BEIRUT — The United States makes so many abrupt changes in its strategy in Iraq, and its rationale for being there, that you need a direct feed podcast from the White House to keep up with the breaking news of its broken policy. The latest theme from the United States — it is not clear if this is new strategy, new threat, new trial balloon, or just massive frustration — is that it has limited patience with the Iraqis. If Iraqis do not get their house in order and grasp the democratic opportunity before them, the US will start leaving. We hear this from senior American officials, leading columnists and politicians, and it is the closest thing there is to a national American consensus on Iraq — abandon the mess you created in the first place.
This is an understandable American attitude, because no country wants to have its soldiers killed and money wasted in another country’s civil war. But it is not credible for the US — and its UK partner in crime — to play here the innocent bystander who is just getting out of the way of a local dogfight by Arabs who have been killing each other for centuries. To paint the Iraqis as hopeless hooligans and religious fanatics who cannot grasp the democratic opportunity the US-UK armada has placed in front of them, while affirming the pure intentions and gallant policy of the Anglo-American military assault, is simply one more distortion and grossly unfair and inaccurate analysis from the deceptive peddlers who dominate policy-making in London and Washington. This intellectual weapon of mass destruction only compounds the death, pain, fear and instability that Anglo-American policies have sparked all over the Middle East.
Historically, American and British policies in Iraq are among the most flagrant examples of Western colonial and neocolonial global abuse of power. They go into countries like Iraq like ordinary people go into an amusement park, a shopping mall or a casino: picking and choosing how they spend their time, getting what they want, changing from game to game and shop to shop, and leaving when they get bored, frustrated, or have nothing more to gain for themselves — regardless of the conditions left behind for the Iraqi people.
The American threat to leave Iraq is easy to grasp politically, but hard to fathom morally. Does the United States have any responsibility for the destruction, waste and fear that Iraqis have suffered in the past four years? How about the new cohort of terrorists and quasi-anarchists that have found inspiration and experience in fighting the Americans and instigating chaos in Iraq? Is the recent overt strife between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq purely an indigenous phenomenon, or should we ask if American and British policies have brought Iraq to its current condition and are partly or largely to blame for unleashing this new brand of ethnic and sectarian strife in the region?
The Bush administration cannot expect to play Arabs like yo-yos and have the world passively cheer its childishness. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney and others repeatedly speak of their error in supporting Arab dictators for six decades, and now they have switched to supporting freedom and democracy for Arabs. That democracy-promotion process now seems to have been aborted, or simply sidelined, as Arab democracy has bred Islamist victors like Hamas. So the United States quietly shelves that approach and gets back to seeking stability, or fighting Iranian aims that its policies in Iraq and Palestine have helped to bolster in the first place. Now the US says it has limited patience and will get out of Iraq soon if conditions do not improve. This selective, self-serving flip-flopping disguised as grand strategy, with a touch of divine approval, is the worst sort of colonialism and neocolonialism rolled into one.
The British in Iraq have a similar track record that begs some sort of historical accountability. The British manufactured Iraq in the 1920s, supported it and its tyrants for much of the 20th century, then attacked and destroyed it in 2003, tried to rebuild it in their image once again, and now threaten to leave quickly. Creating Iraq, supporting it, destroying it, and now trying to recreate it have been a cumulative show of colonial incompetence and bravado that will go down in history as a great tragedy, if not a crime, that has come at a very high cost, especially to the people of Iraq and the Middle East.
The combined legacies and policies of the American and British governments bring us this summer to the latest phase of this tragic process of Western powers expediently toying with Arabs for their own convenience. This is one reason why the Arab world is riddled with a combination of local tyrants and pro-Western lackeys, but very few normal, effective leaders, or stable, self-satisfied citizenries.
Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
Copyright ©2007 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 28 May 2007
Word Count: 803
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