25 - 31 January 2001
Issue No.518
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 25 - 31 January 2001 Issue No.518 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Bush-whacked no longer
The world awaits the next move of the new American administration under George W Bush, and possible reforms in US policy. The new administration's first statements and signals regarding the Arab world carried a note of intimidation, and were directed specifically at Iraq. Vice-president Dick Cheney (formerly the secretary of defence) and foreign minister Colin Powell (former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff) are reviving memories of their military victory over Saddam Hussein.
Ten years after the end of the Gulf War, many conditions have changed in the region, altering the political and military balance of power. Yet they have evidently changed nothing in the minds of American officials. The statements made by Powell and Condoleeza Rice, the new head of the National Security Council, regarding the need for mobilisation against Saddam Hussein, are effectively anachronistic. Cheney, for his part, pointed out during the electoral campaign that Bush might have to undertake military action to remove Saddam from power.
There are facts that the new administration must reconsider before embarking on a fatal adventure. The first is that the consensus that allowed America to wage a war on Iraq in the first place is no longer viable. Nor are the policies that gave rise to the sanctions imposed by the US (including the air embargo and the economic siege). Apart from Britain, members of the Security Council no longer approve these policies, and they are ready to pass a resolution lifting the sanctions if Iraq agrees to allow international observers back into the country.
The second and perhaps most important fact is that most of the Arab countries that stood by the US during the Gulf War now adamantly oppose such intervention. They also take issue with America's unjustified military presence in the Gulf and the flooding of the region with weaponry, using up resources in activity that seems increasingly pointless. The prevalent conviction among most Arab governments and peoples alike is that US intervention currently poses an obstacle to inter-Arab or Iraqi-Arab reconciliation, and that the US is deliberately stirring up trouble between Iraq, on one hand, and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, on the other, to preserve an atmosphere of tension in the Gulf and thereby draw attention away from clear and present dangers -- like Israel's military superiority and belligerent policies.
The third fact is that most Arab countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria and most Gulf countries, have resumed diplomatic and economic relations with Iraq. There is an Arab consensus (however slow-acting some parties to it might be) that Arab relations must be rebuilt and the past forgotten. Therefore nobody takes Iraq's adolescent posturing against Kuwait very seriously. Everyone knows that it is a response to the US's trouble-making.
The new administration should be apprised of these facts, so that Washington can realise once and for all that divisions concerning Iraq within the Arab world are no longer a card it can play. The situation has changed in the past decade. Hostility towards US policy in the region make this evident.
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