CAN THE UNITED STATES CHANGE ITS COURSE?
By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News

This past week, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq passed the 2,500 mark. At least ten times more have been so severely maimed, in mind or body, as to be unable ever to fight again.

The American financial sacrifice has been on the same large scale. Following the latest appropriation by Congress of $66bn, the cost to the American taxpayer of President George W. Bush's "global war on terror"' has reached the very considerable sum of $450bn.

What will future historians say of this wanton squandering of resources?

They are likely to conclude that America lost its mind after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In a fever of angry, vengeful nationalism emotions exploited and manipulated by a cabal of pro-Israeli officials the US embarked on a world-wide campaign against "Islamic terrorists", which was profoundly misconceived.

The war against Iraq, in particular, was waged on false, even fraudulent, premises, which had more to do with enhancing Israel's security environment than with protecting the United States against further attacks.
The same "neocon" officials, publicists and lobbyists who pressed for war against Iraq, are now clamouring for the use of force to end Iran's nuclear programme.

Indeed, far from containing or defeating the "terrorist threat", America's aggressive policies are greatly enhancing it.

Is it utopian to speculate how American resources could have been better spent? With a good deal less than $450bn, the US could have paid Israel to remove its colonists from the West Bank and settled and compensated the Palestinian refugees, thereby resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has bedevilled the region for a century.

It could have eliminated poverty and disease in a great part of Africa. And it could have rebuilt Iraq, freed from the scourge of occupation troops.

Iraq has indeed suffered a great deal more from the war than the United States. Its human losses are estimated to be in the tens of thousands, some would say well over 100,000, while the material and societal damage has been enormous.

Iraq as a major Arab country, as a functioning unitary state, as an ancient civilisation has been smashed, probably beyond repair.

The blood-letting in Iraq is all the more deplorable and disquieting because there is no end in sight.

Last December, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that the US would this year start reducing its troops in Iraq.

But this policy now appears to have been reversed, largely because the US feels obliged to give maximum support to the new Iraqi government of Nuri Al Maliki.

On a surprise visit to Baghdad last week, President Bush repeated his pledge that the US would stay in Iraq, until that country was secure and whatever the sacrifice. An attempt by Democrats in Congress to get the administration to fix a date for withdrawal has been defeated.

On Friday, the House of Representatives voted 256 to 153 in favour of a resolution promising to "complete the mission" in Iraq, prevail in the global fight against terrorism, and oppose any "arbitrary date for withdrawal" of American troops.

The agony for both the US and Iraq is, therefore, likely to continue at least until Bush leaves the White House in over two years' time.

Catastrophe

The shockwaves of this American-made catastrophe will undoubtedly be felt throughout the region for decades to come.

Among the many casualties are the gravely weakened geopolitical position of the Arabs versus both Israel and Iran, the severe damage to relations between Sunnis and Shiites, and the devastating blow to the image of the United States in the Arab and Muslim world, which has now become a focus of anger and hate as never before.

America's violations of basic human rights at foul places such as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, its disregard of international law, the blatant hypocrisy of Bush's campaign to spread "democracy", his abandonment of "collective internationalism" in favour of policies of pre-emption and world-wide domination all these have led to a collapse of confidence in the United States, not only in the Arab and Muslim world, but even among America's closest European allies.

Can the United States correct its aim? Can it change course? The answer is likely to be no, if only because the US has never been ready to examine candidly why it has become a target for terrorists.

In particular, its intimate relationship with Israel, the source of much of the problem, has rarely been the subject of objective analysis in the United States.

For more than half a century, the US has grossly favoured Israel over its neighbours, arousing bitter Arab resentment.

In the 1960s, the US turned a blind eye to Israel's nuclear weapons programme at Dimona. In the decades after the 1967 war, it allowed even financed Israel's illegal settlement of occupied Palestinian territories.

After the 1973 October war thanks to Henry Kissinger, America's secretary of state at the time America's annual subsidy to Israel rose from millions to billions.

In 1982, the US did not object to Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its siege of Beirut.

Indeed, it even sought to reward Israel by attempting to broker a separate Israel-Lebanon peace, which would have put Lebanon in Israel's sphere of influence. Nor did the US object to Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon for the next 18 years.

The US has protected Israel from international anger by vetoing scores of resolutions at the UN Security Council.

And, above all, it has allowed Israel to oppress the Palestinians and steal their land over the years, culminating in its current campaign to destroy the democratically-elected Hamas government.

These are among the roots of terror, for which the United States and its Israeli ally will continue to pay dearly, until these policies are reversed.


Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.