Mission accomplished ....?
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
by Walter C. Uhler
On the eve of President Bush's nine-day visit to the Middle East, Voice of America Middle East correspondent, Challiss McDonough, reported on "waves of criticism and rancor" spewing from the Arab press. "Newspaper columnists note the push for Middle East peace has not begun until the final year of the president's two terms in office."
Mr. McDonough failed to mention that, in January 2001, Bush actually stated that he was going to tilt toward Israel by pulling out of the Arab-Israeli conflict. When Secretary of State Colin Powell objected that such a pullback "would unleash Sharon and the Israeli army," Bush responded: "Sometimes a show of strength by one side can really clarify things." [Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, p. 72]
How true! For, as McDonough reports:
"Mr. Bush remains one of the least popular world leaders in Arab opinion polls, and is held personally responsible by many in the region for the destabilizing chaos in Iraq."
And, as Juan Cole so forcefully put it yesterday:
"One of the arguments warmongers gave for overthrowing Saddam Hussein was that his regime was responsible for the violent death of some 300,000 civilians between 1968 and 2003. That estimate now appears exaggerated…But what is tragic is that in 4 ½ short years, a foreign military occupation has unleashed killing on a scale achieved by the murderous Saddam Hussein regime only over decades. Bush did not kill all those people directly, of course, but he did indirectly cause them to be killed."
