BRITAIN

BRITAIN
The Telegraph, London, Nov. 7: Many British people regard the battle beginning at Fallujah and last week's casualties among the Black Watch with dismay, even revulsion. They perceive an ugly predicament in Iraq growing worse by the day, and Tony Blair allowing hapless British troops to be dragged ever deeper into it. Here, they say, are the first fruits of the re-election of George W. Bush, an ignorant and dangerous man. Heaven help those shackled to his chariot wheels, when he really gets into his stride.
There are good reasons for questioning Bush's fitness to lead the world, and for savaging his administration's handling of Iraq. Yet it seems gravely mistaken to go beyond this and start to hope -- as so many French and German people hope -- that Washington's hubris will be humbled in the Sunni triangle. Even Bush's Western critics should beware of wanting him to fail in Eyerack.
Greater bloodshed
Win or lose, we are in this together. If America fails, we all fail. If Iraq dissolves into anarchy, as well it may, the world will be the loser. The fact that the United States has not used its power wisely since 2003 does not diminish our profound need for this power, to save us from the consequences of failed and failing states. In Iraq, we are where we are. Political defeat or premature withdrawal threaten not only a vacuum and even greater bloodshed, but lasting damage to world order.
If Iraq is to have any chance of becoming viable, January's elections are critical. It is impossible to make every part of the country secure for polling in the next two months, but the insurgents must be pushed back and weakened. Breaking their hold on Fallujah is a crucial step.
SINGAPORE
Singapore Straits Times, Nov. 10: The imminent departure of the gravely-ill Yasser Arafat will remove the only icon that Palestinians have had since their land was transformed by the United Nations into the Jewish state of Israel 56 years ago. He reinvented himself from being a civil engineer in Kuwait, part of the 6 million-strong Palestinian diaspora living in various countries but not in the independent state that it yearned to have.
He was a practitioner of the in-your-face school of politics whose primary weapon was his personal veto: No to opportunities for Palestinian statehood offered by sympathetic leaders like former U.S. President Bill Clinton, no to anything other than full and complete possession of the historical Palestinian homeland -- the maximalist approach that Israel would never countenance. Like many ambitious men with a driving dream and an emotionally charged constituency, Arafat substituted stubbornness for statesmanship. That is why Palestinians now lack a clear voice for their cause. Arafat has left behind only a tattered flag for them.
Bargaining table
That flag will never be hoisted in an independent Palestine unless the re-elected and energized U.S. President George W. Bush brings intransigent Israelis, Palestinians of all ideological hues, the overly cautious Europeans and the United Nations, to the bargaining table.
As Arafat's name becomes one for the ages, it is fair to ask: What if he had been more practical on behalf of dispossessed Palestinians and less focused on grandstanding? His flag would have stood for full-fledged statehood today, not as a symbol of a worthy cause that failed during his extraordinary lifetime. Say this for Yasser Arafat: he was suigeneris but that was not enough.