Spelling out a vision of war
10 March 2003
Spelling out a vision of war
Middle East International
from Michael Brown, Washington
The American Enterprise Institute, a reactionary think-tank in Washington DC, held its annual black-tie dinner on 26 February in the Washington Hilton Hotel. Sporting a business suit, George W. Bush spelled out the reasons du jour – the French language is not yet outlawed here though French fries have become “freedom fries” on some restaurant menus – for attacking Iraq.
He may say, as he did on 18 February, that a second United Nations Security Council resolution is “not necessary, as far as I’m concerned,” but he clearly needs it if his war is to have any legitimacy in the eyes of much of the world.
The march toward war clearly is not proceeding in the choreographed lockstep envisioned months ago. Consequently, the new round of Bush explanations for the war is focused on the elusive search to hit on one that resonates with the American people.
“Securing the realm”
This particular speech provided what passes for the grand Middle East war vision of the White House. Richard Perle, an adviser to the Pentagon, and Douglas Feith, an aide to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were for all intents and purposes co-authors of the talk, having in 1996 largely sketched the outlines of the plan President Bush offered for the region’s transformation.
Their document – A Clean Break: A new strategy for securing the realm – lists Perle as the “Study Group Leader” and gives his affiliation as being with the American Enterprise Institute. There is nothing illegal here, but it is worth knowing the analysis went first to then Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu before becoming Bush’s policy and originated in large part from Perle, a pro-Israel hard-liner dubbed by some the “Prince of Darkness”, and Feith, a strong supporter of the Zionist Organization of America, one of the most pro-Likud organizations in the United States.
In fact, the document states that removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is “an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right”. From there, it looks to undermine the Oslo Accords through focusing attention on corruption within the Palestinian Authority.
Ousting Saddam Hussein and cultivating “alternatives to Arafat’s base of power”, as the document suggests are now centre-pieces of Bush’s regional policy.
Bush jazzed the plan up a bit rhetorically by nodding towards extending freedom in the region. Initial success in Iraq will, he thinks, send positive ripples across the region – if it does not explode first under the weight of tens of thousands of occupying American troops.
Bush is a featherweight thinker on the Middle East, but backed by a heavyweight military he is capable of turning the region upside down. Some things may in fact shake out for the better, but almost certainly a good deal more will turn for the worse. His plan, as he sees it, is simple. Attack Iraq. Vanquish Saddam. Install an American administrator to rebuild Iraq, yet remain there only “as long as necessary, and not a day more”, as Bush puts it. Build on Iraq’s new-found freedom to transform the Middle East, particularly engaging the Israel-Palestine conflict, which should now be easier to untie without Saddam Hussein’s money flowing to the families of suicide bombers.
Verging on madness
The plan verges on madness. At the very least it is irresponsible in not being entirely honest with the American people. Parts of it can be done but not with nearly the ease presently claimed.
First, the president remains perilously close to jumping headfirst into the dismembering of alliances and ties established over more than 50 years. Of this, he seems blissfully unaware. Wire-tapping the UN delegations of friendly European Security Council members and other delegations, for example, will not be well received if initial reports prove accurate.
Second, the plan bounces right over what we can expect in the course of the fighting. Of course, offensive wars are always such. Bush would be an unusual leader were he to look in the eyes of the mothers and fathers of America’s fighting forces and give them a projection of American casualties from Baghdad street-fighting. It simply will not happen and is probably too much to expect of any national leader waging a war of choice. Still, if war is waged and goes worse than expected, Bush may pay a significant political price.
On the other side of the ledger, and ignored almost altogether by the Administration, are the thousands of Iraqi civilians likely to be killed. But with the Pentagon ensuring it controls the flow of information, such news may be slow to arrive. CNN and Fox News are unlikely to race each other to report the “collateral damage”. Just how devastating fighting in and around Baghdad could be for Iraqi civilians is not a matter the Administration wants to discuss publicly.
Third, the plan is guilty of criminal neglect. The White House has provided no sense of how long it will stay and no sense of how much it will cost the American taxpayer. White House sophist Ari Fleischer dodges and weaves on the matter: “There is, unquestionably, a responsibility on the executive branch to provide the legislative branch with an estimate about what the war will cost, what the humanitarian operation would cost. And that is a responsibility the Administration takes seriously. Because we take it seriously, I’m not in a position to speculate about what the number may be.”
He would be hard pressed to brush off more arrogantly American voters left to wade through conflicting reports of how many billions will be expended. This war has been discussed long enough for Fleischer to have a real answer.
Free hand for Sharon
Finally, the speech was noteworthy not just for what it said about the Israel-Palestine conflict, but for what it omitted. Not one word was said about the coalition government formed that very week by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. No concern was voiced about coalition partners in that government dead set against even the White House’s minimal plan for peace. Nothing would have done more to jolt the world into thinking that Bush was serious on Middle East peace-making than for him to come out swinging against a coalition of racists. The clear opportunity was there for Bush to denounce National Religious Party leader Effie Eitam for holding, in a recent speech, that the Palestinians should have their state in the Sinai. Even more so, the opportunity was there for Bush to criticize National Union bloc leaders for asserting that “Jordan is Palestine” and that “transfer” – a particularly odious euphemism for ethnic cleansing – was a legitimate option.
Instead, unsurprisingly, Bush said nothing. What he did say could hardly have encouraged Palestinians or the Arab states. Already weak on the issue of settlements, he back-pedalled from his language on the subject of June 2002. Now, Israel does not have to move on settlements until “progress is made towards peace”. Only then does he think that “settlement activity in the Occupied Territories must end”. By not adding more detail, he left wiggle room to explain in the future that he meant no “new settlements”, as opposed to stopping all Israeli construction in the Territories. The chances of Bush standing up to Sharon before the 2004 elections and calling on Israel to stop all settlement construction is essentially nil.
President Bush was equally disingenuous on the Quartet’s “road-map”, claiming he had a “personal commitment” to it. His words rang hollow, however, after his approval of one delay on top of another to the road-map over the past two months, the last one so that Sharon could put his coalition of ethnic cleansers in place. Yet rather than express frustration with Sharon for misleading him, Bush said not a word. Indeed, there is no evidence Bush is even the least bit perturbed by the shape of the Israeli coalition.
Ask no questions
Laid out in broad strokes, in a million ways the plan is overwhelming in its audacity but terrifying in its staggering failure to mention what it will mean for the American people – not just this year but for a decade or more to come. The first president with an MBA shows it with his propensity to think about the next quarter but not the forces he is setting in motion for five or ten years from now.
As for how the Bush build-up to war is being viewed in the region, Washington came in for a rude shock on 1 March when the Turkish Grand National Assembly turned down tens of billions of dollars in aid in a remarkably close vote that belied the reality of 90% opposition from the Turkish people to war with Iraq.
Nevertheless, Secretary of State Colin Powell was on the phone the very next day with Turkey’s prime minister, Abdullah Gül, to discuss a possible second vote. US troops have not yet been ordered from the Turkish coast to the Gulf. There is almost certainly a good deal more horse-trading still to come, though how much of it is financial and how much of it is a slice of northern Iraq remains to be seen.
Scrambling not to lose the weekend spin battle to the unexpected outcome in the Turkish parliament, the Administration was bailed out by the reported capture of al-Qa’ida’s number three man, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad.
This would appear to be one of the biggest achievements in the 18-month effort to defeat and/or bring to justice members of Usama bin Laden’s entourage. Yet as satisfying as locating him is, the untold dirty secret that America has not yet begun to grapple with is how many men were tortured to secure the capture of the man who, by most accounts, masterminded the horrors of 11 September. How many hours before he, in turn, is tortured? Congress is not asking and the American people are not asking.
It is a nasty business when all anyone wants to do is look in the opposite direction. The slippery slope is upon America and the stopping point is no sure thing.
