Our JIC became sharper as a result of challenges in Northern Ireland

Our JIC became sharper as a result of challenges in Northern Ireland. The US equivalent will owe its prominence to the enduring threat of domestic terrorism.The Americans are aware that such terrorism does not exist in a geo-political vacuum and that the threats to the Hudson Valley originated in the Jordan Valley. This does not mean that they are any nearer to solving the Palestinian problem. Indeed, when I was in Washington recently, I detected an impatience with the minutiae of the Israel-Palestine question and a belief that the answer lies in strategic radicalism.I would put the obvious argument: that if America were to act against Saddam before demonstrating its willingness to broker a deal broadly acceptable to Palestinians, chaos would follow in the Arab world, with the fall of friendly regimes I would then be accused of misjudging the point of leverage. I was told that it was not a question of solving Palestine in order to create the moral momentum for forcible regime-change in Iraq, and more a matter of using Iraqi regime change to create a balance of forces in the Arab world which would open up possibilities in Palestine.Those who argue in this way have a point As long as Saddam is in power, America will look weak.

As long as America seems weak, many Palestinians will believe that a deal is not necessary; that they should suffer on while hitting Israelis, in the belief that they can eventually break their will. Such Palestinians will also be emboldened by the likelihood of further anti-Western terrorism.Were Saddam to fall, the Middle East would look very different. Once a moderate, pro-Western regime was installed in Baghdad, shortly to be followed by another in Tehran, terrorist fantasies would have less scope; and Arabs who accept the need to co-exist with the West – and with Israel – would have much more political space. Today, much of the Middle East seems locked in a sterile confrontation between fundamentalist street politics and oppressive regimes.

The overthrow of Saddam could be the unlocking mechanism.Now that the US has given up on Yasser Arafat, and since replacing him with an acceptable Palestinian leadership has little short-term hope, this new approach is likely to prevail, and to become the basis of American policy It is not an unrealistic one. But any contribution which it does make to the lessening of the terrorist threat will only manifest itself in the longer term. In the interim, Tom Ridge, or his successor, will have plenty of work
More from Bruce Anderson. Here at last is some excellent news for gays and bohemians. According to a new study that is being taken rather seriously in America, they hold the key to growth and prosperity in the future.

In The New York Times, a commentator has made the semi-serious suggestion that industrial towns with relatively stagnant economies – Pittsburgh, say – should consider marketing themselves as gay-friendly and encourage the latte-set with tax breaks for those working in the creative industries. Its author, Richard Florida, a professor of regional economic development, has meanwhile become a surprise celebrity on the reading and talk-show circuit. Civic leaders across America are clamouring for his services as a consultant, offered at $10,000 a pop.Professor Florida’s argument is that what he calls “the creative class” is now the powerhouse of the American economy, comprising 30 per cent of the workforce – double what it was 20 years ago. Ideas, technology, information and the media have become central in our lives and, as a result, it has become important for towns and regions to attract members of this new ?te with agreeable restaurants, intimate arts cinemas showing foreign films, bookshops with coffee bars and so on.It is also essential – and here is where the gays and bohemians come in – that they conform to “the three Ts – tolerance, talent and technology”. According to the professor, “you cannot get a technologically innovative place unless it’s open to weirdness, eccentricity and difference”. Apparently, the most reliable indicator of a community that is acceptably open is not a racial mix – there are ghettos, after all – but social and sexual tolerance.So San Francisco, a town where the weird, eccentric and different feel entirely at home, rates high on his “creativity index”. It is no coincidence, apparently, that Silicon Valley is nearby, a place “where the geeky engineer with hair down to his waist and no shoes walks into a bar and no one blinks”.