September 4, 2006
For
a Productive New Approach in the Middle East
"Democracy must be something more
than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
James Bovard,
1994
"In a country well governed
poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed wealth is
something to be ashamed of."
Confucius (551-479 BC)
"Democracy [is] when the
indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers."
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Can you have a miltarily 'occupied
democracy'? To ask the question is to answer it. When a foreign army occupies a
country by force, the population cannot be in control of its destiny, whatever
the language spoken by the local puppet government. —This is an oxymoron.
That is the reason there could never be democracy in occupied Iraq or
in occupied Afghanistan. It is only, if
ever, when foreign troops leave or are kicked out that the national government
in these lands can regain its legitimacy and authority.
This is a basic truth that the American president, George W. Bush, seems to have trouble
understanding. In order to mobilize American public opinion behind his failed
policies, Bush II is forced to rely on incendiary vocabulary to present his
'war on terror', an empty phrase, as a war against terrorists in Iraq. For
example, there may be so-called 'terrorists' in Iraq, but there were none
before the Bush-Cheney administration decided to invade that country on March
20, 2003, and they are not the worldwide terrorists à la al Qaeda who want to do damage
to the United States. The 'al Qaeda terrorists' who have a beef
against the U.S. are not in Iraq; they are in Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia,
the U.K. ...etc. —Most of the insurgents in Iraq are not terrorists, but
patriots who are fighting a foreign invader. That would be the case if the
United States were invaded by a foreign enemy: Americans would fight the
invaders. To fight an invader is not a terrorist act but a patriotic act. For
Bush, "to stay the course" in Iraq is not a policy; it is stubborness
and a lack of vision.
By gratuitously and illegally
attacking, invading and occupying
Iraq on March 20, 2003, for reasons that Bush himself says had nothing to do with
9/11 and terrorism, as he openly conceded during his August 21 (2006) news conference,
while continuing to babble the word "democracy", the American
president is not only giving the great institution of democracy a bad name, but
he has turned hundreds of millions of moderate Muslims against the West and its
humanistic values. And, to make matters worse, by pushing Israel to attack and
destroy the country of Lebanon, while closing his eyes on the sufferings that
Israel imposes daily on the Palestinians, George W. Bush has brought upon
himself the contempt and anger of most of the world. As a result of his
misguided policies and dumb pronouncements, Bush has only succeeded in presenting
western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan as 19th Century colonial and
imperialistic adventures. In this sense, George W. Bush and his cohort of
Neocon advisers are truly men of the 19th Century, not of the 21st Century. In
this day and age, such a policy is a dead-end approach. It can only lead to
disaster.
What would be called for, at this juncture, is an
international conference, preferably under the auspices of the United Nations, on
the future of Iraq and of the Middle East region and their inhabitants. This
may be the only way to stop the Iraqi civil war that Bush denies but
that the Pentagon
confirms is going on in Iraq. —A first obvious objective would be to
divert the current unproductive military expenditures toward a Marshall-like
Plan to raise standards of living in that part of the world. A second
imperative objective would be to adopt a plan with teeth to stop, once and for
all, the lawlessness that prevails in Israel-Arab relations. I suspect that
most Israelis and most Palestinians are war weary and would accept a liveable
compromise wrought in good faith.
If no credible leadership pushes events in that rational
direction, the laws of inertia and of unintended consequences will move things
toward chaos and ever more escalading conflicts.
Since the U.S. is so deeply involved in the current
international mess, a reappraisal of the situation would require fundamental
changes in the Bush administration's approach to international problems. This
could be difficult, but surely not impossible, for the American president to,
-first, stop being under the dominating influence of his vice-president, and
reassert his authority to formulate foreign policy, and -second, place the
interests of the pro-Israel Lobby in a more balanced perspective within
American foreign policy. This would require a change of personnel, but other
presidents, Ronald Reagan for example, did it with success.
The new American foreign policy toward the Middle East
should take a leaf from the 1975 Helsinki Accords and the new
productive approach toward the Soviet Bloc. The world needs a policy of
'detente' in the Middle East. —Western leaders should start telling all
moderate Muslims, and they are the vast majority, 1- that their country, their
culture and their religion will henceforth be respected; and 2- that democratic
countries will assist them in their development, but will not dictate to them
what political systems and what institutions they must adopt.
The current American administration is scheduled to remain
in office until January 2009. The U.S. and the world cannot afford two more
long years of amateurism, improvisation and failure. —Let us hope that
the world of today can generate leaders of vision of the type found in the
past, with Marshall, Acheson, Kissinger, Brzezinski, Baker,...etc.
________________________________________
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor
emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.
He is the
author of the book 'The
New American Empire'.
Visit his
blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's
Website:www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Posted,
September 4, 2006, at 5:30 am
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