our airports.