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Politics : World Affairs Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: haqihana who wrote (2717)	9/8/2003 4:37:04 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 3959

Chinu?!? You pushed the wrong button....

To: haqihana who wrote (2717)	9/8/2003 9:22:18 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 3959

Burden of Iraq may prove heavy for US M.J. Akbar: 08/09/2003 Two years after September 11, 2001, American imperialism has been trapped by American confusion. Part of the confusion arises from a noble source, American idealism. That does not make it any less confusing. America was the first colony that won freedom from an imperial power; India was the second. The Constitution of India is wrought in the same spirit as the American one. Freedom at home, and equality abroad. Americans have always felt compelled to dress up their intervention, or conquest, in liberal hues. Woodrow Wilson entered the World War I to liberate nations with his 14 points, and Franklin Roosevelt promised his four freedoms to the 'United Nations' – his term for the anti-Axis alliance. Neither succeeded after victory. Germany believed in Wilson, and took revenge for its betrayal through Hitler. After the World War II, Ho Chi Minh, believing Roosevelt's anti-colonial promise, waited for American assistance in his war of liberation against France. Vietnam's betrayal began the worst chapter in American history. Today, a self-serving argument compares the fall of Saddam Hussain to the defeat of Hitler. The analogy misses a vital truth. The 20th century had two kinds of wars. Great powers fought world wars because their outcomes determined who would control the world. The combatants were either empire-preservers or empire-seekers. Then there were the 20th century wars of liberation, as yoked nations sought their independence from European powers. Only one of them, the Indian, was non-violent. International order In an international order designed by Washington, America would be a patriarch rather than King-Emperor. Nations taken hostage by America must fall in love with their captor, because the reasons for capture are so palpably noble. Traditional imperialists sniff at such naiveté. An empire lasts till it can get away with it. It may survive centuries, or only a lifetime. But no empire can survive ambiguity. America chose to conquer Iraq against world advice. It must now either rule Iraq, or get out. If America decides to rule the price will be heavy. President George W. Bush began as an isolationist. That ended on 9/11. American troops are now stationed in 137 countries. Bush has begun two wars that could last longer than his term in office, even if he is re-elected. Washington bargained for a war against regimes. It is astonished and embarrassed by the fact that removing Saddam was the easy part. Here is where the oft-repeated analogy with the World War II collapses. The German and Japanese were docile after surrender because the people identified with their regimes. In Iraq, only Saddam was defeated. The people have continued to fight. Saddam was a tyrant who subverted Iraqi nationalism. By removing him, Bush released Iraqi nationalism from the avaricious grip of a despot. Iraqi nationalism will not exchange a brutal Saddam for a colonist Bush. Who confirmed to the Iraqi people that America had come to colonise? The Bush administration. Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has explained that the so-called WMD argument was a bureaucratic fudge. The real reason for America's occupation of Iraq is to have new American military bases. The British were less explicit in 1918, but had the same reasons: oil At the peak of the Iraq war, a saying echoed through the mosques of the Islamic world. America relied too heavily on divide-and-rule. Shias and Sunnis may have had much to divide them over 1,400 years, but a new ideology has been developed since the 19th century. The principal architect of the intellectual response to the "Christian" advance was a maverick Iranian Shia called Jamaluddin. His disciples carried the argument into the next century. Khomeini borrowed from him to fashion his own united Islamic front in a war against the two pillars of the West (USA, the Great Satan, and USSR, the Lesser One), and their clients in the Muslim world. Traditional Shia-Sunni differences have blurred in the political cauldrons of the Middle East. The zeal of the Shias in Hezbollah, for instance, is not diminished by the fact that the Palestinians are mostly Sunnis. Hence America confronts an overlapping alliance in Iraq. The chaos in Iraq would worry a more determined imperialist than Bush in pre-election year. Iraq's fighters are bolstered by the seeping spirit of Jihad. They also have the implicit sympathy of non-Jihadis who do not want American imperialism to become the central fact of their times. The crisis on the frontline is a test of America's will to rule. Does Bush have the will, and America the ability, to be what they want to be? Two years ago, the answer sounded was yes. Now the wobble is evident. On April 9, America declared victory when Saddam's statue was brought down. Route to peace Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had sneered at France and Germany as "chocolate-making countries", were ecstatic. Bush, trying to look serious in victory, fixed a route to peace in the Middle East. Today, America stands on the doorstep of the once "wimpish" UN, begging for troops so that others can die instead of Americans. If self-interest has taken Bush to the UN's door, then the self-interest of other nations will keep that door shut until America understands that it cannot live by the principles of George Washington at home, and the rules of Rudyard Kipling abroad. Nor can America privatise or sub-contract its wars. America expounds the fiction that it occupied Iraq for high moral purpose. Kipling's phrase for similar nobility used to be "white man's burden". That burden proved too heavy for the old empires; it has not become lighter with time. Today, America is only the most powerful nation in the world. It will become the leader of a free world only when it accepts that freedom is incomplete without equality. M.J. Akbar is the Editor of The Asian Age. gulf-news.com