Rarely can a US Vice President have met such a devastating rebuff from America’s Arab allies; not a single Arab king, prince or president has been prepared to endorse a US attack on Iraq. Even in Kuwait — where Dick Cheney arrives today before going on to Israel — an opinion poll suggests that more than 40 percent of its citizens are hostile to Washington’s policies. In every Arab capital, Cheney has been politely but firmly told to turn his attention to the bloody Palestinian-Israeli war, and to forget the “axis of evil’’ until President Bush brings Israeli allies into line.
All Cheney’s efforts to pretend that the conflict in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, are separate from Iraq — or “two tracks” as the American cliche would have it — have failed. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah met Cheney at the end of a long red carpet at Jeddah airport, but the Saudi press were not so polite. Editorials in other Gulf papers uniformly condemned any assault on Iraq. Prince Abdullah has gone out of his way to explain to American television audiences why he opposes military action against Saddam Hussein, while Americans have been told that they cannot use the massive Prince Sultan airbase in the Kingdom for any war against Baghdad.
Repeatedly, Arab leaders have turned Cheney’s arguments about America’s “war on terrorism’’ around. For them, the terror is being inflicted upon the Palestinians by the Israelis, and Cheney’s reminders of Saddam’s brutality carry little weight. If Saddam is overthrown, Iraq could break apart, the US Vice President was told several times, with incalculable effects on Iraq’s Muslim neighbors.
Even the small United Emirates had no time for the Cheney argument. The Vice President’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Millerwise, said that Cheney “made the point that Al-Qaeda can’t be allowed to reconstitute’’ in the Middle East, a remark that was smartly followed by a statement from UAE President Sheikh Zayed Ibn Sultan Al-Nahayan. He was, the government said briskly, opposed to military action in Iraq.
The Arabs might be forgiven their confusion over Cheney’s objectives. If America wishes to pursue its “war on terror’’, what has Iraq got to do with it? Where is the evidence that Saddam was involved in the crimes against humanity on Sept. 11 last year? There is none. So, Cheney has invented a new dogma for the Arabs — and for the US servicemen, who gathered to listen to him aboard the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis in the Gulf. “The United States will not permit the forces of terror to gain the tools of genocide’’ he announced.
Saddam has “weapons of mass destruction’’ — though that is not the view of some members of the old UNSCOM inspection team — and they could fall into the hands of Osama Bin Laden. Since Bin Laden hates Saddam and has gone on record as saying as much, just how the Iraqi weapons, if they exist, would reach America’s nemesis is unclear.
And the Arabs have been asking themselves what this new “genocide” is supposed to be. Who is threatening genocide in the Middle East? Who is being attacked? The Kuwaitis, of course, still believe that Saddam threatens them, but their government has been shocked at the opinion poll which showed such anti-American sentiments amid a population that was liberated by a US-led coalition only 11 years ago.
It is symbolic that the one Middle East nation that supports a strike at Iraq is Israel — whose own war with the Palestinians has so angered America’s Arab allies. Destabilization is the word the US Vice President has been hearing from the Arabs. Cheney will, therefore, hear what he wants to hear from Sharon, the man whose reoccupation of Palestinian territory has done so much to destroy Cheney’s mission. (The Independent)
