Caroline Glick on Fatah and Obama

Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick has written an excellent, detailed op-ed piece of the results of the recent Fatah conference in Bethlehem. She highlights the utter corruption of the policies of the Obama administration with respect to the region. Here's a brief excerpt:

FOR THE Obama administration, Fatah was supposed to be the poster child for moderate terrorists. Fatah was supposed to be the prototype of the noble terrorist organization that really just wants respect. It was supposed to be the group that proved the central contention of the Obama White House's strategy for dealing with terror, namely, that all terrorists want is to be appeased.

But over the past week in Bethlehem, Fatah's leaders said they will not be appeased. To the international community whose billions of dollars in aid money and boundless goodwill and political support they have pocketed over the past decade and a half they sent a clear message. They remain an implacable terror group devoted to the physical annihilation of Israel.

Read the whole thing. A similar sort of denial is noted by ARC's Elan Journo with respect to Pakistan.

State of the War

A useful survey of the condition of the various war theaters, written by noted journalist Bill Roggio, can be found here. The survey begins with this paragraph:

The US and her allies in Europe, the Middle East, and beyond have witnessed both stunning successes and dramatic setbacks in the Long War during 2007. Pakistan has continued its slide towards a failed state, with the government having relinquished control over additional territory to the Taliban and, thus, al Qaeda. Suicide bombings and attacks on all segments of the state plagued Pakistan as the Taliban and al Qaeda cemented their new safe havens. Iraq, which seemed all but lost at the end of 2006 as the US appeared to lose the all-important political will, has turned around with the change in counterinsurgency plan and the surge of troops US and Iraqi troops. Al Qaeda and the Iranian-backed Shia terrorists are losing ground and local support in Iraq. Afghanistan has seen its worst year of violence since the Taliban was defeated in late 2001; suicide bombings and IED attacks skyrocketed due to the problems in Pakistan.

Read the whole thing; it's quite instructive. I'm still of the opinion that if we had taken this conflict a lot more seriously to begin with, along the lines described by John David Lewis here, we would have wrapped it up a long time ago.