I think that Bill Quick has got it right. I’ll say nothing in this post that hasn’t already been said elsewhere in the blogosphere, but perhaps I can summarize several people’s points.

Those of us who are unhappy with Bush’s speech yesterday were relying overmuch on the media interpretation of it, instead of actually reading it and delving into the subtleties therein. This is a speech that was very carefully crafted.

Note his use of the imperative “must” when speaking to the Arabs, and the more requestful “ask” when addressing the Israelis, and he didn’t use the word “immediate.” I think that the purpose is indeed to stall for a few more days (note that Powell is going next week, not immediately). It may also be to assuage Powell’s ego, while placating the Arabists in Araby and Europe, as Rumsfeld, Rice and company continue planning the war that will replace Saddam. (Note that both Michael Barone and the WSJ clearly recognize today that Iraq is the linchpin to the whole region).

In the next few days, the Israelis will have achieved much of their goal in tearing apart Arafat’s terrorist infrastructure, and gathering intelligence and evidence, after which they can withdraw to make Powell look good, and continue to distract the Euroidiots from the real game.

Even if the fresh evidence of Arafat’s perfidy persuades no one in Europe (who still don’t even believe that the Karine A was really carrying weapons to him), it will be used to steel the spine of their own people and prepare them for the coming war as the Mideast goes through the necessary crucible that will finally bring it into modernity.

And Arafat will be Arafat, and the talks will fall apart again, but Powell will have at least be seen to have made the effort, and now the old terrorist will have been rendered relatively toothless for a few weeks or months, which may be enough time to get on with the real agenda.

As usual, Krauthammer gets it right.

American critics, beginning with the secretary of state, object to this goal of destroying Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. As The Washington Post explained in an editorial, we need the continued presence of “the leadership of the Palestinian Authority as well as its principal security services” because they have been “the only available instruments for stopping Palestinian terrorism.”

Good God. Instruments for stopping terrorism? They are instruments for aiding and abetting, equipping and financing, supporting and glorifying terrorism, which they call “martyrdom operations.” The question of capabilities is irrelevant. Of course they have the capability. But they have no intention of exercising it.

This is like arguing at the beginning of the Afghan war that we should not attack the Taliban because they were the only instrument in Afghanistan available for bringing al Qaeda to heel. Sure. But they were allied with al Qaeda, commingled with al Qaeda and shared al Qaeda’s objectives. They had no intention of ever stopping al Qaeda.

A Palestinian woman received a kidney donated by a Jewish victim of a suicide-bombing. Can anyone imagine the reverse occurring? A Jew receiving an organ from a Palestinian who was killed by Israelis?

Compare and contrast two cultures–one that celebrates murder and destruction, and another that offers life to its enemies, born from the deaths that they cause.

[Update at 2:45PM PST]

James Taranto, via Instantman, links to a WSJ article that’s almost the opposite.

However, it’s still not quite symmetrical–in both cases, it was the Israeli health-care system that was responsible. My point was that it would be hard to imagine a Palestinian state, at least one that in any way resembled the existing Palestinian Authority, doing such a thing.

My new Fox News column is up. It’s mostly recycled from here, but I do have some new stuff in the “Letters” section on my give and take with the creationists that I inadvertently brought out of the woodwork last week.

My new Fox News column is up. It’s mostly recycled from here, but I do have some new stuff in the “Letters” section on my give and take with the creationists that I inadvertently brought out of the woodwork last week.

My new Fox News column is up. It’s mostly recycled from here, but I do have some new stuff in the “Letters” section on my give and take with the creationists that I inadvertently brought out of the woodwork last week.

Will Warren has an ode to our current favorite media punching bag.

She’s just letting this Palestinian representative sit there and lie to her, and not challenging him. He says that it’s “nonsense” that they teach children to martyr themselves in the schools. He says that “no one” would support their childrens’ suicides.

All she would have had to do was to have some tape cued up of these lunatic Palestinian mothers bragging about how they wanted to send their sons off to die. Or some graphics of some texts from the madrassas. Or some tape of the Arafat praising the martyrs in Arabic (it would be effective with English subtitles, and he would have looked like a real ass trying to say that that wasn’t what Arafat was saying).

But no, she didn’t bother to prepare for this interview. I preferred the rotation that Fox had before Greta came aboard. It was inconsistent, but it wasn’t consistently incompetent.

She’s just letting this Palestinian representative sit there and lie to her, and not challenging him. He says that it’s “nonsense” that they teach children to martyr themselves in the schools. He says that “no one” would support their childrens’ suicides.

All she would have had to do was to have some tape cued up of these lunatic Palestinian mothers bragging about how they wanted to send their sons off to die. Or some graphics of some texts from the madrassas. Or some tape of the Arafat praising the martyrs in Arabic (it would be effective with English subtitles, and he would have looked like a real ass trying to say that that wasn’t what Arafat was saying).

But no, she didn’t bother to prepare for this interview. I preferred the rotation that Fox had before Greta came aboard. It was inconsistent, but it wasn’t consistently incompetent.

She’s just letting this Palestinian representative sit there and lie to her, and not challenging him. He says that it’s “nonsense” that they teach children to martyr themselves in the schools. He says that “no one” would support their childrens’ suicides.

All she would have had to do was to have some tape cued up of these lunatic Palestinian mothers bragging about how they wanted to send their sons off to die. Or some graphics of some texts from the madrassas. Or some tape of the Arafat praising the martyrs in Arabic (it would be effective with English subtitles, and he would have looked like a real ass trying to say that that wasn’t what Arafat was saying).

But no, she didn’t bother to prepare for this interview. I preferred the rotation that Fox had before Greta came aboard. It was inconsistent, but it wasn’t consistently incompetent.