Arab Liberals Petition the U.N. to Establish an International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Terrorists

MEMRI alerts us to another reform manifesto from the Arab world:Arabs petitioning the UN to Prosecute Terrorists! Here's an excerpt:

On October 24, 2004, the liberal Arab websites www.elaph.com and www.metransparent.com published a manifesto written by Arab liberals, in which they petition the U.N. to establish an international tribunal which would prosecute terrorists, as well as people and institutions, primarily religious clerics, that incite terrorism.

I'm sorry, but I can't show you Elaph in English, but here's a link to their fashion page. You can tell a lot about someone's worldview by how they dress--or maybe not dress. Yes, they're quite a liberal lot, as Arabs go, and I would further imagine that the terrorists hate them worse than they hate us. Browse through those fashion links and draw your own conclusions.

Fortunately, I can show you Middle East Transparent in English. And here is the letter to the UN, straight from the English version of Middle East Transparent's own site. So we can regard MEMRI's lead as solid gold, if not platinum. (MEMRI have never let me down before.)

What is going on here? I'd say that those "liberal Arabs and Muslims" are as innocent as babes if they really think the UN can or even will help them. I don't know anything about them, because I never heard about them until today. But in point of brutal fact, the only power in the world that is going to prosecute anyone for conducting, inciting, or abetting terrorism throughout the world is the United States of America. Nor am I convinced that the publication of this letter, coming as it does after our just-concluded election, is at all coincidental. Yes, I know--MEMRI says that they started thinking about this back in September 2004. But why did they wait until after the election? To avoid being accused of influencing that election? I don't think so. More likely, the re-election of George W. Bush as President of the United States gave them courage.

But not, perhaps, all the courage they need. As I say, the UN can't or won't help them. The only power that will help them is the United States of America. Unconfirmed reports say that this help is already beginning--I'll have something to post on the Siege of Fallujah when it is well under way. (I don't believe in tipping the enemy's hand through my own reporting.)

But I'd say that we can have an end to the blithe assumption that "all the world will hate us" for prosecuting the War Against Terror as aggressively as we are now doing, and as aggressively as we ought.