Youssef M. Ibrahim: Get the American GIs out of Iraq
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gulf-news.com
Special to Gulf News | 18-11-2003
Looking at the American debacle in Iraq through Arab eyes, the solution is starkly evident: put American forces under the command of General Kofi Anan, otherwise known as Secretary-General of the United Nations, immediately.
Get the French, Germans and the European Union - along with China, India and the rest of the world community - to send their soldiers under blue caps as peace-keeping forces, as they all readily agree they would if commanded by the United Nations.
And, above all, get the American GIs out.
Sooner or later an exceedingly stubborn and lonely George W. Bush Administration will have to reach that conclusion. Problem is, as long as it drags its feet, this administration is doing untold damage to the reputation and values of the US, once the most admired in this part of the world.
It is creating a deep hatred in the Arab, and more important, the much bigger 1.2 billion Muslim world around the globe that will haunt us for years to come, feeding the ranks of the very same terrorists we are hoping to eradicate. Instead of winning the war on terror, President Bush is fanning its flames.
As long as we remain an occupation force in Iraq, the worst case scenario is an expansion of the ongoing collapse of American prestige, respect, credibility and power . At the end of this tunnel lies a defeat which history will judge to have been entirely an American domestic political design.
It is unconscionable of the Bush crowd of hawkish neo-conservatives, Evangelical Christians and pro-Likud supporters of Israel to drive matters to that extent, solely for the questionable purpose of gaining electoral votes. Indeed it is self-defeating. Bush may loose his job along with the US clout in the Iraqi quagmire.
Web of spin
Not since the Vietnam disaster, which cost well over 50,000 American and more than a million Vietnamese lives, has a debacle of the scale unfolding in Iraq been visited upon the American people. This is a war constructed on ideological premises uncomfortably resembling those that led us to Vietnam: a web of spin, lies and self-delusion.
Bush has not, to this day, given the world a credible reason for putting the lives of over 150,000 Americans in harm's way - no weapons of mass destruction found, no democracy is mushrooming, no light looms at the end this dark tunnel.
Worse yet, the great Iraqi silent majority, according to the latest CIA confidential report leaked to the "Philadelphia Inquirer" a few days ago, is tilting against the US and the puppet Iraqi government we have put in Baghdad, as people become poorer, less safe and harassed by frightened and confused American troops in their homes and villages.
Instead of facing up to this, the Bush crowd is now plotting to get out and leave the puppet government in charge with all what that entails of danger including a return to a Saddam Hussain-style autocracy, or a civil war.
Is it a surprise then that no one wants to come and help? The Turks, having pocketed $8 billion to send 10,000 troops, now say they aren't coming. The Red Cross has folded its tent in Iraq.
The United Nations is refusing to co-operate and the Japanese and Koreans have just said they are re-thinking their promise to send forces.
Even our friends, the Brits, have quietly cut their forces from 45,000 during the invasion to less than 15,000 now. Meanwhile in Iraq, American forces which a few months ago were attacked an average of 10 times a day, are now attacked 30 to 35 times daily.
And, yes, we are losing that war on terror. All around the world America, its friends, and Western interests in general, are under assault by Al Qaida and a growing club of terrorist-internationals. Turkey, Italy, Spain, Poland and other American allies have suffered terrorist attacks at home and in Iraq.
Worse than that, our United States diplomatic and business apparatus in this age of globalisation is suffocating.
American schools from Pakistan to Indonesia to the Middle East, are shutting down. Multinational American companies are sending dependents home or relocating them outside the Muslim and Arab world at great costs.
Elemental duties
Our embassies have become forbidden fortresses surrounded by huge slabs of concrete. Our diplomats cannot perform their most elemental duties without bodyguards and armoured cars to move around. Our consulates are shutting down every other day here and there.
Indeed the whole notion of globalisation is shaking as multinational western businesses are slashing the number of their expatriates. Pro-Western Arab and Muslim students, who are our natural friends and potential allies, are shunning American universities to avoid humiliation, fingerprinting and bias.
Sadly, the whole world is indicating that the Bush Administration unilateralist policies are costing us friends as poll after poll shows the US has become very unpopular around the world.
It is time to go back to the drawing board, or change leadership in 2004, as nothing less than the vital interests of America are at play here.
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The writer, a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is Managing Director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group, a consulting firm specialising in assessing political risk in the Gulf, Middle and Near East region. He can be contacted at ymibrahim@gulfnews.com |
