Give George Bush 100 out of 100 for charity if not clarity. When sections of the untamed world sneered that his “Coalition of the Willing” against Saddam Hussein was actually a “Coalition of the Billing” Bush refused to see the joke. He always knew that willing and billing were closely related. What is a single alphabet between friends? George Bush is also a far better businessman in the White House than he was in the private sector. He knows that the real spelling of “payback” is “dollars”. When the bills come, Bush pays up.
No one has been more regular about sending the invoices than General-President (or is it the other way around now in the age of uniform-democracy?) Pervez Musharraf.
This makes him a little different from his undeclared role-model, Gen. Zia ul Haq. The two may not share ideology but they share a similar survival plan. Gen. Zia was also a huge embarrassment to democracy-loving America until Afghanistan bailed him out of such tedious morality. Gen. Zia seized power in 1977 from Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and then sat out a difficult period of sanctions and stink-in-the-air status until the Soviets marched into Kabul. Gen. Zia immediately became a front-line ally of America, all was forgotten, and money began to pour like a good monsoon in Bombay and arms began to drop like a hailstone shower in Haryana. Gen. Musharraf was a pariah to democracy-snobs when a diverted plane diverted his destiny in 1999. He sweated a bit but hung around till the savior of successful Pak dictators, Afghanistan, re-entered the geopolitical stratosphere. For more than two decades now Afghanistan has alternated between being a key battle zone for America and an unwanted basket-case. After 9/11 the country returned to the American map of the world. Gen. Musharraf took the call from Washington and the dollars began to flow.
In the last two years (actually a bit less) America’s assistance to Pakistan has been upward of $20 billion, give or take a few million. Not all of it has been in the form of the outright reward of $3 billion given on June 24. A year ago, Bush wrote off $1 billion in debt at a New York press conference while the general stood gratefully at his side, wearing a much more elegant tie. This was the appetizer. The big meal came quietly when America forced the IMF and other donors to give Pakistan $2 billion in loans at marginal interest, and then helped Pakistan reschedule $12.5 billion of debt to the Paris Club. Just to make sure that the latest $3 billion was not wasted on economic development, Bush allotted half of the three billion to “defensive weapons systems”. Has anyone heard of “offensive weapons systems”? The American companies who will take that money have never been to make a single offensive weapon. So there. The most defensive of these systems is going to be the avionics of F-16s. Bush solemnly assured India that Pakistan would not get any new F-16s. These planes are a particular bugbear because they can deliver nuclear bombs. But what Pakistan can do with the money is upgrade its existing fleet till they become virtually new. Only the shell will be old, and perhaps some friendly third country will upgrade this too when no one is looking.
Pakistan has got $20 billion of aid without finding Osama Bin Laden on its own soil. Imagine what the payback will be when Osama is found. Osama in chains should be great gift from Pervez to George when the general goes for his summer holidays in June and July next year, first stop Washington. Gen. Musharraf could get a meal at the Texas ranch if he had Osama in his baggage. It would be just the kind of gift to lift George’s spirits in an election year. It pays to be a friend of George.
Such visions must have encouraged those in Delhi who wanted to send a division of the Rashtriya Rifles to police turbulent Iraq on behalf of the United States. So far, fortunately, caution has proved stronger than greed.
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Once upon a time the Qatar television news channel Al Jazeera could count on only one superstar source for world scoops, Osama Bin Laden. Now it has two: Osama and Saddam. How good can it get for Al Jazeera? How embarrassing can it get for the White House? There is something extraordinary going on which beggars belief. How on earth could Saddam have disappeared from under the nose of the Americans and still be available to a news channel? Is the television channel more powerful than the CIA and Pentagon put together? Nor is it Saddam alone. His dangerous sons are equally untraceable. Does Saddam have the kind of support among the people that we never suspected? It cannot be. Saddam is no Ho Chi Minh. He was a known tyrant, and no one knew his tyranny better than the Iraqi people. The two most public faces of his regime, Tareq Aziz and Mohammad Al-Sahaf have surfaced. The former is under American confinement, and the latter, the old information minister, was found to be so uninformed that the Americans let him go. (You can learn all that he did not tell the Americans from his forthcoming autobiography.)
Bush must be under serious pressure. The daily body count is rising, and is in danger of becoming routine news. The smirk has weakened on Donald Rumsfeld’s face, although it will never disappear. The toll is now more than one a day, and the pace of incidents and attacks is sharpening. The children of Middle Class America are dying. At some point Middle Class America will ask for a cost-benefit analysis. If this question is raised in an election year, Bush could be in trouble. He is not in trouble yet, but politics can get ominously different in a matter of days. The campaign for the 2004 presidential election has already begun, and the only candidate to catch some sort of fire is the Democrat Howard Dean. Dean is angry about Bush’s pro-rich tax cuts, but he is hopping mad about Iraq. The Iraq war gets him louder cheers than even the tax cuts. Comparisons are already being made with George McGovern, the peace candidate of the Vietnam era. McGovern was too liberal to get elected, but his campaign did persuade Richard Nixon to get out of Vietnam. George Bush does not have that luxury. America cannot retreat from the war on terrorism as it retreated from Vietnam. Vietnam never struck inside America; but terrorism did, and terrorism could strike again. Vietnam was under siege in the Sixties; America is under siege now. Which brings us to the crucial question: Has George Bush chosen the right allies in his war against terrorism? America had the wrong friends during Vietnam. It paid a heavy price for supporting friends and puppets that had lost credibility with their own people, who were a burden rather than an asset. America cannot fight a war against terrorism in alliance with regimes whose minds are not clear about terrorism.
Arab News Opinion 6 July 2003
