Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2004, page 23

Special Report

 

Bush Whacked in Iraq

 

By Robert Hazo

In one of his statements about Iraq, George W. Bush said, “We have a moral obligation to leave Iraq better than we found it.” He is correct. Restoring the infrastructure we destroyed, getting the schools and hospitals operational after 12 years of sanctions, and bringing in supplies the Iraqis need are things we are obliged to do and are doing.

We are also obligated to help Iraqis form their own government. As we should have learned from the teaching of George F. Kennan, who warned us about the danger of trying to impose our political processes on Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, democracy is not the ideal, or the only perfectly just, form of government toward which all nations should strive. The ideal is much more generic. Any government whose goal is the welfare of its people—or, more precisely, the greatest good for the greatest number—is, at the very least, an acceptable government. Democracy is only one of the ways—and not always the most effective—of achieving that goal.

We should not be surprised that the people of Iraq do not like us. In fact, considering what we have done to their country, it would be a miracle if they did have a favorable view of us. In the first Gulf war, we dropped more bombs on Iraq than all of the ordinance used in World War II; during the final phase, we were dropping a bomb a minute on Iraq. Not only did we bomb it back into a pre-industrial age, but we also killed or wounded over l50,000 people.The Pentagon did not then, nor does it now, estimate the number of Iraqi casualties. But it can be said that in both Gulf wars the numbers have been substantial, that most were noncombatants, and that many of them were children.

Given what we have done, the Iraqi resistance to our occupation has become an insurgency that is rapidly becoming more widespread and intense. It may have been started by Saddam Hussain loyalists along with infiltrators from surrounding countries. Given that catalyst, however, “major conflict,” declared over on May Day, has resumed. Tanks, attack helicopters and planes dropping 1,000-pound bombs on urban locales are being used because the number of coalition—mostly American—casualties is constantly increasing. (Sixty were killed in November alone.)

The resistance is becoming more of an indigenous upheaval of a people who do not want their country occupied and governed by the United States.

Whatever our intentions may be, our actions there are those of a colonial government. Except in Palestine, colonialism was both discredited and defeated in the 20th century. An imperial America in the 21st century, no matter how strong, is headed toward a geopolitical disaster.

 

An imperial America in the 21st century is headed toward a geopolitical disaster.

The irony is that, until l948 and to some extent after it, the Arabs loved the United States. They revered Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt because both stood for the self-determination of countries occupied by colonial powers. Arabs knew that America was the first of such countries to free itself of the colonial yoke, and saw it as the champion of their cause.

Many Arab leaders were educated at the American University of Beirut.They knew that President Dwight D. Eisenhower (whom they regarded as the man who defeated Hitler) condemned the invasion of Egypt by England, France and Israel in 1956 and forced all three to give back the Egyptian territory they had conquered.

They knew that Senator, later President, John F. Kennedy gave a speech in favor of Algerian independence at the height of that bloody struggle. They could not, therefore, understand the uncritical support that America gave to their mortal enemy: Israel.

For decades Arabs have made a distinction between what the U.S. government did and what the American people would have their government do, if they only understood the Arab predicament. For many Arabs, that distinction was abandoned when, in l982, then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig gave Ariel Sharon, then defense minister of Israel, the green light to invade Lebanon.

More than 50,000 casualties, not to mention the pounding that Beirut took by air, land and sea, changed the perspective of many in the Arab world. The Israel invasion, and its role in the Sabra-Shatila massacre, plus the great upheaval in Iran that put Ayatollah Khomeini on the world stage, made the Middle East a dangerous place for Americans.

Even so, many Arabs were willing to withhold judgment on George W. Bush following his election. When he called Ariel Sharon a man of peace, however, the Arabs’ worst fears were confirmed.

Fast forward to Sept. 11, 2001, the subsequent conquest of Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the invasion and reoccupation of Palestinian territory by Israel. It should be obvious by now that no one in this administration—least of all the president—has anything like a realistic grasp of what has happened and how to deal with it. Nor are they given much help by the intellectual leaders of the neo-conservatives.

Unfortunately, the real vacuum in leadership is at the top, with the president himself. There is good reason to believe that Bush thinks we are at a major turn in world history and that, if he succeeds, he can become a truly historic president on a par with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt (both Theodore and Franklin). He may even believe that God has chosen him to rescue us from the barbarians who threaten civilization itself. That is how he talks, at any rate.

 

An Unreflective Leader

But the president is an intellectual lightweight at best. Although he lacks the necessary experience, he has no doubt that he is doing the right thing. Above all, he is not reflective.

Not only is the president of the United States the most powerful man in America, he arguably is the most powerful man in the world—and may be the most powerful man in all of human history. The claim that George W. Bush is capable of discharging the awesome responsibility of the presidency as a genuine statesman is fanciful at best and ridiculous at worst. He believes that he is capable, however, and is comfortable exercising awesome power without sufficient thought for the causes or consequences of his actions.

If he is not replaced next November, he will compound the geopolitical disaster into which he has led this country and deepen its shame because of his disregard for human rights. By pushing his policy more urgently, he may even lead us into a religious war, a war of civilizations of the kind that Osama bin Laden and the American acolytes of Samuel Huntington have always wanted.

I do not envy Bush’s successor. He will inherit a host of intractable problems that have been further degraded by actions taken during Bush’s stewardship.

What is clear, however, is that no single action in that region will do more to nourish hope, and therefore diminish the turn to terrorism, than giving the long-suffering Palestinians a truly sovereign place in the sun, which they so obviously deserve. An American president can accomplish that—provided he has the kind of courage that so many of his predecessors have lacked.

Robert Hazo is chairman of the Middle East Policy Association.

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