[Dialogue] Good-bye Bush era Al-Ahram Weekly September 29, 2005

Mon Oct 3 00:16:56 EDT 2005

Good-bye Bush era

Something has changed in America and it doesn't augur well for Bush and his
buddies, writes Mohamed Hakki 

It could be a coincidence that in the week that world leaders gathered in
New York to attend the United Nations' annual General Assembly meetings, the
American people displayed a degree of fed-up-ness with the Bush
administration never shown before. The number of negative articles and
commentaries has been too numerous to list. I choose only two or three
examples to convey the prevailing mood in Washington.

On Tuesday, 13 September, during the 14th Annual Policy-makers Conference of
the National Council on US-Arab Relations, Chas Freeman, former ambassador
to Saudi Arabia stated: "Once seen as the reliable champion of a generous
and just international order based on the rule of law, the United States is
now widely viewed as an inveterately selfish spoiler of international
organisations and a scofflaw in international affairs. Once seen as the last
best hope for mankind, the United States is now -- according to many polls
-- more feared than admired in a lengthening list of countries."

The following day, one of the most astute political commentators for The
Washington Post, E J Dionne, wrote a scathing editorial entitled "End of
Bush era". He starts by saying that the sooner politicians in both parties
realise that the Bush era is over, the better for them and the country. Both
Dionne and Freeman agree that Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly
ideological partisanship. The colossal fiasco in Iraq was followed by the
catastrophic failure regarding Hurricane Katrina. The utter failure of the
relief efforts has "penetrated the country's consciousness".

Aspects of failure on almost every front are becoming obvious everyday. In
Dionne's words, "the glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be
glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report
released in the midst of the Katrina disaster found that 4.1 million
Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004." 

According to Paul Craig Roberts in Counterpunch magazine: "The destruction
of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most incompetent government in
American history and perhaps in all history. Bush has squandered the lives
and health of thousands of people. He has run through hundreds of billions
of borrowed dollars. He has lost America's reputation and its allies. With
barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty, he has stripped
America of its inherent goodness and morality. And now Bush has lost
America's largest port and 25 per cent of its oil supply. All because he
started a gratuitous war egged on by a clique of crazy neo-conservatives who
have sacrificed American interests to their insane agendas. The thing is, so
far, no one has been held accountable."

The General Assembly's annual meetings happened also to coincide with the
fourth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and
Washington. On this occasion, a growing number of policy experts are openly
arguing that Bush's strategy for conducting the war on terror --
particularly his preferences for military action over soft power, and for
working with a compliant "coalition of the willing" over independent allies
and multilateral mechanisms -- is in urgent need for re-evaluation and
redirection. 

It is growing more and more obvious, according to these experts, that
"enlightened diplomacy must be combined with a robust commitment to compete
vigorously for hearts and minds." This group sports half a dozen former
secretaries of state and national security advisers, including Madeleine
Albright, former NATO commander General Wesley Clark and Senator Charles
Hagel, among other heavyweights. They published a statement implicitly
criticising Bush's conduct of the war noting that "terrorism is a tactic,
not an enemy", and stressing that success in the war will require "a strong
partnership with allies based on mutual respect" living up to traditional US
principles such as respecting law in the conduct of war.

A similar statement was issued by Nir Rosen of the New American Foundation
in which he said, "they don't hate us for who we are, but for what we do...
An American withdrawal from Iraq and Israeli withdrawal from the occupied
territories to 1967 lines would do more to fight terrorism than any military
action ever could."

Bush's problems, or more accurately, problems caused by President Bush, fall
in two categories: external and domestic. Those who are able to be candid
and call a spade a spade, continue to remind audiences, like Ambassador
Freeman, that "the extremism and terrorism bred by the continuing injustices
and crimes against humanity in the Holy Land continue to take their tall in
places as remote from the Holy Land as Britain, Thailand, Nigeria,
Indonesia, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan."

But it also has its consequences on the American home front. Freeman says
that the US political system is premised on the notion of competition
between two parties -- an adversary process in which one party criticises
and proposes alternatives to the politics of the other. "This system has
clearly broken down," he believes. "Patriotism is confused with silent
acquiescence in the politics that should be a gullible public accepts the
subjects of active debate without a word of protest. Those who know better
say nothing even when they can see the country being led into disaster. The
opposition party does not only oppose, it does not propose alternatives
either because it has no ideas or because it lacks confidence in those it
has been too timid to advance. This is not just a political problem; it is a
systemic breakdown in the American democracy."

However, democracy is not the only thing that seems to be breaking down. It
seems that American sanity itself is beginning to totally break down --
melting down, or disappearing. In a significant shift after half a century
of nuclear deterrence based on the threat of massive retaliation, the
Pentagon has revised its doctrine to allow pre-emptive strikes against
states or terror groups, to destroy enemies and biological weapons
stockpiles. We have not heard any uproar yet since the Washington Post
published the news last week. Maybe because nobody yet believes that this
could truly be the policy of the Unites States.

Dionne says of Bush: "He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win
support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned
that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to
see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on
the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policy-making and
thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his
administration's strong suits."

Even before Katrina, Bush would have been a "lame duck president" but with
Katrina, his whole administration's ineptitude makes his whole era look
pathetic. Richard Cohen says in the Washington Post, "if Bush were the CEO
of a major corporation, his board of directors would have fired him. It
would want to know what the hell he's been doing for the past four years and
what he's done with the untold billions given to the Department of Homeland
Security. After seeing how the Feds stood by while sick people died in New
Orleans hospitals, the board might want to fire itself -- but that is not
practical. The board, in this case, is the American people."

Cohen says he feels sorry for Bush; "The man must be perplexed about why he
is being held responsible for a natural disaster and not for the one wholly
of his making. The war in Iraq, after all, is entirely his doing -- from its
inception to execution, which have both been inexcusable examples of
incompetence."

The saddest thing about the Bush era is that not a single member of his
whole negligent team of incompetent architects of the war in Iraq has been
held accountable. If anything, they have all been rewarded with cushy jobs.

Peace,

Harry

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