by Hillel Fendel Jan. 27, 2007
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/120188
Traiman asked about Woolsey's choice of terminology in calling the
present conflict between the West and Islam as World War Four.
Woolsey
explained that shortly after 9/11, "I saw an op-ed in the Wall Street
Journal by Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University where he wrote that
the Cold War was World War III, and that the war against what I call
Islamist totalitarianism is World War IV... We have a situation where
democracies in the west such as Israel and the US, and Japan and others
too, are at war with a group of Islamist totalitarianism ideologies and
movements - very loosely analogous to the movements of the 20s and 30s
- Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and Japanese imperialism..."
Woolsey
said that it could take the West "decades to win this war; the Cold War
took us four decades to win, and I see no reason to expect this one to
be less than that."
Traiman asked, "Iran is actively working on
a nuclear bomb and calls for Israel's destruction. How long can Israel
afford to wait before taking action? And how long can the US afford to
wait?"
Woolsey did not offer a direct answer, but rather some background:
"We
can only hope that the Israeli and American governments have a better
handle on the precise details of the Iranian nuclear program... The
Persians [precursors of today's Iranians -ed.] invented chess, and they
are playing it well. Hamas and Hizbullah and other groups are their
pawns, and the Syrian government is a rook, and their most precious
piece - their queen - is their nuclear weapons program. They are moving
the pieces around quite cleverly, this week using Hizbullah to
overthrow the government of Lebanon; next week it may be something
else. They are moving their pieces with skill, and they're a very
serious adversary."
PA State - Not in the Coming Decades
Asked
his opinion on the establishment of a Palestinian state, the former CIA
director recommended that it not happen in the coming decades. He said
that though the Jewish presence in this region precedes the Moslem
claim - "for some Muslims like Arafat to deny that Jews were ever
present here is idiotic" - the Moslems also have national rights in the
area.
Openly avoiding the question of the nature or borders of
a Palestinian state, he emphasized his opinion that "the Palestinians
should not be granted the right to statehood until they start to treat
Israeli Jews who settle in the West Bank as fairly as Israel treats its
Muslim citizens."
"An Arab Muslim living in Jaffa," Woolsey
said, "enjoys freedom of speech, religion, and expression, and can vote
for his representatives in the Knesset, and doesn't go to sleep
worrying that some government element might come and kill him. I think
that once the Palestinians start treating Jewish settlers with that
same degree of humanity - and they're very, very far from doing that
now - at that point I think we have to seriously consider how they
could have some degree of self-governing. I won't get into the question
of borders, but what I think is that the Palestinians must be held to
the same standards as Israel regarding how they treat the other. I am
sure this will be many decades from now, though, because their children
are taught the Wahhabi doctrine of being suicide bombers and the like."
Disengagement Was a Mistake
Traiman:
"There are continuous calls for American troop withdrawals from Iraq;
the unilateral withdrawal idea is back on the table here in Israel; and
talks with Syria are again being pushed. Why are we playing the
appeasement card?"
Woolsey: "Appeasement isn't called playing a
card - it's just folding. I think those steps that you just mentioned
are most unwise. Talking to Syria and negotiating should be done only
when one has leverage... Unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank would
not be a wise step for Israel to take; when one sees what happened in
Gaza, and sees the political advantage that Hamas has taken of the
situation to claim unilateral victory and now to be part of the PA
government - how many failures do you need before you recognize that
it's a failure?"
Woolsey said that this past summer's war
between Israel and Hizbullah was a lost opportunity for the United
States and Israel to jointly decide on Syrian targets to be attacked.
This type of mistake must not be repeated, he said:
"We ought to
make sure that if there is another legitimate and reasonable occasion
for us to use force in this part of the world against Syria or Iran, we
must not waste it. We should move towards encouraging peaceful regime
change there; but if we are absolutely forced to use force against
Iran, for instance, in order to stop its nuclear program, that should
not be the limit of our use of force - it ought to be used also to
break the power of the terrible Iranian regime and give the people of
Iran a chance to live under a better one."
Asked his opinion on
Jonathan Pollard, Woolsey said that though he has favored a significant
punishment for Pollard in the past, "now that he has served [over] 20
years in prison, my view is that 20 years is enough. I also think that
the close relationship between the US and Israel is also of some
consideration, and at this point I think he's served long enough. I
won't go any further than that."
