So what's new?
By
Mona Makram Ebeid
Hawks in the Bush administration insist Saddam Hussein must be deposed because he is a murderous despot. So what's new? There are many murderous despots in the world and the Bush administration coexists comfortably with most of them.
Bush's State of the Union speech was clearly an attempt to brace Americans for war. And after the Camp David meeting between Bush and Tony Blair, both appeared confident the weapons inspectors will find enough evidence of Iraqi weapons programmes to satisfy both the public and the Security Council that Iraq is in material breach Resolution 1441. On the consequences of war, however, Washington remains opaque beyond reiterating that the ousting of Saddam will be a modernising shock for the whole region.
To the Arab world, though, an assault on Iraq by an administration that ignores North Korea and Israel's possession of nuclear weapons looks like an attempt to stage a show of overwhelming military power. And while there is no great swell of anti-Americanism in the Arab region anti-Bushism is rife, permeating governments as well as the public. Washington's concentration on Iraq and its failure to deal even handedly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has fuelled rage across the Arab and Islamic world, where the alliance between the Sharon government and Washington is rightly perceived as the motor behind America's Iraq policies.
Legitimacy will only accrue to such policies when Washington allows the Iraq issue to remain under the mandate of the UN, whether combat begins or not, and when the US and its allies engage in the Israeli-Palestinian question, pressuring for two states, Israeli withdrawal from territories, a massive dismantling of settlements and two capitals in Jerusalem.
This is what will provide the local allies needed in Washington's war against terror.
This week's Soapbox speaker is a former member of parliament and professor of political science at AUC.
