Middle East Attacks Spread Amidst Unraveling US Support
by Steve
After a bombing in Iraq today where 20 school children were killed by assailants, and another bombing where it appears that Al Qaeda is attacking directly Saudi security forces for the first time, one could be excused for thinking that it can’t get much worse in George W. Bush’s Middle East. And you would be wrong. The best that Bush could do was to say that Al Qaeda was probably behind the attacks.
Duh. Gee George, do you think that if you had done everything possible to chase down Al Qaeda and kill them first before destabilizing a country in the middle of the Islamic world that maybe Al Qaeda wouldn’t have the run of the Middle East now?
First, in addition to the recent attacks, as Mary said in an earlier post two moderate regional allies have put us on the deep freeze as a result of our support for the Israeli reversal on settlements and the assassination of a Hamas leader. Having both Jordan and Egypt distance themselves from the United States at this critical time will not advance peace or gain EU support any time soon for a resumption of the tattered road map. But of course the world’s best foreign policy team thought of all this before they handed over the United States’ Middle East policy to Ariel Sharon last week, right? It doesn’t help clarify what our actual policy is from this all-star team when they are already backing away from what their boss himself said last week.
Second, our own military commanders tell the media today that up to 50% of the Iraqi security forces we trained have either taken up arms against us or quit, and refuse to take up arms against their Islamic countrymen, even though we stupidly assume they will eventually do so. You can be sure that more of these forces will quit.
Third, despite assertions from the Pentagon that the US will remain in control of security in Iraq after the transition to a new government in July, the European Union said today that no such control by the US should be assumed, and that the UN will let the Iraqis determine who has control over their own security as a condition for any new UN resolution.
Fourth, even GOP senators have now had their fill of the Bush Administration’s efforts to conceal the additional costs of the Iraqi occupation from the voters prior to the election.
No amount of revisionist justifications like “we did it to liberate the Iraqis,” or “we have a duty to topple dictators who murder their people” will obscure the fact that this war was sold to America and the world as an anti-terrorism and WMD-elimination venture, both of which were sold to the world on false pretenses. If candidate Bush wanted to sell the American people on the need for America to spill the blood of its military for nation-building and dictator-toppling around the globe, he should have ran on that during the 2000 campaign. But he didn’t.
If you want proof of that, take a look at these quotes from a Foreign Affairs piece from 2000, and see who said it.
America can exercise power without arrogance and pursue its interests without hectoring and bluster.
One thing is clear: the United States must approach regimes like North Korea resolutely and decisively. The Clinton administration has failed here, sometimes threatening to use force and then backing down, as it often has with Iraq. These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them. Rather, the first line of defense should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence -- if they do acquire WMD, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration.
The president must remember that the military is a special instrument. It is lethal, and it is meant to be. It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society.
It is one thing to have a limited political goal and to fight decisively for it; it is quite another to apply military force incrementally, hoping to find a political solution somewhere along the way. A president entering these situations must ask whether decisive force is possible and is likely to be effective and must know how and when to get out. These are difficult criteria to meet, so U.S. intervention in these "humanitarian" crises should be, at best, exceedingly rare.
This does not mean that the United States must ignore humanitarian and civil conflicts around the world. But the military cannot be involved everywhere.
Using the American armed forces as the world's "911" will degrade capabilities, bog soldiers down in peacekeeping roles, and fuel concern among other great powers that the United States has decided to enforce notions of "limited sovereignty" worldwide in the name of humanitarianism.
It’s good to see that Bush moral clarity and consistency in action, right?
