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Bush
shares dream of Middle East
democracy
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
In a major policy address to the neo-conservative
think-tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), US
President George W Bush on Wednesday pledged to "ensure
that one brutal dictator is not replaced by another" in
post-invasion Iraq and argued that a US victory there
"could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace".
"The passing of Saddam Hussein's regime will
deprive terrorist networks of a wealthy patron that pays
for terrorist training, and offers rewards to families
of suicide bombers," he said. "And other regimes will be
given a clear warning that support for terror will not
be tolerated."
The speech, the latest in an
accelerating series of appearances by Bush and other
senior members of his administration to drum up public
support for war in Iraq with or without the United
Nations Security Council's authorization, was notable as
much for its venue as its content.
AEI, whose
foreign policy "scholars" are closely identified with
the most unilateralist and pro-Likud elements in the
Bush administration, has acted as the hub of a network
of neo-conservative activists and groups, including the
Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the Center
for Security Policy (CSP), the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs (JINSA), and several others
that have agitated for war against Iraq and other Arab
states that are believed to threaten Israel since the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon near Washington,
DC.
More than any other think-tank in
Washington, AEI and its associates have consistently
formulated and favored the most radical and hardline
proposals for US policy, including aligning US policy in
the Middle East with Israel's right-wing Likud party;
cutting ties with traditional US allies such as Saudi
Arabia and Pakistan; opposing negotiations with North
Korea; providing direct security guarantees to Taiwan;
and treating China as a strategic threat with which an
eventual confrontation should be considered inevitable.
In sympathetic publications - including the
Weekly Standard, the National Review, the Washington
Times, the New Republic, the editorial pages of the Wall
Street Journal - as well as on talk shows on Fox News
and CNN, they have aggressively pressed those positions,
and launched attacks against their perceived enemies,
particularly Secretary of State Colin Powell and former
national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, both of whom
are seen as dangerous realists, and, more recently, the
governments of France and Germany.
AEI has also
served as a major recruiting ground for foreign-policy
positions in the administration.
Indeed, its
former executive vice president, John Bolton, has become
one of the Bush administration's most powerful - despite
journalistically undercovered - figures as
undersecretary of state for arms control and
international security, a key post that he has used not
only to ensure Washington's withdrawal from the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, but also the undermining
of other elements of the international arms-control
regime. He has also spearheaded US efforts to attack the
Rome Protocol to set up the new International Criminal
Court. He told the Wall Street Journal last year that
signing the letter informing the UN of Washington's
renunciation of adherence to the Rome Protocol was "the
happiest moment of my government service".
Presiding over much of AEI's foreign-policy
program has been Richard Perle, a close advisor and
longtime friend of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, who
named him as chairman of the Defense Policy Board (DPB).
Lynne Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's spouse, also
works at AEI, albeit not in a foreign-policy position,
as does former UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.
Perle, who has also worked closely with Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz since they were
students at the University of Chicago in the late 1960s,
convened the DPB within a few days of the attacks to
discuss possible links between Saddam Hussein and Osama
bin Laden's al-Qaeda and put Baghdad squarely in
Washington's crosshairs in the impending anti-terrorist
campaign.
Indeed, within just nine days of
September 11, 2001, Perle helped mobilize support for an
open letter to Bush by PNAC, whose offices are on the
fifth floor of the AEI building in downtown Washington,
that laid out a program for conducting a war on
terrorism that anticipated much of what the
administration has subsequently followed.
Signed
by 40 prominent right-wingers and neo-conservatives, of
whom at least a dozen were directly associated with AEI,
the letter argued that the war on terror must not stop
with bin Laden, but must also include ousting Saddam
Hussein, "even if evidence does not link him to the
[September 11] attack", cutting off aid to the
Palestinian Authority (PA), striking Hezbollah in
Lebanon, retaliating against Iran and Syria if they do
not stop supplying Hezbollah, and sharply increasing the
defense budget.
In another letter six months
later, the same group called for the US to cut all ties
with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and cease
pressure on Israel to negotiate with him pending the
emergence of a new Palestinian leadership. "Israel's
fight against terrorism is our fight," the letter said.
"Israel's victory is an important part of our victory.
For reasons both moral and strategic, we need to stand
with Israel in its fight against terrorism." After a
major struggle between the hawks clustered around
Rumsfeld and Cheney and more realist forces led by
Powell, Bush adopted PNAC's recommendations.
Having won that battle, its AEI associates led
by Perle transformed themselves into neo-Wilsonians by
leading the charge for a regional policy of "reshaping",
"transforming" and "democratizing" the entire Middle
East, the main subject of Bush's address on Wednesday.
"This war cannot be limited to national
theaters," Michael Ledeen, another AEI "scholar" and
JINSA co-founder along with Perle, argued last
September. "We face a regional challenge and must
respond accordingly. We are the one truly revolutionary
country on Earth, which is both the reason for which we
were attacked in the first place and the reason we will
successfully transform the lives of millions of people
throughout the Middle East."
Similarly, another
AEI associate, Joshua Muravchik called as early as a
year ago for an aggressive pro-democracy policy in the
region. Citing a recent survey by Freedom House, a New
York-based neo-conservative think-tank, that found Arab
states to be the least "free" of any other region, he
argued that "far from pointing toward a relaxation of
military efforts [in the war against terror, the survey]
suggests that the more terror-loving tyrannies the
United States can topple the better".
Yet
another AEI scholar and former Central Intelligence
Agency officer, Marc Reuel Gerecht, has also called for
sweeping changes in US policy toward authoritarian Arab
regimes, such as Saudi Arabia, although his views about
the compatibility of democratic institutions with Arab
temperaments have tended to be far more equivocal, if
also revealing. "Arabs only respect strength," he wrote
last year in an appeal for Washington to back Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's efforts to crush
Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories.
"Though the Near East Bureau at State hates the notion,
the tougher Sharon becomes, the stronger our image will
be in the Middle East."
Gerecht has also been a
major proponent of severing ties with Saudi Arabia, as
has Perle himself, who last summer got in trouble with
the White House for inviting a vehemently anti-Saudi
French scholar to address the DPB about the necessity of
ousting the royal family from power.
Bush's
appearance at AEI on Wednesday, however, made it clear
that all had been forgiven. And his embrace of virtually
all of the think-tank's theories about democratizing the
region made clear the extent to which the most radical
hawks in the administration have prevailed in the
internal policy debate.
"There was a time when
many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were
incapable of sustaining democratic values," said Bush.
"Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today.
They are mistaken. "The nation of Iraq ... is fully
capable of moving toward democracy and living in
freedom.
"A new regime in Iraq would serve as a
dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other
nations in the region," he declared, adding that "it is
presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole
region of the world - or the one-fifth of humanity that
is Muslim - is somehow untouched by the most basic
aspirations of life".
Moreover, "success in Iraq
could also begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace,
and set in motion progress towards a truly democratic
Palestinian state ... Without this outside support for
terrorism, Palestinians who are working for reform and
long for democracy will be in a better position to
choose new leaders: true leaders who strive for peace;
true leaders who faithfully serve the people.
"For its part, the new government of Israel - as
the terror threat is removed and security improves -
will be expected to support the creation of a viable
Palestinian state and to work as quickly as possible
toward a final status agreement," Bush said in his one
concession to Arab opinion that must have disappointed
his hosts. "As progress is made toward peace, settlement
activity in the occupied territories must end."
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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