Israel Lost Its War. Will Assad's Enemies

Israel Lost Its War. Will Assad's Enemies Lose, Too?

After The Allied Victory Of 1918, At The End Of My Father's War, The Victors Divided Up The Lands Of Their Former Enemies. In The Space Of Just Seventeen Months, They Created The Borders Of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia And Most Of The Middle East. And I Have Spent My Entire Career — In Belfast And Sarajevo, In Beirut And Baghdad — Watching The People Within Those Borders Burn.

Osama Bin Laden Is Very Shrewd. But He Struck Me, Even In 1997, As Being Remarkably Out Of Touch. I Remember Thinking This Does Not Look Like The Type Of Guy Who Walks To The Top Of A Mountain With A Mobile Phone And Says, "operation B, Attack."now He Is America's Number One Enemy. He's Always Wanted To Be That.

If It Is Bin Laden, He's A Very Intelligent Guy. He's Been Planning His War For A Long Time. I Remember The Last Time I Met Him In 1997 In Afghanistan. And Bin Laden Said To Me "from This Mountain, Mr. Robert, Upon Which You Are Sitting, We Beat The Russian Army And Helped Break The Soviet Union. And I Pray To God That He Allows Us To Turn America Into A Shadow Of Itself." When I Saw The Pictures Of New York Without The World Trade Center, New York Looked Like A Shadow Of Itself.

I've Never Seen A Single Demonstration In Pakistan, In The Streets Of Gaza, In The West Bank, In Which The People Have Come Out With Signs Saying, "please Give Us Better Roads. Please Give Us New Prenatal Clinics. Please Give Us A New Sewage System." I'm Sure They'd Like Those Things, But It's Not What They Demand In The Demonstrations. In The Demonstrations, They Talk About Justice, They Talk About An End To Israeli Occupation.