Guess the speech was better than we thought. Considering the source, you can't get a finer endorsement than that. It's Grade A Prime certified.

The Syrian spokesman is obviously upset with the lines calling for "a Syria that must choose the right side in the war on terror... [and that] supports peace and fights terror."

The big headline from this speech is about U.S. policy transitioning to a post-Arafat era, but the subtext aimed at the so-called "moderate Arab states" is what I'm most interested in. The U.S. has been signaling for months now that Arafat's time was running out, but the speech has a telling reiteration of the Bush Doctrine, aimed at the "moderate Arab states," repeating that "every nation actually committed to peace" will or must act to show it, and do several things, one of which was "oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq."

The Palestinians are once again being used as a symbol, much as Arab leaders do all the time, but this time by the U.S. in a way that should make all the Arab countries in the region uncomfortable. "For decades you've been treated as pawns in the Middle East conflict," says the U.S. to the Palestinians. For decades the neighboring Arab countries have used the "plight of the Palestinians" for their own political purposes, mostly to whip up antisemitism and hatred for Israel, while keeping the Palestinians in refugee squalor rather than assisting them to improve their circumstances, or assimilating them into Arab society.

With this statement, the U.S. begins to call that bluff, and to cut the Gordian knot of the Middle East conflict. If the moderate Arab states are really interested in improving the plight of the Palestinians, and if the moderate Arab states are serious about living in peace with Israel, as the so-called "Saudi peace plan" asserted, it's put up or shut up time. If on the other hand, they're never going to be willing to do either, it's about time they come out and show that, too, and line up to be next on the U.S. sh*tlist, right after Iraq.

This is some high-stakes diplomacy, and it's an integral part of the war on terror. The U.S. is sowing confusion among the enemy, and "smoking them out of their caves." Arafat, true to form, has finally realized this (too late), and has embraced not only the Clinton proposal he rejected but even greeted warmly the call for his being replaced. The backchannel communications must be really be a "candid, frank exchange of views", to put it diplomatically, if the public diplomacy is this blistering.

The storm is beginning out there in the desert,
and these are just the first gusts...