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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
One of the most eloquent of those voices was that of Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American scholar who wrote a valuable book titled "Resurrecting Empire" around the time of the invasion. Khalidi points out that the caricature of Islam as antithetical to democracy betrays historical ignorance of the many pioneering Middle Eastern experiments with democracy -- which, he adds, were persistently undermined by Western powers.
He also reminds Americans that people in the Middle East have a long memory. The British rulers (who, like the Americans, claimed they just wanted to "liberate" the Iraqis) were able to put down an Iraqi revolt in the 1920s only by an intense aerial bombing of civilians. Iraqis have not forgotten this. Khalidi also pointed out the obvious fact that nationalism, a word banished from discussions of post-invasion Iraq because it didn't fit the uplifting "liberation" paradigm, would be inspired by an invasion. In short, Khalidi's argument is that it was historically naive for the United States, even assuming its intentions were pure, to discount the region's painful, historically recent experience of Western "liberators" in judging how it would be greeted.
Some of the most influential pro-war voices also sounded alarms. Thomas Friedman, to his credit, warned U.S. policymakers that if they wanted to win the war, not just the battle, they would not only have to pour massive resources into rebuilding Iraq, they would also have to take an active, good-faith role in resolving the Palestine-Israel crisis. Kenneth Pollack, whose "Threatening Storm" was the least ideological and most convincing book advocating war (he has since apologized, saying -- not completely convincingly -- that he based his call to arms on "faulty intelligence"), hedged his pro-war arguments by warning that the postwar period would be more difficult than the war and that a massive U.S. troop presence would be needed for success.
But the Bush administration ignored all of those warnings. Drunk on ideology, it saw an opportunity to run the table -- rearrange the Middle East to Israel's advantage, remove a dangerous regional despot who they imagined threatened America, put the fear of God into the Saudis, Iranians and Syrians, open the spigots to Iraqi oil on favorable terms, create new American military bases in the Middle East, and in the mystical ways discussed above somehow scare terrorists into submission -- all while assuring Bush's reelection by picking up evangelical and Jewish votes and turning him into a war president, George of Baghdad. And so it launched the most momentous war in half a century based on bogus intelligence provided by a wily con man, with grossly inadequate troop levels, no postwar planning, and only one significant ally. We know the results.
If it was the Bush administration's secret desire to turn America into Israel in the eyes of the Arab and Muslim world, it has gone a long way to succeeding. A devastating recent poll shows a precipitous decline in America's popularity in the Arab world: Even in moderate countries like Jordan and Morocco, Osama bin Laden is more popular than Bush, and majorities in both countries said suicide bombing against U.S. troops in Iraq was justifiable. The aerial bombardment of Fallujah last spring was not seen by the Arab world as a liberating blow against terrorists but as the American equivalent of Israeli strikes against Palestinian cities. The new U.S. use of targeted assassinations, a tactic employed by the Israelis but one we had always rejected before, has only strengthened the association.
Not surprisingly, jihad is on the rise. European Muslims are now making their way to Iraq to fight. And things seem likely to get worse. This is the Bush legacy, whether he wins or loses on Election Day.
The terrorists who hit America on Sept. 11 were filled with religious clarity. And in another perverse historical irony, they passed that clarity on to Bush. A floundering president suddenly found his mission, handed down by God. I am not, of course, equating the actions of Mohamed Atta with those of Bush. But there are reasons to be as suspicious of the president's divine clarity as of the hijacker's. By launching his own crusade against bin Laden's, Bush allowed the fight to take place on the terrorist's terms. It was not a wise idea.
If John Kerry is elected president, he will have to clean up a disastrous mess. The first question, of course, is what to do about Iraq. The likelihood that free, fair and general elections will take place as planned next year grows fainter by the day, which raises the question: At what point should the United States decide that its mere presence in the country is harming the Iraqi people and their future more than its absence? There is no way to answer that question. But it must be asked.
The second issue is the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, which Bush has simply handed over to Ariel Sharon and his extremist counterparts on the Palestinian side. America's eyes are understandably fixed on Iraq, but what happens in Ramallah and Jerusalem is just as important to America's security as what happens in Ramadi. Indeed, the Iraq debacle, and the attendant rise in anti-American rage, has only made resolving the Israeli-Palestinian crisis more urgent. Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan could hold promise, but only if he is prevented from trading Gaza for the West Bank, effectively locking the Palestinians up in Bantustans -- a policy that his top aide recently acknowledged, indeed bragged about. The precarious state of Yasser Arafat's health also demands that America immediately act: Post-Arafat, the Palestinian leadership could degenerate into even worse anarchy than now threatens it. Without a real political plan, the two-state solution, already endangered, would become impossible. And that outcome would be disastrous for Israel, for the Palestinians, and for America.
It is still possible to rectify Bush's mistakes. It is not too late to restore America's standing in the world in general, and the Arab world in particular. But time is running out. And first of all, he must be removed from an office he has proven manifestly incompetent to hold. It is hard to believe, at this point, that even those who subscribe to Bush's ideology could possibly vote for him.
A pious, foolish and poorly educated man, surrounded by zealots and knaves, dreamed of smiting the evildoers, but instead put a sword into their hands. He imagined that by invading a state in the heart of the Arab world, he would cut through the Gordian knot, but he entangled his army in writhing coils. He fantasized that an all-powerful America would stand atop a grateful world, but he made his nation despised everywhere, and particularly in the one region of the world where it is most important that we not be despised. This is the world Bush left us. We must make a new one.
