Human Events asked me to write about reactions on the “Muslim street” to the Annapolis summit, so I did that for this week’s column: “Gloom Before Annapolis.” But the “Muslim street” reactions didn’t leave me much room to say what I really thought of the conference itself. Frank Gaffney’s piece in the Washington Times, “Gang rape in Annapolis,” is much better and more worth reading:
It is fitting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of today’s so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women.
Despite official efforts to low-ball its significance, Miss Rice’s conclave is shaping up to be a gang-rape of a nation on a scale not seen since Munich in 1938, when the British and French allowed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to have their violent way with Czechoslovakia.
This time, the intended victim is Israel. As with the effort to appease the Nazis and Fascists nearly 70 years ago, however, the damage will not be confined to the rapee. The interests of the Free World in general and the United States in particular will suffer from what the Saudis and most of the other attendees have in mind for the Jewish State “” namely, its dismemberment and ultimate destruction.
The Bush Administration also, at least as far as the dismemberment goes. Read it all.