The recent death of Arafat and the uncertainty of who is to follow him as leader of the embattled fledgling Palestine raised some new questions for me; about both the mideast peace process and the history of extremism and moderation.
To begin, why were Arafat and Rabin able to attempt a peace? The answer seems to be that both were involved in the military struggles of their respective peoples (Rabin commanded the IDF during the Six-Day War, Arafat headed the PLO). Rabin seems to have been a bit short of laurels, as he later died at the hands of a militant Israeli.
Traveling further back (and to the act that gave this diary its name), why is it that Nixon was able to dramatically shift US policy towards communist China? After all, the American attitude beforehand was that nationalist China, firmly forced into its continuing Taiwan exile, was the rightful and legitimate governing authority for those hundreds of millions of people.
The answer to that seems to be Nixon's involvement with the McCarthy witch hunt; only a man so dedicated to fighting communism could be forgiven for such a massive reversal of the Truman Doctrine.
All of this begs the question, why is it that, in order to do the sensible, it is first somehow required to do the despicable? In order to do the right thing, we must push to the extremes? I call it (yeah, you guessed it) the "Only Nixon Could go to China" Syndrome.
We seem, perhaps, to be in the midst of another period of ideological overshoot/sensible withdrawal in the struggle against international terror. I have, since the beginning, been of the opinion that terror was an intelligence and law enforcement, and not a military, problem, which is why I thought it was sad to see Kerry not go for the jugular on that point (after all, Kerry fought members of his own party to bring down BCCI, proving that he had the wherewithal to fight international terror in the way most damaging to it).
Are we, in the next decade or two, going to have to wrestle with this Syndrome? In order to get a sensible policy towards the mideast that doesn't involve toppling governments and occupying nations, are we going to require someone who wanted ringside seats at Saddam's execution (and the poor judgement that that reveals)?
Or, hopefully, are we going to come to our senses and find a more workable, moderate position on the issue before we do any more damage to ourselves?