Bush needs a vision to justify war
William Pfaff International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles
Times Syndicate International
Saturday, September 14, 2002
Targeting Iraq II
iht.com
PARIS Americans are uncomfortable with foreign
policies that are not given a visionary or idealistic
formulation. They are accustomed to having
foreign policy placed in a more generous
framework than is currently offered. Where would
victories over Iraq and al Qaeda lead?
The absence of vision was particularly noticeable
this week, as memorial observances for last year's
lost lives included readings from Franklin
Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, the Gettysburg
Address and other idealistic past statements of
American purpose.
President George W. Bush spoke of America's
"moral vocation." But his administration has at the
same time been making its most strenuous efforts
yet to convince Americans and their reluctant
allies to go to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
There is discordance here, which more than one
American has found troubling.
Ever since Communism's collapse left the United
States in a position of unchallenged power, there
has been much discussion of how this power
should properly be used, or how it could be
abused. Articles and books have described the
situation in terms of "global hegemony," and have
recommended that the United States take
advantage of its extraordinary position.
This ordinarily was accompanied by the disclaimer
that American interests nonetheless serve the
world's interest because of the high ideals of the
United States. Bush put this in his own way
recently when he called the United States "the
single surviving model of human progress."
The administration's problem is that a war against
Iraq does not comfortably fit into the model of
progressive and essentially benevolent national
policy.
Now there is an effort to supply a remedy. A part
of the neoconservative and pro-Israeli community
influencing Bush administration policy argues
that a war against Saddam Hussein should be
seen in the context of a long-term American policy
for transforming the Muslim Middle East.
It identifies "regime change" in Iraq and the
campaign against Al Qaeda as necessary steps in a
decades-long American program to replace
virtually all of the existing Middle Eastern
governments and install social and economic
reform. The entire Middle East, plus Central Asia,
Afghanistan and Pakistan, would be included in
an American policy that its authors compare with
the remaking of Europe ("by America") after World
War II.
Descriptions of this new project have been
provided by Michael Ledeen of the American
Enterprise Institute and others. The program itself
will soon be published in Policy Review magazine.
Its authors are Ronald Asmus, formerly of the
State Department, and Ken Pollack, formerly of
the Clinton administration.
It envisages a remade post-Taliban Afghanistan;
an Arab-Israeli settlement on terms acceptable to
Israel; "regime change" in Iran, as well as Iraq; and
backing for civil society throughout the region,
"particularly among current allies" (meaning
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and probably the Gulf
emirates).
Other advocates of this approach insist that
eliminating Saddam Hussein will release existing
but suppressed democratic forces, radically
changing the Middle East. The eminent British
historian Michael Howard wrote last weekend that
to believe this "demands a considerable
suspension of disbelief."
There is nothing wrong with having a theory about
reform in the Muslim world. A serious government
is expected to have a strategic outlook. The new
Washington proposal rests, however, on the
progressive myth that mankind would be peaceful
and democratic if it were not the victim of false
ideologies or evil dictators.
It rests as well on an inherently contradictory
notion that foreign intervention is capable of
solving the Islamic world's distress.
To justify his war against Iraq, Bush needs a
demonstrated grave cause (not speculation about
what Iraq might do in the future); reasonable
prospects for success and legitimacy in the
opinion of the American public and that of his
allies.
He has yet to prove his cause. If he did, the United
Nations could provide the legitimacy. But a theory
that rests on the suspension of disbelief does
nothing for him or for the debate. It tends rather
toward the characteristic evil of the 20th century,
which was to kill people because of a fiction about
the future.
International Herald Tribune Los Angeles Times
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