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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, OCTOBER 25, 1985
PAGE 7
intercepting the EgyptAir flight, which the latter refused to do.
Americans now wonder: What good is it to pump thousands of millions of
dollars of aid into Egypt, only to get a rebuke at the first inkling of
a dispute?
Especially galling was the sight of Egyptian university
students burning the American flag, hoisting pictures of PLO's Arafat.
Egypt is not proving to be a very faithful lover--lovers rarely are
(Jer• 3 0: 14 ; Lam• 1: 2) •
And while Americans felt that at last some forceful action had been
undertaken to counteract terrorism, columnist George F. Will CLOS
ANGELES TIMES, Oct. 18) showed it was done very late in the game, and
that the lonely war on terrorism has a foreboding parallel to Vietnam.
In the aftermath, three nations--one a member of NATO,
another counted an ally, the third considered an example of
"civilized communism" [Yugoslavia, to _whom Italy dispatched
the alleged terrorist ringleaderJ --showed that they value
good relations with the PLO� than with the United States.
Or perhaps the point should be put this way:
The three
nations' fear of PLO anger is palpable, but their fear of
U.S. anger is negligible••••
The message of the interception was supposed to be "you can
run but you can't hide." But terrorists routinely do both.
Low-level terrorists with blood on their hands have little to
fear, and their leaders have nothing to fear, from a U.S.
government that brings to anti-terrorism a self-defeating
desire to assign
direct,
individual culpability
for
particular acts of violence sponsored by organizations. This
is
A
policy of striking only at the fingers rather than the
brain of terrorism. [The U.S. declined to veto a U.N. vote
condemning an Israeli raid on the P.L.O. "brain" in Tunisia.]
We are bringing to the war against terrorism the same war
losing restraint that, 15 years ago, had U.S. fighter planes
chasing trucks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, while North Viet
nam's dikes were spared. Soon the U.S. government will utter
the usual lubricating pleasantries, and Egypt's president and
other fellow-travelers of terrorism will grudgingly, and for
a profit, forgive us for the injuries that they have done to
us.
[The U.S. has already dispatched an envoy to Rome and
Cairo on a "fence-mending mission." ]
Britain, too, is taking her lumps. It has been a very uncomfortable
week in the usually balmy Bahamas for British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher. She has had to sit through one stormy session after another
at the 47-nation Commonwealth conference, listening to demands that
Britain cut its formidable trade and investment links ($15 billion
worth) with South Africa. Scores of thousands of British jobs depend
on this relationship. Early on in the conference India's Prime Minis
ter Rajiv Gandhi had called upon all members to enact "comprehensive
and mandatory sanctions."
In the end, the will of the "Iron Lady," which is set in principle
against the use of sanctions, prevailed. A final communique read that
"some of us (members) would consider" imposing in the future a long