Washington Report, March 2006, page 66

Waging Peace

CNI Panelists Speak Out to Prevent “Clash of Civilizations”

THE Council for the National Interest (CNI) held a Dec. 1, 2005 public hearing on Capitol Hill to discuss “Exiting Iraq and Engaging Iran and Syria.” First to address the audience was former Rep. Paul Findley (R-IL), who served in Congress for 22 years, from 1961 to 1983, and who has spent years advocating a fair and balanced U.S. Middle East policy.

“We meet at a time of great peril to our nation, the most menacing I have known in my lifetime,” Findley warned. “I believe the invasion of Iraq is the worst U.S. blunder in a century, certainly the most menacing to the well being of the America that we have known and cherished in years past. If we fail to exit Iraq promptly, our nation and our world risk being engulfed in a wider, more grisly conflict that could suddenly degenerate into an enormous, costly clash of civilizations—Christendom versus Islam. I choose my words carefully. I do not exaggerate,” Findley said.

“I am distressed at President Bush’s failure to recognize reality and change course,” Findley continued. “I am disgusted at the cavalier, superficial, almost comical way the Congress is responding to this gathering calamity.”

Findley went on to praise Rep. John Murtha’s (D-PA) criticism of the war in Iraq, along with the anti-Iraqi war appeals made by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), whom he called “great heroes” for calling for an “early and complete exit from Iraq.” 

Saying he holds the president and Congress responsible for making Iraq “a killing field,” Findley, referring to President George W. Bush’s Nov. 30 speech in Annapolis, MD, added, “President Bush admits no error and offers no change in doctrine or tactics.”

After pointing to the war’s cost in American lives and tax dollars, Findley examined the cost to Iraq’s population as Iraqis fight U.S. forces. Iraqis, he said, view Americans as an “occupying power, not a liberating one.”

According to Findley, the president could still “escape a bleak entry when the history of this stormy era is written” if he quickly made “a clear announcement of precise plans for a total U.S. exit by a date certain...If crystal clear, it will, I believe, inspire an immediate reduction in anti-American insurgency and go far in dismissing the widely held belief that U.S. forces invaded Iraq mainly for Israel and oil, not to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people.”

(For Findley’s plan “How to Exit Iraq Within a Year”, see the Sept/Oct. 2005Washington Report, p. 19.)

Findley concluded his remarks by saying that his greatest fear is that “President Bush does not yet grasp the enormity of the peril at hand and will persist in his quest for a military victory. Our best hope is that a rising tide of public and congressional protest will change his mind.” His proposed presidential announcement, Findley said, would “curb speculation about an emerging U.S. empire, help refurbish America’s worldwide moral standing, and end the ugly U.S. role in Iraq’s killing field.” 

Turning to the growing fears of a U.S.- or Israeli-led attack on his country, Syria’s Ambassador Imad Moustapha deftly shot down every accusation that has been leveled against his country. While Syria opposed the invasion of Iraq and compared it to opening Pandora’s box, Damascus has prevented international fighters from crossing into Iraq. Nearly 1,500 insurgents have been captured in Syria and imprisoned or sent back to their countries. Americans don’t want to hear this, Moustapha said, adding that their motto seems to be “Don’t bother us with facts.”

Moustapha related an astounding conversation he’d had with one senator, who told him that after the huge cost of moving U.S. troops to Iraq there would be little extra costs in moving them to Syria.

His country has been asked to get involved in a bloody conflict to disarm Hezbollah on behalf of Israel, the Syrian ambassador said, when Israel found it impossible to do so.

Asked if he was concerned about Iran’s nuclear program, Ambassador Moustapha replied that he was constantly astonished by this question. Part of his country was occupied by Israel, he noted, “a country that has the largest per capita nuclear weapons in the world.” Syria shares no borders with Iran, he explained, so “why would we be concerned?”

Prof. Lawrence Davidson, who teaches Middle East history at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and his anthropologist wife, Janet Amighi, who teaches at Immaculata University in Pennsylvania, recently returned from an informative trip to Syria and Iran. They presented their analysis of current religious, economic, and political trends in the region based on their interviews, including several hours spent with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and his wife.

After describing a number of political demonstrations they both witnessed, Amighi described a politically active and engaged Iranian population. Because Iran shares borders with occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, many Iranians are feeling vulnerable to a possible attack, according to Amighi. While most Iranians enjoyed talking politics with them, she said, one man cautioned them, “we are welcoming now, but if we meet occupying U.S. troops at our border, we won’t greet them with flowers.”

When Davidson was asked about U.S. policies in the Middle East, he noted that the Middle East knows more about us than we know about them.

—Delinda C. Hanley

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