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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector-From: Marie Major-Monahan
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Subject: Embarrassing America
Embarrassing America E-mail this
Print thisHasan Abu Nimah & Ali Abunimah,
Electronic Iraq, 30 June 2004
President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony
Blair of Great Britain participate in the Working
Session of the NATO-Ukraine Commission on the
final day of meetings in Istanbul, Turkey, Tuesday,
June 29, 2004. Photo: White House
Just when we thought the Bush Administration had
reached the bottom of the ditch in its
unprincipled behaviour, it surprises us by digging deeper.
US Vice President Dick Cheney's use of the F-word
to a senior Democratic Senator and political
opponent during a ceremony in the United States
Senate on June 22 demonstrated that the Bush
administration no longer feels a need to cover up its
thuggish behaviour with even the pretense of decorum
that gives democratic government its authority.
Rather than apologize, Cheney said he "felt better
after I had done it." Was this an example of the
kind of democratic discourse that the United
States wants to teach the rest of the world?
A few days later, Cheney's boss, President Bush,
gave an interview to Irish television on the eve
of his visit to Ireland for the US-European Union
summit. What was notable was his impatience
whenever interviewer Carole Coleman asked him any
question that challenged his simplistic conception of
the world and his role in it. Several times he
admonished her not to interrupt him, displaying
testiness that would be ruled out of order in a high
school debate.
Coleman put it to Bush that a majority of the
Irish people did not welcome his visit because "they
are angry about Iraq, they are angry about Abu
Ghraib." Bush explained that "they must not
understand." When Coleman asked Bush why he thought so
many people around the world do not understand
what he is about, he answered simply, "I don't
know."
Bush justified the Iraq war by claiming again
that he invaded the country because Saddam refused
to disarm Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction,"
without explaining how anyone can disarm themselves
of weapons that do not exist. Underlining his
imperviousness to reality, Bush stated that, "most
of Europe supported the decision in Iraq," and he
claimed that only France opposed it.
On the Abu Ghraib prison torture, Bush reasserted
the theory that the torture was the work of an
isolated few, even though every day brings new
evidence of abuse known and authorized at high
levels, including from his White House. Several major
international human rights organizations have
concluded that Bush's "war on terror" has been
accompanied by systematic and growing human rights
abuses. But these organizations too must not
understand according to Bush's logic.
Bush's visit to Ireland, followed by a trip to
Istanbul for the NATO summit, came on the heels of
another diplomatic failure. The United States was
soundly defeated in its effort to push through
the UN Security Council an extension of the special
immunity from war crimes trials enjoyed by its
soldiers involved in UN peace-keeping missions. Any
administration in touch with reality would have
recognized at the outset that in the wake of Abu
Ghraib such immunity, extraordinary and
unjustified to begin with, had simply become untenable. Yet
in Bush's alternative reality in which the world
— as he told Coleman — is safer on his watch, and
the United States is guided by a pure and
innocent heart, these kinds of demands are perfectly
normal.
Coleman, who persisted in the kind of tough
questioning with which few American reporters ever
dare confront their government, asked whether the US
approach to the Palestine-Israeli conflict needed
to be more "even-handed." Bush boasted "I'm the
first American president to have called for the
establishment of a Palestinian state," adding,
"that sounds like a reasonable balanced approach." Of
course he ignored the total backing he gave to
Ariel Sharon's policy to annex much of the occupied
West Bank and to cancel the inalienable rights of
refugees to return to the homes and lands from
which they were ethnically cleansed.
It is encouraging that the broader US public,
after years of complacency and unjustified trust in
its government, has started to wake up to the
seriousness of the catastrophe that the US
administration has wrought. A recent Gallup poll found
that 54 percent of Americans now think the Iraq war
was a "mistake." The same survey found that only
37 percent of Americans think the war made their
country safer, while 55 percent said it had not.
Bush clearly has no hope of convincing Europeans
and Arabs to back him with his own domestic
support draining away.
With this growing catalogue of disasters,
Americans can be forgiven for thinking that anything is
better than the Bush administration. From the
Arab world, however, an administration led by
Democratic challenger John Kerry looks like it would be
nothing more than a cosmetic change in tone and
style, while the growing harm that US policies are
causing would continue unchecked. This week,
Senator Kerry sent Florida Congressman Robert Wexler
to Israel on his behalf. Wexler, a member of the
House International Relations Committee and a
close ally of the pro-Israel lobby, has been asked
by Kerry to formulate the Middle East policy for
the Democratic Party platform. During his visit,
Wexler is due to meet with Israeli officials,
including prime minister Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu
and Shimon Peres, and, bizarrely, the Turkish
Ambassador to Israel, but with not a single
Palestinian. A June 25 press release from Kerry's envoy
expresses "unequivocal support" for Sharon's
policies and adds,
"Although Prime Minister Sharon has been
reasonably successful in combating terror over the past
several months, Israel still faces grave internal
and external threats from a nuclear Iran and
expanded terrorist networks in West Bank, Gaza, Iraq
and around the globe who are being funded by
Saudi and Arab sources."
This kind of Israeli-inspired language, suffused
with hostility to the Arab world and deliberately
obfuscating issues, can make no contribution
whatsoever to repairing the damage to US credibility
and prestige let alone to bringing peace to the
region. Such approaches, although ostensibly
"pro-Israel" actually condemn Israel to an unending
conflict which it will never win. True friends of
Israel, if there are any in the United States
government, would hold the country accountable and
press it forcefully to end its cruel and oppressive
regime over millions of Palestinians.
The United States urgently needs to make a
radical change in direction to halt the wholly
unnecessary slide into civilizational conflict that its
policies since the 9/11 attacks are fuelling. If
the US allowed itself to be guided by justice and
fairness instead of an unquenchable thirst for
power and resources, and unconditional support for
Israeli extremism, Americans would be amazed by
how quickly distrust and hostility would be
replaced with respect and affection across the Arab
world, isolating the fanatic voices that the US is
now permitting to set the agenda. But the road to
such a change seems depressingly long as was
underscored by another event last week: the US House
of Representatives voted by 407-9 to give
full-backing to the Sharon-Bush-Kerry approach to
Palestine. Let us hope that the voices of ordinary
Americans can be heard above this discouraging din.
Ambassador Hasan Abu Nimah is the former
permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of Electronic Iraq and
The Electronic Intifada.
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