Confusion on the Middle East in Washington
By Geoffrey
Kemp
From the August 11, 2002 edition of Al-Ittihad
It is not surprising that one of the most frequently heard criticisms of the Bush Administration’s Middle East policy is that it is confusing and inconsistent.
Take for example, Bush’s policy towards the Palestinians. This week Secretary of State Colin Powell and the National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice will meet with three senior Palestinian officials, all appointed by Yasser Arafat. The leader of the delegation is Saab Erekat, an Arafat colleague for many years. The purpose of the discussions will be to address the reform of the Palestinian Authority and how to strengthen the Palestinian Security forces and eventually open political talks with Israel. Yet in Washington Arafat remains persona non grata and will have no chance to meet with President Bush. Bush calls for a change in the Palestinian leadership yet his most senior advisors are negotiating with the very same leadership Bush wants to replace. Presumably the Bush plan is that Palestinians, themselves, will eventually move Arafat "upstairs" to a more ceremonial position, but there is no indicator that they can or will make a move at this point in time.
Meanwhile, Bush’s Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in a talk to Pentagon employees, broke with formal American diplomatic policy and referred to the "so-called" occupied territories in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He thereby calls into question over thirty years of established international law supported by successive U.S. administrations which decree that the territory captured by Israel in 1967 is indeed occupied territory. The more extreme neoconservatives on Rumsfeld’s team believe that the best way to bring about stability in the region is to support Prime Minister Sharon and seek regime change in Iraq, Palestine, Iran, and Syria and perhaps, eventually, Saudi Arabia.
Concerning policy towards Iran, the administration has gone some way to clarify its ambiguous position. In a speech delivered on August 2nd, the senior administration official in the White House, with responsibility for Iran, Zalmay Khalilizad, said of the U.S.-Iran policy, "It’s a dual track policy based on moral clarity: tell the world specifically what is destructive and unacceptable about Iran’s behavior: sponsorship of terror; pursuit of weapons of mass destruction; and oppression of the clearly expressed desires of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy while laying out a positive vision of partnership and support for the Iranian people." This is all very well and certainly be justified in view of the extraordinarily destructive policies the Iranian government is pursuing, particularly with respect to terrorism. However the Bush policy says little about how one actually can support change in Iran without dealing with the Iranian government which itself is a compromise of different views.
As the Administration gears up for a war in Iraq, the role of Iran will be critical. If we have no conversations and no interaction with Iran on the issue of Iraq, there will be trouble. The Administration acknowledges they would like to talk to Iran about Iraq, but by issuing such strong statements designed to alienate the very people who control all the power in Iran, it is not clear how this policy will work in practice.
By far the most confusion relates to Bush Administration’s plans for Iraq. More and more foreign leaders, including those of the U.S.’ closest allies in Europe, are troubled about what is happening in Washington. There are almost daily leaks pointing to strong differences of opinion between the uniformed services and the civilians in the Pentagon with the State Department siding more with the uniformed officers, many of whom believe the plans for Iraq are far too vague and need to be carefully thought through and the American people need to be made aware of the costs of such an operation. So far the President claims he has not made a decision on Iraq, but the ambiguity and confusion does not bring great confidence in the leadership qualities of the Administration at this time. It is likely therefore that Bush will come under much greater pressure in the coming weeks to refine and clarify his Middle East policy and be more specific about how he intends to deal with Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict at the same time and what he really means by "moral clarity", a phrase he uses frequently.
Some noted with dismay the failure of the administration to chastise the government of Egypt for the conviction against the Egyptian-American citizen, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who was jailed a second time for supposed activities against the state. That an American citizen should be treated this way by one of the largest recipients of U.S. aid has infuriated many people in Washington who believe that moral clarity should start with individuals such as Saad Eddin Ibrahim. If we can’t get this one right, what is the purpose of being a superpower?
