This may be a harsh thing to say about the man, but let's be honest. He is a war criminal, his record in youth was littered with atrocities and massacres in those early Halcyon days of stealing land from Palestinians. He masterminded the invasion of Lebanon and subsequent brutal occupation. He bears responsibility for the massacres at Sabra and Shattilla. He's been a backbone of oppression and misery and assassination in the occupied territories. He is a genuinely rancid human being, and he has worked hard to add to the sum total of human pain, degradation and misery in this world. There are graveyards filled with his victims.

Against this, the good that he has done in his life is a limited and partisan thing, for whatever good works may be attributed to him were obtained at the price of human misery.

My mother in law suffered a debilitating stroke. I helped to nurse her for three years before she died. So I know a little bit about the subject.

I can only hope that Sharon's stroke is massive and debilitating, and that he suffers a few more. I hope that he is reduced to a thing in the bed, capable only of suffering and misery. I hope he lingers on in this degraded state for years.

Let him die in a gutter. Let no one mourn his passing.

And if there is such a thing as hell, may he go there.

Make that "brain hemorrhage".
He puts a bomb under Israeli politics, then promptly checks out. Surreal.
Given your recent trip, (and the fact that you're like that with Peretz, it'd be good to have a fuller post on your read of the situation.
We have to assume Sharon's toast. What now?

Den, I didn't see your comment before I posted.
Your condemnation of his early career may be defensible. But the fascination of Sharon - and the reason he had been heading for a big victory in the elections - comes from the fact that he was a disruptive force rather than a common-or-garden spokesman for the settler faction. It wasn't clear whether Gaza was the end of the road as far as land-for-peace went. By dumping Likud he ensured that ambiguity continued, and all kinds of people were on board for the journey. Now the bus is wrapped round a tree.
The future's verdict on Sharon will depend on what now comes from the disruption he wrought. Any ideas?

The world (and especially Israel) will probably be better off without Ariel Sharon, but his replacement -Ehud Olmert- is no rose.

All too often, the good that men do dies with them, but the evil that they do lives on.

Well, the evil is pretty well known, and its likely to maintain a long, long life. Let me add to the list his dedicated cheerleading for an Invasion of Iraq by America, and whatever backstage machinations he had going on for actions against Iran.

As for the good that he did... I dunno. Maybe he petted a dog once. Who knows.

Gaza was never about land for peace. Gaza was about pulling a few hundred settlers out of a manufactured human hellhole in order to create a savagely overpopulated version of an American Indian reservation, circa 1900, or the Polish Ghetto, circa 1944.

People can dress it up however they wanted. But take a look at the population in the Gaza strip, the population density, the level of poverty, the dearth of infrastructure, the utter lack of any economic foundation and Israel's control and oversite of the territories border. It's nothing more than an investment in human misery.

That particular investment in human misery, blown up and trumped as a humanitarian gesture then becomes the foundation for land and resource grabs in the West Bank, through the wall and the settlements. Well, whoopee.

The Settler faction was just a bunch of single issue fruitcakes, not fundamentally different than those whack jobs screaming outside abortion clinics. Their narrowness and extremism barred them from coherent discussion.

Sharon's vision was larger and more strategic. As a military man, he knew that he couldn't simply liquidate three or four million Palestinians. He also knew that he couldn't simply expell them. He had to reserve some territory for reservations and ghettos... this is something the settlers never appreciated, they figured that they should have it all, or at least, they figured that they were entitled to the little corner that they stole.

Sharon had the big picture in mind when stealing land. It was strategic for him, good lands, critical resources, strategic vantage points, religious landmarks for Israel, and moving the unwanted population into crap lands, strip them of resources and infrastructure, leave them perpetually impoverished and impotent.

I should respect this?

What happens after he passes from the stage? Who knows. Perhaps things get better, perhaps things get worse, perhaps things will be the same, or maybe they'll be different. The one hope that I have, is that perhaps his successors will be slightly less monstrous.

In no way was Sharon a force for good or for improvement. He was simply one more monster in a world that has too many.

Boy, Den, I could not agree with you more! I posted my thoughts on Sharon and USRael in general on a later thread.

I don't usually wish ill on anyone, but Sharon seems to me to be the embodiement (sp?) of evil -- though I do think Netanyahu, with his smooth American ways and Paul Newman-ish looks, is worse. Netanyahu's a real marquee frontman.

It will now only be a question of months before USRael takes us to war against Iran and, by extension, Russia and China.

But both parties are to blame and it's time for Americans to get rid of these Zionist shills who call themselves our government.

I have a novel suggestion: move Israel to the US! That way the vast majority of pro-Israel sympathizers would be in one place and we could deal with the rest of the world in a realistic, cost-effective fashion, instead of having our foreign policy dictated by Zionists in the media and the government, with tragic results.

The 2000 + deaths of American soldiers, the tens of thousands of Afghans, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, would have some meaning -- the war against "terrorism" i.e., any enemy of Israel, would be over!

We could negotiate for oil, pipelines, etc., and have real treaties -- and not have Hitler's maxi-me, i.e., the Likud party of Israel, dictate which country is a threat to the US (hint: China is but if Israel don't say so, it ain't)

Sigh. Though one can dream, can't one? Get Israel out of our foreign policy or make her officially part of the US.

Steve Clemons, if you're as close to the Israeli government as some have hinted, I'm here in Hawai'i, and I will tell you this: we do not want more war. The "support the troops" stickers are ubiquitous, but when you talk to the people who drive those cars, they want out.

Steve, tell that to your buddies over in USRael, and make sure they know that more and more Americans think that 9/11 and the "Bush" (Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith/Perle/Sharon) adminstration's use of it is under more and more suspicion every single day.

Many Americans will not believe the next "terrorist" attack is not staged, so you better tell your buddies in the USRael government to make the next one really spectacular -- blow up Los Angeles or something -- otherwise we're not going to take "our" government's BS any more.

America was not founded by cowards -- we will live free or we will die fighting against the tyranny, partially from a foreign government, that threatens to engulf us.

Den, you put a familiar case well.
I hold no brief for Sharon at all. Instead I'd like to persuade you to share my fascination.
There's something about him reminiscent of de Gaulle, who was also an unpleasant man - stiff, colossally arrogant, loathed by both Churchill and FDR - yet one who by force of will imposed himself on France and Europe.
Sharon is unlike the grubby run of politicians on the Israeli right, from whom nobody with any sense can expect any good. Like de Gaulle his view is olympian; he conceives of himself as bigger than politics. This self-perception gives him enormous strategic flexibility. When shared by a sufficiently broad section of opinion, such a dynamic becomes self-reinforcing.
For this reason I don't think it is reasonable to say for certain that you know where Sharon is going. Gaza may be a meaningless concession or a mould-breaking precedent. You claim to know for certain. I make no such claim. If Sharon is now finished, all we can know for certain is ... we'll never know for sure.
___

FrowningDimples,
(Frowning dimples?
Frowning dimples??
WTF?)
I'm much less happy with your attempt at a contribution, and I hope your dark comments about Steve's imagined closeness to Israel weren't prompted by my reference to Peretz.

I'm not as hostile to Netanyu as to Sharon. Netanyu, for all his faults, is a politician and his considerations are political.

Sharon was a warlord, a soldier, a butcher. He was a strategic thinker. This was why he could whack the parochial interests of settlers in Giza and Gaza in favour of pursuing his big picture.

His move in Gaza was not mould breaking, it was merely strategic. As quid pro quo, he was preparing to annex outright a third of the west bank or more. This is well documented. There's no 'we'll never know' it's on the record.

One immediate improvement to the situation is that Sharon's passing reduces the likelihood of an American or Israeli air strike against Iran. As a strategist, Sharon would push for that.

Politicians wouldn't. Too many political risks. Too many uncertainties.

With Sharon off the table, the equation changes. Bush isn't being pushed in that direction by Sharon or Israel, whoever is left to push has substantially less credibility and reliability than Sharon.

This doesn't mean that Bush won't simply pursue it on his own initiative. But then again, he's less likely where he sees the situation as less reliable and less stable.

Sharon's misfortune may have saved the rest of us from WWIII.

Actually, the one point on which I agree with our Hawaiian friend is that in the present situation Netanyahu is a very much nastier piece of work.
You say you are concerned about policy towards Iran, and more broadly about the dangers of a 'Gordian Knot' approach to Middle East politics (whereby a particular airstrike/assassination/invasion will lead to a happy reordering of the world). Well, remember that the people who wrote the Clean Break paper, and who later took up positions in the Bush administration, were much closer to Netanyahu than to Sharon. The hardline rump of Likud, for whom Sharon's name is mud, is now under Netanyahu's leadership.
Your view of Sharon has the virtue of clarity, and I see its attractions. But you need to be able to explain his decision to dump the Likud and to get his next mandate from a centrist coalition. I don't think you can.

Well, its something that can be argued about, Bert, can't it?

Perhaps Sharon's decision to dump Likud came as a result of some moral transformation, something along the lines of 'hey, oppressing people is wrong.'

Or perhaps it was made with a view to larger strategic considerations.

Consider that during the peace process with Egypt, Sharon was prepared to bust the heads of Israeli settlers in the Sinai and give back conquered land in exchange for an enduring peace.

Sharon was no fool. He looked at the Sinai, knew it would never buy anything but trouble, that it amounted to a vast expanse of worthless land, and that defending it was strategically untenable. It's better territory to invade than to own. And while it was in play, Egypt was guaranteed to be number one enemy, and with Egypt swinging around, Syria was a threat and the Palestinian question was a live problem.

So, give back the Sinai, take Egypt permanently off the table, what then? Syria is a joke, Lebanon's no problem, Jordan is peaceful and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are trapped... shit out of luck.

And all you have to do to get this strategic coup is to screw over a few settlers in the Sinai.

This, by the way, illustrates Sharon's penchant for strategic thinking rather than political thinking. There is a political cost to beating up Israeli settlers in Sinai to give their land to Egypt.

So, fast forward a few years. Sharon is prime minister, the Gaza strip is a problem.

There are a handful of settlers there, less than a few thousand, among 1.8 million palestinians, the lands all but worthless, there's no strategic or commercial value that makes it desirable to Israel.

What's Sharon going to do? Spend his treasury looking after a few hundred obnoxious settlers who are outnumbers hundreds to one in a strip of land that's basically a hellhole.

Well, its politically the wise thing to do to look after Settlers, but its not strategically sound in this case.

And there's the problem of what to do with the Palestinians in Gaza. Gas chambers? No, people don't like that. Expulsion? No, won't work either. They're there, whether he likes it or not, and there's no way to get rid of them.

But why get rid of them? Strategically, the Palestinians can't be killed off or expelled, so the next best thing to do is keep them locked up and out of the way. Gaza is perfect, as I've said. It's worthless terrority, no resources, no port, no significant infrastructure, no economy to speak of. It's completely helpless, militarily indefensible to those inside it, easily controlled and dominated by Israel.

Strategically, the thing to do is to turn Gaza into a giant American Indian Reserve circa 1900/Warsaw Ghetto circa 1944.

But of course, you don't spin it like that. You spin it as Palestinian self-rule, moderation, a warmhearted gesture. International goodwill follows, who knows, maybe even a Nobel peace prize.

There's even a major strategic plus in that by making this 'concession' here, you arm yourself to go out to the west bank and pull down some real concessions for territory that you want. Territory that is valuable, territory that has resources, territory that has strategic utility which you can use aggressively.

So, turn Gaza into a reservation, penning up a helpless and impotent population, and then take your quid pro quo by grabbing goodies on the west bank. It's a win win win situation all the way around for Sharon.

All he has to do is screw over the settlers in Gaza. Strategically, its the thing to do.

Of course, politically, its a nightmare. Particularly for his right wing backers. Settlers are damned near holy in Israel, they make a lot of noise, they have fanatical support in the right. The problem is, right or wrong, you never screw a settler over. It's just not to be done. The political cost, particularly for a right wing politician is completely unacceptable.

So, Sharon winds up burning his bridges. Now, this illustrates the difference between Sharon and Netanyu, between a strategist and a politician. Sharon is willing to let the bridge burn, because he's looking at it strategically, looking for net advantage in the big picture, because at the end of the day, its the net advantage that counts. Netanyu is a politician, he's looking at constituencies and support, he's looking at today, not the big picture.

So now Sharon moves onto the next step as a strategic thinker. Some of his bridges on the right are burning. That's bad. On the other hand, those constituencies are a pain in the ass who have been restricting his freedom to pursue the big picture. So screw em, let em burn.

But if he's losing constituencies, then strategically, he needs to reposition and obtain new constituencies. Some of his right wing constituencies will be carried along with him. Folk who will vote for him no matter what. So he's got his base.

He's got to look for new constituencies. The right wing ones are either in his pocket or sulking. So, its a move to the center. Or an apparent move to the center.

Can he do it? Sure, he's managed to work Israel into a state of fear and paranoia for years. He's pumped the intifada with selected assassinations and attacks to keep the level of public adrenalin high. In doing this, he's positioned himself just like George W. Bush, he can appeal to moderates because he's made the moderates afraid, he's created a state of fear and he projects strength.

And in addition to projecting strength, his little hat trick with Gaza buys him street cred with the moderates. Those who are looking for peace, those who aren't as thrilled with settlers see Sharon as a guy prepared to represent them.

So, voila, he's reshaped his constituency totally, but not his policies.

He's still looking strategically, still looking at the big picture, still pursuing the net gain... which will be screwing the Palestinians out of as much land, wealth and resources as he figures he can get away with, shovelling the Palestinians onto reservations, rendering them dependent and impotent, and saddling them with their own helpess government so Israel doesn't have any obligations to them and then locking this sick and degenerate state of affairs in for all of perpetuity.

Along the way, Syria can be disposed of and its government replaced with something more amenable. Lebanon can be made into a client state, just like Jordan. Iraq will be pacified and if that doesn't work, Kurdistan will emerge as an independent client state. And Iran and its nuclear program can be sorted out once and for all by pushing the Americans into some sort of pre-emptive attack.

Evil is as evil does.

While Steve's busy drawing on his recent firsthand experiences to write up his take on the situation, this post is worth a read.
Well informed. And unfortunately very gloomy.

I was aware of the election funding and bribery issue. In addition to being a murderer and a thug, a mass atrocity artist and a war criminal, the guy was corrupt too? Who would have thunk?

Bert, I'd advocate a grain of salt. The 'down home' perspective is from a Likudnik. Unfortunately for the Likud party, they're now a rump. Netanyu is not necessarily a shoe in. It remains to be seen whether they can recapture those voters and knesset seats, or whether they've permanently lost them.

Bert, here's a thought. Perhaps one of the reasons for Sharon's hiving off his own new party is much simpler: Corruption. Perhaps it was simply easier to take bribes and engage in influence peddling if he started his own party, rather than if he had to be accountable to his fellow Likuds?

Food for thought?