A RUDE AWAKENING

[Excerpt]
BY AMIR TAHERI

November 4, 2004 -- OOH la la! This was the first reaction of the French elite yesterday as they learned about President Bush's re-election. Having spent much of Tuesday evening jubilating about what they believed would be a landslide win for Sen. John Kerry, the crème de la crème of chic Paris could not believe that Bush had been returned for four more years.

The European elites had spent much of Tuesday evening dreaming about how a President Kerry would ratify the Kyoto accords, sign on to the International Criminal Court, cut and run in Iraq, send flowers to Yasser Arafat and, perhaps, open a dialogue with Osama bin Laden. When it became clear that the American voters wanted none of that, the chattering classes in Europe were left speechless. One Paris TV anchor was literally struck dumb mometarily when, after hours of crowing over Kerry's victory and the American people's supposed liberation from Bushist tyranny, he had to admit that things had gone differently.

The shock felt in Europe was even greater because of the size of Bush's victory. The president won more votes than any candidate in the entire history of America. Dubya also became the first to win the presidency with a majority of the popular vote, since his father in 1988.

People like French President Jacques Chirac, whose party has won just 16 per cent of the votes in a series of recent elections, or German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, whose party has lost every election in the past two years, would look with envy at the clean sweep made by Bush and his Republican Party on Tuesday.

Until Tuesday, the standard excuse by many Europeans who opposed key aspects of Bush's policies was that they were only anti-Bush, not anti-American. They tried to justify that bit of sophistry with Michael Moore-esque lies about how Bush, having "stolen" the 2000 election, did not really represent the American people.

With Dubya's victory, it will no longer be possible for the Hate-America international to pose as merely anti-Bush. Their claim that Bush and his gang of Likudniks had somehow hijacked the United States has been swept away by American voters.

So, what will "old Europe" do?

To start with, not much of it is left. Schroeder has been trying hard to compensate for the crass opportunism he showed in 2003 over the liberation of Iraq. He has sent more troops to Afghanistan to help relieve American forces there, and has assumed a major role in training Iraq's new security forces with help from other NATO allies.

The new Spanish government, too, has tried to modify its initial anti-American posture by sending troops to a number of places, including Haiti, to relieve the Americans. Within the European Union only France, Belgium and Greece had been active on the anti-American front , at least until Tuesday's election.

All three governments had made a strategic choice of systematically opposing Bush policies in the hope that a Kerry administration would adopt substantial parts of their foreign policies. Yesterday, however, all three were making noises about working with the new Bush administration.

The second Bush administration should give them a chance to prove that they have changed course. A first opportunity to do so comes at next month's international conference on Iraq, to be held in Egypt. Chirac & Co. can prove their goodwill by endorsing the democratic process in Iraq and by writing off a substantial chunk of Iraq's foreign debt. Chirac should also stop backing Arafat and his old guard in their opposition to the emergence of a new and moderate Palestinian leadership.

And Chirac should be invited to review his policies on a range of other issues, including Iran's nuclear ambitions. A good part of Tehran's current defiant stance on the issue of uranium enrichment is based on the assumption that Chirac will sabotage any U.S. attempt at taking the issue to the Security Council.

The Islamic Republic is not the only member of the "Axis of Evil" to have played the Europeans against America. Syria, too, has counted on support from Paris to escape punishment for its illegal military presence in Lebanon. ...

Bush's re-election is received differently in the Muslim world. Moderate and democratic forces — from Indonesia through Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq to Morocco — will be encouraged by the prospect of four more years the first U.S. administration to threaten a status quo dominated by despotic regimes. Bush's victory, however, is bad news for reactionary despotic regimes, pan-Arabists and Islamo-fascists who had prayed for a Kerry victory.

Bush now has four full years in which to implement his ambitious plan for political and economic change in the greater Middle East.

The new Bush administration will now have ample opportunity to help the Palestinians develop a new leadership and return to the peace talks. The "road map for peace" that Bush introduced two years ago was sabotaged by Arafat and, to some extent, the Europeans on the assumption that Dubya would be a one-term president.

Tuesday's message is clear: 9/11 changed America, and no one understands and represents that change better than George W. Bush. ...

E-mail:

amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com

Last Update: Thursday, November 4, 2004. 9:17pm (AEDT)

Analyst raises prospect of strikes on Iran

A veteran Washington correspondent and political author says George W Bush's resounding election victory will see him pursue a strong conservative agenda in his second term, possibly including support for military strikes against Iran.

Mr Bush has vowed to continue to pursue the war on terrorism and has promised to earn the trust of a country divided by a bitter election campaign.

Correspondent Martin Walker, now a senior editor with United Press International, says Mr Bush will pursue his conservative agenda with a strong mandate.

"I'm pretty sure we're going to see a real push to impose a very, very conservative set of justices on the Supreme Court," Walker told ABC TV's 7.30 Report.

"We're probably going to have three vacancies coming up in the next few months and I'm not sure that Roe v Wade, the traditional right of a woman to have an abortion is going to survive that.

"We're going to see privatisation, more and more, of social security, young people being encouraged to take care of their own pensions.

"We're going to see, I think, a new push for the outlawing of gay marriage - all of these conservative measures.

"I think we're also going to see, very, very quickly a real crisis with the rest of the world as George Bush carries out that pledge he made in the debates that Iran will not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

"How he does that, we don't know, but my guess is we could well be seeing Israeli war planes, with US support, hitting Iranian nuclear facilities within the next three or four months."

Walker says it is "very nearly a foregone conclusion" that Mr Bush's second-term foreign policy will be conducted without Colin Powell and Rich Armitage, seen as moderate voices on foreign policy.

"I'm told that Colin Powell and Rich Armitage have actually printed out the brochures for the private foreign policy consulting firm they're planning on setting up," he said.

Walker says the widespread analysis that 'moral values' won the election campaign for Mr Bush is credible.

"[Moral values is] a code word for a number of separate things," he said. "It means, first of all, God.

"It means, secondly, gays and being very, very careful about any rights being extended to them.

"Thirdly, it means guns and the rights of Americans to bear arms and, finally, what it means is patriotism.

"The Republicans have learned the trick - they learned it under Ronald Reagan, they learned it back under Richard Nixon - to wrap themselves in the flag, to accuse the Democrats of being a bunch of weak, namby-pamby appeasers and that the sanctity of the Republic is only safe in Republican hands.

"I've got to say that George Bush played that card brilliantly, even though the Democrats thought that by nominating a genuine Vietnam War hero in John Kerry, they could finally make some ground in these macho stakes, but the Republicans did it again."

Iran's Nuclear Debate

November 04, 2004
The Economist
The Economist Print Edition

Why did Tehran's parliamentarians, usually so quick to suspect foreigners of stealing a march, stay silent last week when China signed an advantageous deal to extract and buy huge quantities of Iranian oil and gas? Look to China's power of veto in the United Nations Security Council. The deal's small print favours China, but the Iranians are hoping for Chinese protection if other council members, notably the United States, try to have them sanctioned by the council for their advancing nuclear ambitions.

Iran thinks the likelihood of sanctions has diminished since September, when the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, asked it to suspend all uranium-enrichment and plutonium–reprocessing activities. Russia, Iran's main civilian nuclear supplier, also has a veto in the Security Council—and could block an anti-Iran resolution too. So, rather than refer Iran to a divided council, France, Britain and Germany want to persuade the Iranians to accept a deal to freeze (in the hope ultimately of dismantling) Iran's programme to master the full nuclear fuel cycle and thus keep the issue off the UN's agenda.

The scheme depends on Iran's willingness to stop producing feedstock for centrifuges that produce enriched uranium and to halt work on a heavy-water reactor—at Arak, in central Iran—ideally suited to producing plutonium. But the Iranians say they are prepared to stop these fuel-cycle activities, which they maintain are for civilian purposes but which could also provide fissile material for bombs, for no more than a few months; they demand rewards that include recognising their right to pursue all such nuclear technologies.

The American administration fears that such a deal would allow the Iranians to develop their programme secretly. After all, the Americans point out, Iran exploited loopholes in an earlier deal, signed with the Europeans in October last year, which was meant to halt Iran's progress towards producing uranium and plutonium but barely slowed it down.

The bruised Europeans hope that a fresh deal, with no loopholes, would permit further negotiations to end Iran's attempts to master these dangerous technologies. But the Iranians insist they will not entertain such an idea, and have shown themselves to be shrewd negotiators.

In the run-up to November 15th, the deadline set by the IAEA for a suspension of Iran's nuclear fuel-cycle activities that could be verified ahead of the agency's board meeting later in the month, Iran's negotiators have been telling their European counterparts that they are under pressure from hawks at home. On October 31st, Iran's parliament, now dominated by hardliners, approved the framework for a bill to compel the government to develop fully a nuclear capability—including, says parliament's speaker, a nuclear fuel cycle.

The Europeans are mulling over whether to offer further incentives to persuade Iran to hold off. But few of these are seductive enough. The European Union might, for instance, support Iran's bid to join the World Trade Organisation, but that is not much of a lure so long as the United States opposes it, which it still does. Other incentives, such as a European proposal to sell Iran a light-water reactor, might not be enough to persuade Iran, in return, to scrap its plan to build the Arak reactor.

Only America, it seems, might dissuade Iran from pressing ahead with its enrichment and reprocessing plans. Military strikes on suspected nuclear installations in Iran, perhaps by Israel, which feels most directly threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb, are fraught with risk. Through its fellow Shia proxies, Iran could sow chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq, and help stoke up terror against Israel. But so far the Bush administration has refused to offer incentives. And as long as Iran regards America and Israel as potential aggressors, it is unlikely to stop seeking what it regards as a nuclear shield.

Bush's First Test

November 03, 2004
The Jerusalem Post
Opinion

The reelection of George W. Bush will be perceived by militant Islamists as a defeat for them, just as the fall of the Aznar government in Spain was seen by them as a victory. Bush's endorsement by the American people by a respectable margin is a landmark for this region, as the election was fought, more than perhaps any in history, over policies relating to this part of the world.

Though the war in Iraq was the central issue in the campaign, it might be premature to argue that the election constituted a ringing endorsement of that war. Rather, Americans, despite their misgivings, seemed to agree that there is no turning back in Iraq.

Perhaps most significantly, the election provided a mandate for the context in which the war was fought: Bush's conclusion that the spread of liberty, rather than the "stability" of a sea of dictatorships, is the only real way to stem the tide of Islamist terrorism.

Now that Bush has received this mandate, the urgent question is what he will do with it.

The election, as elections do, postponed and distorted what might have been the natural evolution of the Bush policy following the ousting of Saddam Hussein.

Speaking to cheering troops on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, Bush laid down his post-war marker: "Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilized world – and will be confronted. And anyone in the world, including the Arab world, who works and sacrifices for freedom has a loyal friend in the United States of America."

It has not been that way, exactly.

The Iranian regime, now the leading remnant of what Bush aptly called the "axis of evil," is openly defying Europe and the United States. The mullahs have actively contributed to, and taken advantage of, the troubles America has had in Iraq. Between the war and the election, Teheran has enjoyed a form of immunity, during which it has bought precious time to transform its quest for nuclear weapons into an irreversible fait accompli.

There is still much to do to consolidate an American victory in Iraq – a victory central to transforming the Middle East. At the same time, the Iranian challenge looms ever larger. The war in Iraq, after all, was fought not only to demonstrate that regimes that openly support terror and defy the world will not stand, but to prevent the nexus of the "world's most dangerous powers and most dangerous weapons."

On that aircraft carrier, Bush said, "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 – and still goes on." He was right that it was just one victory, but since then the war has, except for the very important capitulation of Libya, essentially stalled on the level of challenging rogue regimes. Success in Iraq, itself not guaranteed, will have been a failure if it prevented the United States from confronting the not lesser threat from Iran.

Bush has repeatedly stated that each situation requires its own policy, meaning that the precedents of Afghanistan and Iraq do not mean that the only tool in the American arsenal is military force. This makes perfect sense, but it introduces the question: how will the Iranian bomb be stopped?

Even before Bush's reelection, and despite their wish for his defeat, France and Germany have quietly moved to heal wounds from the bruising battle over the war in Iraq. They have, with the UK, led their own initiative to stop the Iranian nuclear program, which they claim is unacceptable.

Unlike with Iraq, then, Bush's European problem was having to take yes for an answer. His reluctance was doubtless a function of both the ongoing embroilment in Iraq and the impending election.

Now that the election is over, and the E-3 have had ample chance to coax Iran into compliance, there is little more time for "testing" Iranian intentions that are obvious for all to see.

It is not clear that even the threat of painful UN Security Council sanctions will induce Iran to demonstratively abandon its nuclear program. What is clear is that nothing short of such a threat has a hope of success, and that sanctions are the best hope for avoiding the need to take military action.

Hellish elections

Voting, according to Iraq's most venerable Shia cleric, has become a religious obligation. Abbas Kadhim comments

Deputies of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani have warned the Shia of Iraq of the risk of going to hell if they fail to participate in the January 2005 elections. This new approach to politics on the part of the Hawza is very curious.

Mandating political participation in a system controlled by an oppressive regime is alien to Shia thought, unless the participant is certain of a positive outcome. The corruptness of the political process in Iraq is beyond doubt and a Shia participation is far from certain to beget any positive outcome. Hence, it is preposterous to threaten those who do not participate with hellfire. Furthermore, the Hawza seem to be content with the current election law in Iraq, despite the potential damage it could cause the political future of the country.

Aside from its extreme vagueness, this law is designed to benefit a clique of party bosses and their foreign patrons. In defiance to common sense and practicality, Iraq, with all its political and ethnic chaos, is being lumped into one giant electoral district. Political parties will submit lists of candidates asking, for example, a voter from a village in the marshes of Nasiriya to expect that his interests are represented by people from, Baghdad, Kurdistan, Detroit, and London. If he has a problem with this farce, he can go to hell -- literally.

There are two explanations for the Hawza's fervour about this election. The first is historical. The Hawza has often been blamed for the plight of its constituents over the past 80 years after their notorious fatwas demanded all Iraqis to boycott the elections of 1923. With the same extremist tones, the Ayatollahs of the time declared that if "anyone participates or helps in the elections [it] would be as if he fought against Allah, the Messenger and the imams. Such [a] person would clearly deserve the eternal torment in hellfire." The result was the elimination of the majority from any participation in the government. The Shia never recovered from this infringement, nor did they forgive the Hawza for betraying their legitimate claims. The bitterness grew after the same Ayatollahs decided to cancel their own fatwas and rubber- stamp the same elections which they had previously banned.

The second explanation relates to the chances of certain political parties close to the Hawza in the elections. Given the approved setup, clergymen and politicians loyal to the Hawza will have the opportunity to submit a list blessed by the Grand Ayatollah and enter the legislature without having to worry about the rising popularity of rivals such as Moqtada Al-Sadr. The list is also meant to secure easy passage to parliament for a few questionable individuals who failed the test during the crisis of Najaf. The political background for the list will involve the Al-Daawa Party, the Supreme Council and other clergy associated with the Hawza. To say that withholding support for this kind of politician would classify eligible voters as enemies of the Prophet is nothing but an empty rhetoric.

Having a legislature dominated by a combination of self-appointed extreme Shia leaders is not necessarily beneficial for the Shia community. Many of the clerics have already been in governmental positions over the past 18 months while others dominate the local administration in most parts of southern Iraq.

Yet whenever a crisis presented itself they were nowhere to be found. Indeed, they have been part of a government that violated the most sacred Shia symbols and practiced some of the worst kinds of corruption. Even the destruction of the old city in Najaf and the damage to the Shrine of Imam Ali were not sufficient enough to generate one resignation or strong denouncement from these pretentious Shia leaders. There is no evidence that they would act any differently should they be elected to the next government.

However, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani has surely made a few positive political accomplishments when he interceded personally to curb certain plots against a democratic Iraq. Among his commendable accomplishments are his demands that the writing of the permanent constitution must be carried out by an elected committee, his rejection of the transitional administrative law and his historic interception of a catastrophe in Najaf. Yet to this record he should have added a clear rejection of the election law and demanded a decent set of rules for what could be the most important political event in Iraq for years to come.

The law in its present language -- vague and incoherent, an apparent translation of a foreign document -- does not provide independent individuals with a fair access to running for political posts. In addition, nothing in this law can prevent a recurrence of the travesty that accompanied the appointment of the current assembly. The next legislature will be called upon to make some very significant decisions. Among these are the writing of a permanent constitution, the status of foreign troops in the country, and the political identity of Iraq at the regional and international levels; not to mention the hot issues in the domestic realm. Any smell of illegitimacy would exacerbate these disputes and render a genuine settlement out of reach. At that point, the road to hell would not require a fatwa.

W2: But Who Is He?

Amir Taheri, Arab News

JEDDAH, 4 November 2004 — With President George W. Bush re-elected for a second term, the Middle East and the Muslim world beyond would do well to take a second look at the man who would lead the American “superpower” for four more years.

Who is George W. Bush? Is he a bumbling, low IQ rich kid, playing dummy for sinister ventriloquists? Or is he the populist demagogue in blue shirtsleeves out to sell the gullible Americans a bill of good?

If he is any of those things one must wonder how he has succeeded in persuading more than 50 million Americans to vote for him for a second time.

Is it not possible that he may be a traditional conviction politician of the kind that became endangered species after the cultural revolutions of the 1960s?

The first thing that we need to note is that Bush returns in a stronger position. He becomes the first candidate since 1988 to win the US presidency with a majority of the popular vote. He is also the fourth American president in more than half a century to win a second term. Also, he is the first US president since 1901 to enter a second term with his party in control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. He has won more votes than any president in all American history in an election that also saw the largest voters’ turnout ever in the US. This point merits attention because some people outside the US had assumed that Bush, having “stolen” the 2000 election, did not represent the American people.

Such assumptions enabled many people to present themselves as “anti-Bush” rather than plain anti-American. Now, however, it would not be easy to disguise anti-Americanism as anti-Bushism.

The second point to understand about Bush is that he is the first US president for half a century to be prepared to use American power, including military force, in a decisive way and, when necessary, regardless of what the global glitterati and the “international community” might think. The fact that he is able to do so is due to the 9/11 events that changed America forever.

Bush’s victory underlines another often overlooked fact.

The United States, far from being the hedonistic liberal society represented by Hollywood elite, is, in fact, a conservative traditional society. This enables Bush to assume a missionary posture that would be unthinkable in other democracies, especially in Europe.

Unlike European, and some American, politicians, who deal in shades of gray, Bush sees the world in black and white terms. When Bush says: You are either with us or against us, he really means it. He perceives of good and evil as physical realities, and not metaphysical abstractions, affecting the lives of both individuals and nations. French President Chirac likes to call Bush “a cowboy” while Japanese Premier Koizumi describes him as “Gary Cooper at High Noon”.

According to an old Arab saying a man is best known through his enemies rather than his friends. The logic of this is that a bad man might choose good friends. Well, here are some of Bush’s enemies: Mulla Omar, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and, oh yes, the speculator George Soros.

Some world leaders have tried to understand George W. Bush based on what they know of his father’s tenure as president. The older Bush, however, was a classical style balance of power player raised on a fare of Cold War politics. To him the highest call of politics was to defend and perpetuate the status quo. The younger Bush, on the other hand, is a change-maker, as evidenced in his domestic and foreign policies.

Love him or hate him, W will be around for four more years. And, unlike in his first term in which he was dogged by memories of the 2000 dispute in Florida and cast by his foes as a usurper, he is now the undoubted leader of his people.

In the past four years some countries and leaders adopted a waiting-it-out policy in the hope that Dubya will not get a second term. That policy is no longer a realistic option.

The Palestinians cannot wait four more years in the hope that George W. Bush’s successor will, once again, unroll the red carpet for Yasser Arafat to the White House. If they want to talk to Washington they have to come up with a new leadership.

The mullas cannot afford to wait four more years in the hope that Bush’s successor would swallow a nuclear-armed regime in Iran. Syria cannot ignore the latest Security Council resolution on Lebanon for four more years. Iraq’s enemies cannot hope to fight for four more years to prevent stabilization and demcoratization.

While the world must accommodate and work with W2, it is also important that George W. Bush, too, should review its policies and, above all, style, in the second term. Dubya could repeat Ronald Reagan’s experience who, despised by many in his first term, ended up by winning virtually everyone’s admiration in his final four years at the White House.

W2 would need to modify the needlessly abrasive style of sections of his administration. It needs to ruffle fewer fathers when there is no need to do so. Having shown that he is capable of waging war in military terms he now needs to also show that he can make more effective use of diplomacy, both official and public, and the magnetic pull of American culture and values. More urgently, Bush needs to explain the United States’ involvement in Iraq more convincingly to his own people. Many enemies of Iraq and the US have built their strategy on the hope that rising doubts about the necessity, not to say legitimacy, of the war might sap public support for the president’s ambitious dreams for a new Middle East.

The American people have decided to give George W. Bush the rare privilege of a second term. There is no reason why the rest of the world should not also do so.