http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24766

Joseph Farah

I didn't think it was possible that U.S. Mideast policy could get any worse than it was under former President Clinton.

I was wrong.

It just got worse – a lot worse.

In fact, viewed through the eyes of the Islamic world, President Bush's announcement that he favors the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a comprehensive Middle East peace initiative can only be seen as a huge strategic victory for terrorism.

I don't know how it can be interpreted any other way.

The message is loud and clear: Keep up the violence, intensify it, keep raising the stakes, make the U.S. pay a price and your demands will be met – eventually.

I'm sick to my stomach over the U.S. sellout of Israel. There would never be a good time for this, but following the dramatic Islamic terror attack on the U.S. makes it appear the U.S. is caving to pressure. You know why it looks that way? Because, like it or not, we are.

I know we're all supposed to rally around our commander in chief right now, but what Bush has done is unconscionable. It will not achieve the goals it is designed to achieve. We are not dealing with honorable adversaries in the Middle East. We are dealing with murderers, liars, cheats, thieves.

This is not a conflict between two reasonable sides with legitimate grievances. It's a conflict between right and wrong, good and evil.

Bush's decision will result in more bloodshed beyond our imaginations. It will result in more terrorism in the U.S. – much more deadly even than what we witnessed Sept. 11.

This is worse than negotiating with terrorists. This is unconditional surrender to them.

It no longer matters what the U.S. does to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. He has already won the war. He has managed to enshrine himself as the hero to hundreds of millions of radical Muslims worldwide whose goal is – and always has been – the destruction of the Jewish state and, ultimately, Islamic hegemony over the whole world. Alive, he will be a hero. Dead, he has achieved martyrdom status.

The Bush administration has decided to make its bed with the totalitarians in the Arab world at the expense of the one bastion of freedom in the Middle East – Israel.

What the administration will soon learn is you can never win by making concessions to these tyrants. No concession is ever enough. It took many in Israel a long time to figure this out.

We are rewarding terrorism – pure and simple.

Remember who will lead this new Palestinian state for life. His name is Yasser Arafat, the father of modern-day terrorism – a man with lots of American blood on his hands.

For 30 years of hijackings, Olympics murders, execution of U.S. diplomats, suicide bombings, torture of dissident Arabs, the cold-blooded killings of Israelis and more, the reward for Arafat is the presidency of his own state.

With this model in mind, isn't it time to consider giving bin Laden a state, too?

But as any astute observer of the Middle East can tell you, a Palestinian state was never the final goal in the first place. So this is not the end. The Palestinian state was, at best, an interim step toward the annihilation of the state of Israel. It's only a strategic step to chip away at the Jewish state's security, to make it vulnerable, to make an Arab military victory more achievable.

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