After Baghdad, where do we go?
Posted: March 3, 2003
Patrick J Buchanan
Prophecy is difficult, especially with respect to the
future, said Mark Twain. And after the president's
speech to the annual dinner here of the American
Enterprise Institute – Politburo of the War Party –
the question remains unanswered: What course
does the United States intend to pursue, after U.S.
tanks have rolled into Baghdad?
As for war itself, that decision has been made. The
United States intends to invade and occupy a
nation that has not attacked us, to reshape its
society, rebuild its government, and redirect its
foreign policy to reflect American ideals and serve
American interests.
Imperialism, pure and simple. Though President
Bush declares our aims to be altruistic – liberation
of the people of Iraq from the grip of a brutal
dictator – this war is already seen in Arab eyes as
a war of American empire.
Aware of the seething resentment in the Islamic
world, Bush sought to send a signal to Arab
capitals and the Arab street. He indicated that he
still believes in a "viable" state for the Palestinians,
he accepts the land-for-peace formula of the Oslo
Accords and that, if terrorism ends, Israeli
settlement-building on the West Bank must also.
In short, Bush seemed to be telling the Arab world
that the West Bank does indeed belong to the
Palestinians and must become the heartland of a
Palestinian state.
But how does he intend to realize his vision and
reshape the Middle East?
In part of his speech, the president seemed to be
saying that after the liberation of Iraq, the peoples
of Middle East will see, and seek out, the fruits of
freedom.
Ariel Sharon and the War Party, however, have a
less Utopian idea, and it does not rely upon
example alone. After Saddam is ousted, they want
U.S. ultimatums handed to Syria, Iran and Libya,
ordering them to surrender their missiles, chemical
and biological weapons, and nuclear programs, or
face a U.S. attack.
Yet, in neither tone nor words did Bush endorse
the Sharon Doctrine. What this portends is a fierce
debate in this city, and a new struggle inside the
War Cabinet, for control of the direction of U.S.
Middle East policy once the Iraqi war is over – a
struggle that will run right into the presidential
year of 2004.
Here are the contending forces and clashing ideas.
The War Party rejects the Oslo Accords as suicidal
folly for Israel. It rejects the Camp David plan
brokered by President Clinton, the Barak Plan and
the Saudi Plan, which calls on all Arab states to
recognize Israel if Israel returns to its pre-1967
borders. It holds that the way to peace between
Palestinians and Israelis is by smashing Arafat's
PLA and all the region's regimes that are urging
the Palestinians to fight on until Israel agrees to
pull out of all lands occupied since 1967.
It believes the only secure peace for Israel is the
peace of the sword, a peace dictated by a
victorious America and Israel to a chastened Arab
world
Sharon was first elected on a pledge to ditch the
Camp David and Barak plans. His new cabinet
contains militant Zionists who consider the West
Bank sacred Jewish land. They will not give it up.
They will not permit Jerusalem to become the
capital of a Palestinian state even if Bush,
triumphant in Iraq, tells them it must be done.
They will fight him as they fought his father. And
they will have the War Party in their corner.
The other course that will be pressed on Bush is
the course his father took in 1991. After Kuwait
was liberated, Bush I kept his word to his Arab
allies, and brought the Israelis to a Madrid peace
conference and tried to use the leverage of U.S. aid
to halt the building of Israeli settlements. For this,
Bush I was excoriated by Israeli zealots as an
anti-Semite, and he set off a firestorm in the Israeli
Lobby and the Congress of the United States.
Bush II believes that firestorm hurt his father badly
in 1992.
Where will this President Bush go after Baghdad?
If he seeks to pressure Israel into what the Israeli
Right and the War Party think are premature and
foolish negotiations, he will court a savage
backlash in an election year, and fail. If he
embraces the Sharon Doctrine and puts military
pressure on Syria and Iran, he will do so without
Tony Blair, without NATO and without U.N.
backing, and he will be seen worldwide as the
leader of a rogue superpower.
The Powell Doctrine – get in, win, get out and
come home – may, by year's end, have real appeal
for a by-then beleaguered President Bush. For his
problems do not end in Baghdad, they only begin
there.
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