It's
still a stark choice for US
voters By Ehsan Ahrari
Phrasemakers in Washington are having a field
day in deciding how best to describe President George W
Bush as he capped the Republican National Convention on
Thursday by accepting renomination by his party for a
second term. His supporters describe him as a great
"wartime" president, while his detractors insist that he
is, to put it mildly, merely a useful mouthpiece for the
most deft of neo-conservatives, Vice President Dick
Cheney, the real power behind the throne. These
contentious depictions notwithstanding, American voters
are edging close to the moment in November when they
have to decide whether they want Bush to occupy the
White House for four more years, or send him and his
army of ideologues back to Crawford, Texas, his
permanent home.
If crises define presidents,
then Bush could not have encountered a more devastating
calamity than that which 19 terrorists brought on the US
on September 11, 2001. His detractors never failed to
point out that, when his chief of staff Andrew Card gave
him the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center, he froze for several minutes. The enormity of
the crisis temporarily paralyzed him. His defenders are
dismissive of that characterization. The whole world
sympathized with the US for weeks or even months after
the tragedy, and was ready and willing to accept that
the US leadership would respond to international
terrorism when it became clear that al-Qaeda was the
culprit.
Bush eventually rose to the challenge,
and declared a global "war on terrorism", but he was
unable to make it a comprehensive enterprise by using
all the tools of America's national power. Americans
expect their presidents to explain complex events by
using broad but easy-to-comprehend phrases. Bush's
simplistic explanations and sloganeering certainly did
not fit the bill. His answer to the question of why
terrorists and their sympathizers "hate us" was "because
they hate our freedom, our love of liberty, and our way
of life". Such glib, but exceedingly wrong-headed,
explanations made good soundbites; however, they could
never become a substitute for comprehensive policies as
bases to wage a "war". Equally important, simplistic
explanations also prove the point that when repeated
often enough they tend to create a spurious sense of
acceptability within the political milieu, whereby the
urgency to find realistic and comprehensive solutions is
also dissipated.
Besides, international
terrorism was not a fort, a hill or a territory that
could be captured, dismantled or conquered. "Terrorism"
is an aggregate term that describes the impulse of
perpetrating individuals or entities to destroy or cause
harm to the perceived object of anger and hatred. It
(terrorism) is driven by supercilious or self-righteous
emotions and passions that, for the believers, are
greater, nobler and incontrovertibly more important than
anything around them, including their own existence. In
the case of al-Qaeda, what drives its functionaries is
their conviction and fervor about the correctness and
righteousness of their cause, based on their
interpretation of Islam. Their objective is destruction
of the US, which is envisaged as the principal enemy of
their religion. Their ultimate purpose is to establish a
puritanical global Islamic government, a caliphate.
However, al-Qaeda, like all movements that are driven to
destroy the status quo to create a new version or
semblance of order, does not spend as much time in
finessing what that ultimate new order should look like.
Rather, what preoccupies most of the time of its
functionaries, and consumes all of their passion and
planning, is the obliteration of the current order and
its chief constable, the US.
The way to deal
with global terrorism was not declaring a war and then
focusing largely on the military aspects of waging it.
Given the global primacy of the US, there is no doubt
that all military operations would result in victory, or
at times Pyrrhic victory. However, to make permanent
gains, a comprehensive "war" had to be waged against
al-Qaeda-related terrorism. That kind of "war" included
a radically different approach to the Middle East,
indeed, the entire world of Islam. Such a war included
elimination of authoritarian rule from within - not
through military adventurism, promotion of political
pluralism and economic development, war against
illiteracy, obscurantism, exploitation and subjugation
of women, and a campaign to upgrade - and in some
instances freshly introducing - modern education, as
opposed to solely religious education. Equally
substantially, such a war necessitated America's active
and impartial leadership in the resolution of the
Palestinian conflict - one of the core Muslim conflicts,
and conflicts where Muslims are subjugated under
communist tyranny (China) or Russian or Slavic tyranny
(Chechnya and other Muslim republics of the Russian
federation).
Instead, the war against global
terrorism became trapped in the quagmire of simple
sloganeering, such as "either you are with us or you are
with the terrorists", or such bumper-sticker phrases as
"the axis of evil". Actually, the first slogan alienated
a whole lot of world leaders who had to steer the ships
of their respective states through the shoals of complex
realities. They hated global terrorism as much as
anyone, yet they wanted to tackle it by developing
comprehensive policies. They wanted to engage states of
the "axis of evil" in order to free the world of the
specter of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,
rather than threatening them with "regime change".
The US easily dismantled the rag-tag Taliban
forces, but decided to go after Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein, by conjuring up a variety of rationales. The US
invasion of Iraq also became the defining moment,
marking the beginning of an era when the US became a
major obstacle in the way of defeating global terrorism.
There also ensued a great split in the Western alliance,
when those European allies who dissented from the US
invasion of Iraq were belittled through such derisive
phrases as "old Europe". Members of the so-called "new
Europe" were the sycophant countries of Central Europe
that did not question America's motives for invading
Iraq. The great Western alliance may never be the same
again.
After the toppling of Saddam, Iraq
emerged as the greatest gathering place for
transnational terrorist forces since Afghanistan under
the Taliban. Today, both Iraq and Afghanistan remain
archetypes of failed states. Both countries require and
deserve massive injections of capital, technological
know-how, and great power commitment that will last at
least until the end of the next decade.
However,
the building of Afghanistan and rebuilding of Iraq are
not likely to be on top of anyone's agenda, certainly
not that of the US, for long. As the lone superpower, a
great many global problems and potential crises are
competing for its attention, commitment of its political
will to resolve, and, equally important, its resources.
The sudden emergence of another crisis would mean that
most, if not all, of America's attention and its energy
will be diverted to the new crisis, and Afghanistan and
Iraq will be forgotten. It should be recalled that
Afghanistan became a problem of considerably lesser
significance for Washington when the Bush administration
decided to invade Iraq.
Today, Afghanistan and
Iraq are places where the great industry is the
mushrooming of global terrorism. Bush cannot escape
responsibility for it. At the same time, he seems to be
looking in the face of two new potential crises: Iran
and North Korea, two potential targets for regime
change, if he is re-elected. If the doctrines of
preemption and regime change were to be implemented in
those two countries, the world would face its largest
fiasco ever. Even if North Korea were spared because of
its presumed nuclear weapons, it would be escaping a
major conflict only for now. There is no way a
re-elected Bush would prolong this crisis endlessly
without resolving it one way or another. Iran, on the
other hand, is an obvious candidate, for it has not yet
produced nuclear weapons.
The choices for the US
electoral are confusing in the sense that both Bush and
his main rival for the presidency, John Kerry, hold
similar positions regarding America's handling of
situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, at the same
time, both candidates also present a clear choice. Bush
is about unilateralism, and about highly divisive
resolve to create an American emporium without calling
it so. Kerry, on the contrary, wants to reinstate the
multilateral frame of mind and modus operandi,
which, during the Cold War years, enabled the US to
create a world order that was definitely superior to
that which the Soviet Union had to offer. The continued
resilience of that politico-economic order continues to
serve as the ultimate accolade to the US ingenuity of
the post-World War II era. Even under Kerry, the US does
not have to foreswear unilateralism. No US president
ever did that - it was always an option under extreme
circumstances. At the same time, no US president
flaunted it in the face of the international community.
Only under Bush has unilateralism become America's way
of dealing with the world on a regular basis.
There are also stylistic differences between
Bush and Kerry that were reflected during their
respective political conventions. The Democratic
convention, with a few exceptions, followed positive
themes, and addressed major issues and Kerry's solutions
for them. On the contrary, the third night of the
Republican convention will go down in the history of
such events as hitting a new low in terms of
vituperative and malicious attacks on Kerry, his
leadership, and his competence to be the
commander-in-chief, and in terms of accentuating the
politics of fear. Come to think of it, "politics of
fear" has been a recurring theme of the Bush
administration. Even in his acceptance speech of the
last night of the convention, the reminder of the fear
of that dark day of September 2001 was evident.
The moment is getting closer when the American
people have to decide which style of dealing with global
problems they prefer for the next four years: a US that
would lead through multilateralism and persuasion, or
one that would act as a bully and be perceived as such
worldwide; a leader who will emphasize politics of
inclusion of hope, or one who would not hesitate using
fear to make a point. It is to be hoped that US voters
will think long and hard about the implications of those
stark approaches - those contrasting styles of
leadership - for America's domestic politics and,
equally important, to the world order at large, before
they walk into the polling booths this November.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
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