When President George W. Bush emerged from his recent strategic meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair, it was clear that, despite British misgivings, Washington’s softening up of world opinion for an assault on Iraq would continue. The two sought to justify their bellicosity by pointing to Iraq’s continuing failure to adhere to UN resolutions regarding the free access for UN weapons inspectors. Their argument is that if Baghdad continues to snub the will of the international community, as expressed by the United Nations, then it must bear the heavy consequences of military retribution.
It is, however, deeply disturbing that neither Bush nor the clearly more intelligent and subtle Blair, can see the glaring contradiction in their political line. If UN resolutions are so sacrosanct, then what about all the UN rulings over the years, which Israel has flouted and continues to flout? If Israel had bowed to the will of the international community, there would surely have been no intifada, no bloodshed and none of the butchery that is being visited upon both the Palestinian and Israeli people.
Unfortunately for the silent majority of moderate world opinion, the contradictory Bush-Blair analysis of the behavior of Iraq and of Israel is doing nothing but hurl huge quantities of oil onto the already raging blaze in the Middle East. This glaring double standard is plain for everyone to see. Nothing that Americans or the British could say can reduce the anger that any reasonable man has to feel about them.
Saddam has much to answer for, not only for his attack on Kuwait but for the brutal treatment of his own people. But thanks to what passes for foreign-policy thinking in the White House, his position has probably never been as assured as it is now. Bush could learn a lot from Saddam about international politics. The Iraqi leader can now seek to promote himself as the champion of the Palestinian people and the figurehead around which all pro-Palestinian feeling can coalesce.
In a single move of bovine shortsightedness, the Bush administration has cut the ground from under the moderate Arab world, where steady diplomacy and much hard work, not least on the Saudi peace initiative, represents the only reasonable way forward. Instead, by lining up its sights on Iraq, while ignoring the glaring wrongs of Zionist Israel, the Americans are passing the initiative to Saddam, a cunning demagogue who knows just how to milk the situation for every ounce of political advantage. Meanwhile, the Palestinian people are paying the terrible price for this double standard and the determined blind eye that the two world leaders have turned toward Israel’s own reprehensible behavior. If it were not so tragic, this inane behavior would be laughable.
It must be hoped that the British, who are clearly having second thoughts about their unstinting support for the occupant of the White House, will soon choose to disassociate themselves from this sickeningly hypocritical mix of policies. Unfortunately, given the Zionist grip on domestic US politics, a British defection would probably have only a marginal effect on the mid-term Bush administration. But at least it would point up the almost total lack of wisdom in US Mideast policy.
