Middle East Is Far From Sold on Bush's Plans

[sassa]

Middle East Is Far From Sold on Bush's Plans

By Michael Slackman, Times Staff Writer

CAIRO, Egypt -- During the Vietnam War, the United States insisted that if South Vietnam fell, its neighbors would tumble to communism one after another. Decades later, Washington is gambling on a new domino theory-- one in which a war to liberate Iraq unleashes broad change, including a wave of democracy in the Middle East.

It is a grand vision that offers tantalizing rewards, but also includes huge risks.

By contemplating a new kind of war-- a pre-emptive assault to oust Saddam Hussein in the name of protecting Americans from rogue nations and terrorists-- the Bush administration also aims to bring peace and stability to the Middle East, end terrorism, and ensure Israel's survival and the free flow of oil.

The Bush administration's willingness to force its vision on leaders across the Middle East has sparked angst and resentment. Widely discussed plans for a post-war occupation have only heightened the alienation.

In a part of the world dominated for centuries by outside empires, where people already are angry about U.S. support for Israel, experts say Washington is on a dangerous course.

They warn that the dominoes could fall badly wrong, threatening governments that are friendly to the United States, ushering in a new wave of anti-Americanism and triggering another convulsion of terrorism.

It is a risk the Bush administration appears willing to take. Convinced that a quick and successful war to oust Saddam can begin the desired change, Washington has told allies-- and the United Nations-- that it intends to do what it wants, and is prepared to do it with or without their help.

"By removing Saddam Hussein the U.S. signals to the rest of the world the length they will go to achieve their core foreign policy goals," said Toby Dodge, senior research fellow at the University of Warwick. "That is what the Bush doctrine is about. That is what this war is about."

Analysts including the authors of a classified State Department report leaked in Washington last week doubt that ousting Saddam will foster democracy in the region.

And however logical and well-meaning the administration's vision for the Middle East may seem to American eyes, no matter how strong the hopes are for a decisive war and a brief occupation, the reaction in large parts of the Arab world could hardly be more different. For many Arabs, it is proof that they have landed in the crosshairs of Washington's war on terrorism.

They regard the United States as a new colonial power that will further strengthen Israel and strip the Palestinians of any hope for an independent and viable state. They believe America will impose its own vision of good governance on a region that has never accepted western democracy as the best way to govern, then promote its religion, it's culture, and eventually loot the region's oil and gas reserves.

"I believe they want to change regimes all over the region-- not for our sake, but for theirs," said Bassam Noh, a 21-year-old political science student at Cairo's American University, who until recently was not politically active.

Many here say they fear that an attack on Iraq may well achieve what Osama bin Laden could only dream about: It will radicalize a generation of young people, who account for more half the Arab population. It will not only persuade them that bin Laden was right-- that Bush is at the head of a new Christian crusade against the Islamic world-- but also that their leaders are impotent and concerned primarily with self-preservation.

That will empower Islamists from Morocco to Kuwait, inspire terrorists and undermine many governments-- including U.S. allies-- that already struggle for legitimacy.

"They (the Americans) are going to change the world," said Tahir Masri, a former Jordanian prime minister who worries about the unforeseen consequences of U.S.-led military action.

Arabs are well aware they lack the ability to temper a superpower determined to pursue its own perceived interests. And they worry what America might do next: Force reform in Iran? Pressure on Saudi Arabia to overhaul its religious-based political system? Impose solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict with no viable Palestine?

A poll of people in six Middle East countries released in mid-March indicated that the vast majority expected a U.S.-led attack on Iraq to lead to greater instability and more terrorism, and hurt chances for a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Washington's shifting explanations to justify war have only deepened Arab suspicion.

"In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, nomore torture chambers and rape rooms," Bush said in his speech Monday that imposed a 48-hour deadline for Saddam to leave Iraq.

He added: "We believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty, and when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to al the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation."

Baghat Kouhry, 63, a political scientist and author in Cairo, likens Washington's rhetoric to the British justification for ruling Egypt as a protectorate.

"People will resent what is taking place," he said.

Much of Arab identity has been forged by hundreds of years of imposed subservience-- a fact underscored by the Arab response to Bush's description of America's war against terrorism as a "crusade." The fury that spread throughout the Arab world stemmed from the perceived link to the religious march of Christians into the Middle East that began in the 11th century.

"There is a big gulf in expectation here," said Abdul Moneim Said, director of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a government funded think-tank in Egypt.

"In the U.S., they are thinking it will be a speedy operation and the Iraqis will welcome it. That is not the perception here. The political and military evaluation is it will go sour, it will go longer, and it will have a negative spill-over effect on the rest of the region," he said.

Any calculation of the stakes of a new Iraq war begins with the issue that has shaped the Arab world for generations: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Though the Arab community is divided by politics and local customs, it is united by a universal connection, one inspired by a common language and religion, and cemented by an "us against them" outlook.

So U.S. support for Israel against the Palestinians automatically makes America the enemy. It is unlikely anyone on the Arab street will give the United States even a benefit of the doubt in dealing with Iraq's Arabs.

Even when Bush commits the United States to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as he did again on March 14 as the White House scrambled to bring the Iraq issue to a head, the Arab community is suspicious. It is widely believed that the United States will impose a humiliating cease-fire, relegating the Palestinians to a bastardized state forever under the thumb of the Israeli military power.

If Iraq is sidelined, Egypt would be the only Arab country left with the military power to possibly take on Israel. That could happen only if Cairo violated its peace treaty with the Israelis, which it has gone to great lengths to abide by despite its anger about Israel's actions on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Iraq may have been tamed after the Gulf war, but it still had the largest military in the region.

"Americans will be victorious, and I think their demands on the Palestinians, dismantling the infrastructure of Hamas and Jihad will be asking for a kind of Palestinian civil war," said Moneim Said of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "I assume the Palestinians will escalate their struggle, that will be part of the chaos to take place."

This is where the dominoes might begin to fall.

With Iraq changed, analysts believe the United States would be in a stronger position to influence neighboring Syria, which provides logistical and financial support to the main militias that are fighting Israel-- including Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Though Syria is a nation strong on Arab nationalist rhetoric, and aggressive in its support of proxy armies, it is reluctant to take up a fight head-on. Syria helps fuel border battles with Hezbollah and hosts the offices of radical Palestinian groups that stage suicide bombings. But it has done nothing to promote an insurgency in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 war and later annexed.

The United States would also regard change in Iraq's eastern neighbor, Iran, as a positive development.

Iranian hardliners may fear that they are next, and that could lead them to reconsider their severest anti-Israeli activity as well as efforts at nuclear proliferation.

"The impact of war could very well accelerate the internal process of change in Iran," says Davoud Bavand, an analyst and former diplomat under the shah's regime.

But Islamic governments unfriendly to the United States are not the only ones that would face pressure from the streets. Observers said that while most governments in the region can expect some degree of civil disorder, those that are closest to the United States are likely to face the greatest challenges.

Poverty is rampant across the region, political freedoms are limited or non-existent, and the viability of governments is ensured by secret police, emergency laws and iron-fisted policies.

Kuwait, which was liberated during the 1991 Gulf War by the U.S.-led coalition, has already experienced a surge in terror-related actions, which could spike in the event of an invasion and undermine an economy built on the labor and skills of foreigners. Saudi Arabia could also find itself the target of a terror campaign as radicals adopt the Iraq cause to pursue their aim of bringing down the monarchy.

Jordan, which has close economic and social ties with Iraq, faces a fiscal crisis if its deeply discounted Iraqi oil stops flowing, and an internal crisis if crowds take to the street. And Egypt, which is considered the most stable of U.S. allies in the region, faces a collapse in tourism, the repatriation of 300,000 expatriate workers in Iraq and the loss of Suez Canal revenues. Estimates put Egypt's loss in the first year at up to $10 billion.

One well-placed and western-educated resident of Saudi Arabia predicted a war would lead to clandestine movements culminating in the fall of governments: "Arabs are angry. They have concluded that their regimes are completely inadequate. They cannot control anything in their own region."

Economic hardship and very young populations in many countries create big pools of angry, disenfranchised young people with no venue for venting their views.

"I hate the Americans-- the government and the people, as well," said Dina Ahmed, 18, a freshman studying to be a tour guide at Ain Shams University in Cairo. "They can change their government's policy, but they don't do that. They hate us."

Since many Arab governments have virtually shut down any political opposition, the only groups that provide an alternative are religious-based.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is banned, but remains a powerful opposition force. More than 100,000 Egyptians defied state security recently to attend a funeral for Mustafa Mashour, the organization's longtime leader.

Analysts believe that Islamists will try to exploit anger over a war with Iraq.

"With the occupation of Iraq, the streets will explode. The left is too marginal to lead this, so the Islamists will try to provide the leadership," said Hassanein Keshk, a sociologist at Egypt's National Research Center, a government-funded think tank.

Even America's many critics say there are some ways for the United States to minimize the effects of war.

It would have to prevent Iraq from destroying its oil wells, or the wells of Kuwait to prevent skyrocketing oil prices, which would hurt industrialized and developing nations alike.

But more fundamentally, the United States must avoid killing large numbers of civilians and show that it was correct about Iraq. It must prove that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, that the Iraqi people view the invasion as a liberation, that it is sincere in its efforts to build a viable, independent and democratic state-- and that it is not seeking to dominate the region.

"We are likely to be forgiven for the war if we do well at nation-building,' said Anthony Cordesman, a military analysts based in Washington. "If we are seen as carrying out an imperialist role it will be deeply damaging. ... The question here is not so much can we win the war, we probably can, but is whether we can win the peace."

[mr mahs]

Do you agree with what the US is trying to do?

And please don't answer what right is it of America.

[dnice35]

Originally posted by mrmhs

Do you agree with what the US is trying to do?

that terrorist doesnt know who or what to agree with.....

[underwater]

It will radicalize a generation of young people, who account for more half the Arab population. It will not only persuade them that bin Laden was right-- that Bush is at the head of a new Christian crusade against the Islamic world

These people need to wake up a smell the roses.....They are bored, poor, and believe that "god" is putting them through this struggle......The reality is that their leaders are causing their miserable circumstances.....

Poverty is rampant across the region, political freedoms are limited or non-existent, and the viability of governments is ensured by secret police, emergency laws and iron-fisted policies.

This is exactly the problem of the region....Who would want to defend this type of regime?

[underwater]

During the Vietnam War, the United States insisted that if South Vietnam fell, its neighbors would tumble to communism one after another. Decades later, Washington is gambling on a new domino theory-- one in which a war to liberate Iraq unleashes broad change, including a wave of democracy in the Middle East.

Democracy is something that gains acceptance among people much faster then communism.....Comparing the spread of Communism to Democracy in this day and age is not comparing apples to apples....

[igloo]

How many times are going to hear the same arguements about the "Arab Street"??

The same arguement was made before Afghanistan, and in 1991, and in 1995, 1996, 1998, etc.....

I guess these morons will keep saying the say things over and over and over until one day it may actually happen---and then theu can feel proud and say "I told you so"....irrespective that they have been wrong 100 times over...

And will be wrong again

[mr mahs]

A perfect example of Democracy and western values improving the way of life in the Middle East is Kuwait.. The only people afraid of United States intervention in the region are the people in control..