A Retreat Is A Retreat Is A Retreat

Me, three and a half weeks ago:

Whatever Prime Minister Sharon's intentions vis-a-vie cutting and running from Gaza or the reasoning behind them, to the Pals it looks like a retreat under fire that is the result of their terrorist warfare. As far as they're concerned they have the Jews on the run. If I were they I would be thinking the same thing: let's pour it on even more until we finish them off and "Palestine" is once again "Palestine," and the "people of the Book" are a dhimmized historical footnote.

Sometimes in life - and especially in war - what you think you're doing matters far less than how your enemy perceives those same actions. It is the genesis of every foreign policy miscalculation that has ever been made. It is, just to cite one example, how our economic sanctions against Imperial Japan plunged us into the Pacific war they were intended to prevent. And in the here and now, it constitutes the first strategic victory for Islamic fundamentalism over the West since 9/11.

Andy McCarthy in the Corner today:

The Washington Post editorializes this morning that – shock, shock – it is chaos in Gaza since Israel ceded control to the Palestinian Authority.

In the emerging free and democratic Palestinian state that will purportedly someday live side-by-side in peace and security with Israel, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad grow stronger while openly armed mobs run wild, torching synagogues and looting greenhouses – undeterred by the risible PA security forces.

Meanwhile, the State Department’s other new favorite democratic reformer, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt (who just squeaked by in “free” elections last week with 89% of the vote and who is subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer to the tune of about $2 billion a year) has reneged on a promise to Israel to patrol Egypt’s border with Gaza. This has allowed thousands to enter over the last few days, including armed militants believed to be connected to al Qaeda affiliates.

So, though the U.S.-led “roadmap” process is supposed to make disarming militants a condition precedent to further steps toward Palestinian statehood, the Palestinians have nonetheless been given control of Gaza – with the results that terror groups are increasing their arsenals and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has conceded he has no intention of trying to disarm them. The U.S. and the G-8, meanwhile, are providing the PA with over $3 billion in financial support. (See, e.g., here and here.)

Israel – which has heretofore been successful in keeping al Qaeda out – must now fear the worst: an uncontrolled influx of terrorists and weaponry, some of which will inevitably make their way from Gaza to the West Bank, Jerusalem and elsewhere. [emphases added]

Any questions?