The United States shows no sign of being diverted from its declared plan to assault Iraq. On three occasions in the past week, the Bush White House has rolled out an increasingly aggressive line, first from the president himself, then from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and lastly from Vice President Dick Cheney. It seems that Washington is in no mood to pull back from a course of action which is sheer folly.
America is not lacking good advice. A succession of friendly governments in the Middle East, including those of the Kingdom and Egypt, has warned of the disaster that would follow a unilateral US attack upon Iraq. The Arab League is only the latest to add its voice to the growing crescendo of concern at the direction of US policy. The Europeans too are protesting ever more loudly at the idea that the United States should arrogate to itself the right to attack countries just because it does not like the rulers there. It is easy to see the way that the Washington hawks are thinking. They are calculating that once US forces have launched their attack upon Saddam’s ruthless regime, it will collapse quickly. They expect to be welcomed on the streets of Baghdad by a population finally free to express its hatred of a regime that has used fear and mass murder to keep them under its thumb.
What may however be holding back even the hawks is the end game, what they are no doubt calling "the exit" from their invasion of Iraq. The country’s exiled opposition should tell Washington’s planners a lot about the likely political direction of a country which has three distinct parts, the largely Kurdish north, the south and Baghdad, which before Saddam’s iron rule, was always a maelstrom of political dissent and rivalry. In their long years outside the country, the exiles have failed to produce anything resembling a united front. Their recent London conference was judged a success, not because of any positive distillation and realignment of the myriad factions, but simply because all these traditionally bitter rivals managed to be civil to each other for a weekend. The CIA has doubtless been scouring the ranks of exiles looking for a leader whom they can promote, who would attract sufficiently widespread support among ordinary Iraqis. The indications are that they have not found such an individual. In Iraq itself, Saddam’s rule has been such that there are no longer any institutions that are in a position to throw up a new government. In the view of some analysts, Saddam’s ouster will result, in due course, in civil strife in Iraq leading to the emergence of another strong man, who will probably be no more of a friend to Washington than Saddam himself.
The Bush White House’s inability or culpable refusal to recognize that its pro-Zionist policies tarnish everything else it seeks to do in the Middle East remains deeply disturbing. And European reservations about the direction the US is taking should be understood for what they are. President Bush and his hawks should realize that massive firepower alone cannot solve the serious problems that face the world today. They should look for better instruments.
A good starting point, in search of those instruments, would be to listen to friends.
