Syria's Peace Proposal

By Uri Avnery

You really can't rely on these Arabs.

Take this fellow, Qaddafi. For decades he played the clown. The whole world laughed at him (except when he downed a French plane in Chad and the Pan-Am jet over Lockerbie.) His Libya was a "rogue state", an international pariah. He was working on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Americans hated him, and from time to time bombed him, killing his daughter on one such occasions.

You could rely on good old Qaddafi. He supplied us with an alibi for producing all kinds of interesting weapons. Everybody understood that with such people around, Israel needs the doomsday weapon, and that it's useless to talk about peace.

And then, suddenly...

<snip>

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery01122004.html

I especially liked this bit:

"Catch 23: If the Arabs are strong, you can't make peace with them. You have to defeat them. And if the Arabs are weak, there is no need to make peace with them. Why offer them anything?

Catch 24: If the Arabs say they want war, you have to believe them. But if the Arabs say they want peace, they are clearly lying. And how can you make peace with liars?"

Violet...

but a nice read.

It wasn't the Bushies labeling Syria a terror state. Syria has been on a government watch list for years, dating back past * and perhaps even past Clinton.