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Wolfowitz's America
by
Mohamed Hakki
It now seems almost
certain that US forces will invade Iraq, despite the fact that the
justification remains unclear. All talk to the effect that "the
president has not made up his mind" is just that, talk. The decision
was already made for him long ago. Much has already been written
about the group of advisers formed by Undersecretary of Defence Paul
Wolfowitz and their plan, the "Project for the New American
Century", which aims at no less than establishing a new world order
of uncontested American hegemony. The US, according to this group,
must be sure of "deterring any potential competitors from even
aspiring to a larger regional or global role". Thus we have current
discussions about the preemptive use of nuclear, biological, and
chemical weapons, "even in conflicts that do not directly engage US
interests".
The London Observer
tells us that a paper circulated among Wolfowitz's group said that what
was needed for the US to move towards assuming this position was "some
catastrophic and catalysing event, like a new Pearl Harbor". The document
also noted that while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides an
immediate justification for intervention in the region, the need for a
substantial American military presence in the Gulf goes beyond the matter
of regime change in Baghdad.
Now, in the final hours before
the most horrible of human calamities is unleashed -- not against Saddam
Hussein, but against the Iraqi people -- Bush's administration is telling
us that it is contemplating what to do aprés Saddam. One would have
thought someone in the administration would have meticulously thought
through questions about what comes next in Iraq before unleashing the most
destructive force in history. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia
lamented the other day that "as this nation stands at the brink of battle,
every American must be contemplating the horrors of war. Yet, the Senate
is for the most part silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no
debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and
cons of the war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute, paralysed by
our own certainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events."
Finally, at this late stage,
during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, two of the
administration's "heavy weights", as they were described by the press,
attempted to explain just what the plans are for the Iraqi people. After
the destruction of the country's electric power plants, water
infrastructure, bridges and factories, and the killing of 500,000
(according to Senator Barbara Boxer's estimate), we will then rebuild
Iraq, and liberate it's people.
The testimony by Mark
Grossman, undersecretary of state for political affairs, and Douglas Feith,
undersecretary of defence for policy, lasted for four hours and filled 86
pages. Extensive selections of the testimony should be printed on the
front pages of every Arab newspaper, because the testimony shows that key
administration figures' are totally clueless about the Arab world. There
were so many instances where each said "it is hard to answer a lot of
these 'what ifs' because a lot depends on, you know, future events that we
don't know". Another response was, "We would like to make a distinction
between plans and predictions... and we must stress uncertainty because we
are not in the predicting business".
Towards eliciting some
concrete answers, Senator Paul Sarbanes of Maryland brought up estimates
by William Nordhaus, a Yale economist, about the cost of war. Nordhaus
estimates that the occupation of Iraq will cost between $17 billion and
$45 billion per year -- but even those figures seem on the low side, as
the post-combat environment in Iraq is likely to be hostile, it's dangers
resembling those of the West Bank more than those on the Balkans. When
Sarbanes asked administration representatives what their figure was, the
answer came, "The single most unsatisfactory thing that we are going to be
able to do is not to give you a figure. It is unknowable."
What the administration fails
to understand is that it cannot hide or ignore the huge elephant in the
middle of the room, namely Israel. Retired US General Anthony Zinni said,
"my worst nightmare would be an Al-Jazeera TV picture of American troops
in combat fighting Iraqis at the same time the Israeli Defence Forces is
in the West Bank and Gaza killing Arabs. Furthermore, how can the Bush
administration convince either Congress or the Arabs that the US cares
about 'the territorial integrity of Iraqi' when those same members of the
administration were signatories to a document in 1996 advising Benyamin
Netanyahu of the desirability of dismantling Iraq and any other Arab
country that stands in Israel's way? What these same people were telling
Netanyahu then and President Bush now is: you are stronger than all your
neighbours, act upon it. Forget the peace process; it does not serve you.
Forget international law; lead, and everybody will follow; the rest can go
to Hell."
Zbigniew Brzezinski correctly
pointed out the hypocrisy of this logic. He said, "the European press has
commented more widely than the US press on the striking similarity between
current US policy in the Middle East and the recommendations prepared in
1996 by this same group -- admirers of Israel's Likud Party for the then
Prime Minister Netanyahu."
Unfortunately, the American
people do not see the reports on how the entire war issue is seen in the
Arab world. As an example of the media's self-censorship of most issues
touching on Israel, when The New York Times published
excerpts of Osama Bin Laden's message that was broadcast by Al-Jazeera TV
channel, it omitted any reference to Israel or Tel Aviv -- despite the
fact that Bin Laden named those places close to 10 times in his broadcast.
It is no wonder, then, that there are several patriotic Americans who are
warning against the invasion of Iraq because they believe that it is being
done in the interests of Israel. They are calling it Sharon's war.
The war party in the
administration consists of the same people who helped create Bin Laden.
Now, he is a threat, a terrorist, a defiance that America is unable to
capture despite the $25 million price on his head. To most Arabs, Bin
Laden is nothing. He is neither an Imam, or even a religious scholar like
Hassan Al-Turabi of Sudan, who is a graduate of Oxford and the Sorbonne.
Bin Laden is only a mediocre man that the US has turned into a larger than
life hero. Muslims reject the nihilistic streak in his actions and his
message, the twisted US policy towards Palestine that the war party has
been advocating is creating more Bin Ladens. If anything, the US owes the
Palestinians an apology for all the pain they have caused them in the last
50 some years.
If Bush follows through with
his promises to both Saudi and Egyptian leaders to solve the Palestinian
problem with the creation of two viable states living side-by-side in
peace, all future or potential Bin Ladens will fade away. However, the
warmongers are pushing Bush to attack Iraq. Unfortunately, as in the case
of Bin Laden, they are driven only by hate. Their passionate attachment
not only to a foreign country, but to its most extreme and nihilistic wing
is driving them to espouse hatred of all Arabs and all Muslims.
The administration has seen
what a miserable failure it's message has been towards the Arabs, but it
still doesn't get it. It still listens to those who are pontificating
about "what went wrong".
When I first came to America
as a young attaché in the Egyptian Embassy in 1957, America was the
"shining city on the hill". Its press was the most informed and most
informative in the world. Recently the US hit the office of Al-Jazeera in
Afghanistan to keep the truth from the American people. The free media
exercises self-censorship on all matters pertaining to the Middle East.
One can always find better reporting in Israeli newspapers. Presidential
speeches are replete with rhetorical flourishes, but sound like speeches
by Third World leaders, banal and devoid of any true meaning. The attorney
general sounds more like a mullah than a statesman.
Things are starting to seem
more and more like the world I left behind. The thousands of faces that we
used to see lining up in front of US embassies in our countries to obtain
a visa to freedom and opportunity, are now lining up in front of the
Immigration and Naturalization Offices across the US in fear of losing
those same visas. When a young American student demonstrating against the
war in front of the White House was asked by Middle East Broadcasting
Corporation (MBC) TV, "what would you like to say to Bush?" he said, "I
would like to tell him to take off his crown. Nobody voted you to become
King." But, my advice to Bush is more modest: President, fear God.
Source:
by the same author:
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