In a major policy speech, President George W Bush said the US would take a tough stance towards Iran and Syria, whom he accused of destabilising Iraq.
This, from the BBC’s report on Bush’s speech from last night, does a good job of summing up how blinkered Western government has become about the middle-east debacle. The man accusing others of destabilising Iraq is the man who invaded in 2003, having first convinced his electorate of the threat posed by non-existent (or astonishingly well hidden) WMDs. When it transpired that this excuse wasn’t going to cut it, we were told that the invasion was all part of the war on terror—al-Qaeda had formed tactical links with Hussein and we were there to destroy them. Unfortunately, there appears to be no evidence to support that suggestion either. Moreover, it has been made abundantly clear from attacks such as 7/7 that, rather than being subdued, extremists’ resolve has merely been redoubled.
Even if we convince ourselves that there was a good reason for entering Iraq in the first place (and good luck on that one) it’s still amusing to think that Iran and Syria are now accused of destabilising Iraq by a government who went to fight a war of “liberation” without an exit plan. The State Department tried to formulate plans for the democratisation of Iraq, but their “Future of Iraq” project was tragically underfunded. Even more sickening, when they tried to organise a conference with the Middle East Institute (editors of the oldest and most highly regarded academic journal on the Middle East) they were stopped when members of the Bush administration took offense at Edward Walker’s criticism of the president’s Middle East policy. (Walker was the MEI’s executive director and later president.) [ref].
I’d be the first to admit that this is all rather worn. Unfortunately, it’s not getting any better. Powell, Baker & Hamilton, Obama—as well as a rather good article by Lord Patten in the FT yesterday—have all made it clear that more of the same is not going to work. So what does Bush do? Oh, that’s right: more of the same. Upwards of 20,000 extra troops, assertions that while Maliki hasn’t been doing so well he will sort it all out Real Soon Now and, best of all, a raid on the Iranian consulate in Arbil.
Baker-Hamilton was crystal clear: only by working with regional neighbours such as Syria and Iran will peace ever come to Iraq. Bush, however, is clearly unable to understand this, perhaps because he has compartmentalised Iraq into three groups: Liberators, Insurgents, and Civilians. Unfortunately, the line of distinction between the latter two is more than slightly unclear. Nonetheless the Bush administration seems to think that simply by throwing more soldiers at Baghdad, they will suddenly solve their fundamental difficulty: guerrilla warfare of the type employed by insurgents is extraordinarily difficult to defend against, especially when the foreign troops are trying to protect both themselves and Iraqi civilians. Can you really tell the insurgents from the civilians before that rusty old Mercedes at the checkpoint is blown into a million pieces? Fighting it out is never going to work.
If we want peace in the Middle East, a good first step would be to lay aside the ridiculous arrogance of the West and accept that none of these people think of themselves as “terrorists.” We have to stop provoking more and more Iraqi/Iranian/Syrian/Lebanese children into hating the West. We have to stop trying to dictate what Iran can and can’t do with their nuclear development programme. Why tell them to stop when all we want is for them to conform to the NPT? As Lord Patten points out, they would be far less likely to object to “a stringent and intrusive inspection regime” for civil-only nuclear development.
But isn’t arrogance really the root of the problem? How else could Bush accuse Syria and Lebanon of “destabilising” a region that has been shaken upside-down by his administration more than any other. I leave you with a direct quotation from Bush’s speech, in the sincere hope that it isn’t meant to open doors to the invasion of Iran.
Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity — and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.