Posted on 11/12/2006 10:48:42 AM PST by Heartofsong83
Bush changes course, how about Harper? The era of American militarism is coming to an end, notes Haroon Siddiqui Nov. 12, 2006. 01:00 AM HAROON SIDDIQUI
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reality is setting in on the White House. George W. Bush seems ready to abandon, or at least radically modify, his failed approach to the world — the one Stephen Harper backs.
There are several signs that the era of American unilateralism and militarism is coming to an end. The process has already begun, with indirect American participation in multi-party talks on Iran and North Korea, and Bush ruling out military retaliation against the latter.
The Republican rout in the mid-term election has speeded up the policy reversal.
As important as the firing of Donald Rumsfeld was, the better clue to what's coming is Bush's choice of his successor.
Robert Gates is not just another faceless former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
He has been a strong critic of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He has condemned the American isolation of Iran.
He is cut from a different cloth than Bush, Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the clique of neo-cons that has caused so much havoc in the last five years.
Gates belongs to the pragmatic Republican old guard, which constituted the inner circle of former president G.H.W. Bush.
Gates is a member of the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by James Baker, who, as Bush Sr.'s secretary of state, built the 1991 Gulf War coalition that overturned Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.
Unlike Bush, Baker and Gates are proponents of dealing with one's adversaries. "It's not appeasement to talk to your enemies," Baker said recently.
Baker has already been exploring avenues of Syrian and Iranian co-operation in Iraq.
His group will soon propose an Iraq exit strategy. "Our commission believes there are alternatives between `stay the course' and `cut and run.'"
Bush is onto the script. He has admitted making many mistakes and acknowledged his tactics are not working in Iraq.
Reflecting Washington's new thinking is another member of the elder Bush's team, Richard Haass. He worked for Colin Powell at the State Department and now heads the Council on Foreign Relations, for whose journal Foreign Affairs he has just written a lengthy piece.
He makes many of the same points that regular readers of this column will find familiar.
"The age of U.S. dominance in the Middle East has ended," he writes. "One of the main reasons is the Iraq war, which has ignited sectarian warfare; emboldened Iran, given terrorists a base, ignited anti-Americanism throughout the region."
Here as some other factors that he lists in the loss of American prestige and power:
"The demise of the Middle East peace process," partly due to "the Israeli embrace of unilateralism" and Bush's refusal "to undertake active diplomacy" in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The rise of new media, especially satellite television, which lets Arabs see the slaughter and oppression of Muslims in Iraq, Lebanon, the Israeli Occupied Territories, etc. "As a result, governments in the Middle East now have a more difficult time working openly with the U.S."
Haass predicts, correctly, that the European Union will offer little help in Iraq. It will take a different approach to Palestine, as will Russia and China, which, given their energy and other needs, will not turn against Iran, an emerging power.
Iran has "great wealth, is the most powerful external influence in Iraq, and holds considerable sway over both Hamas and Hezbollah."
A preventive strike on Iranian nuclear installations won't accomplish much. It would solidify the clerical regime, which could reconstitute the nuclear program and retaliate, through proxies, against American interests in Afghanistan or Iraq or directly attack the United States.
An attack on Iran "would further radicalize the Arab and Muslim worlds and generate more terrorism." It would "drive the price of oil to new heights, increasing the chances of an international economic crisis and a global recession."
Israel is clearly the other major power. But, weighed down by the occupation of Palestinian land and people, it faces "a multi-front, multi-dimensional security challenge." And strategically, it is "in a weaker position today than it was before this summer's crisis in Lebanon."
Haass thinks "militiazation" will continue in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Terrorism will "remain a feature of the region." Islam will "increasingly fill the political and intellectual vacuum" in the Arab world.
Fixing this Bush-made mess requires a wholesale change of policy and outlook, one that Bush seems prepared to make.
How about Harper?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiq@thestar.ca.
Oh they will do some meaningless posturing and PR cosmetic things (Rummy leaving is one) but the War is fundamentally won at this point.
President Bush great sin is to be right while Old Boy Washington DC has been wrong for decades in how to deal with the problem of failed states.
Now that Iraq is won, they have to rush in too present the image that THEY fixed it rather then have to admit, along with the Democrat Party Leadership, that they have been all wrong about Iraq from the start
REALLY disgusting thing about Politicians, Like Journalists, arrogantly refuse to ever admit they were wrong. Dan Rather STILL defends the fraudulent Bush National Guard story to this day
Read the data about Iraq. Read the dozens of articles Freeper Sandrat posts every day. We have won in Iraq and it was simply a matter of mopping up the remnants and finish the turn over to the Iraqis. NOW the question is will President Bush let the Dincons and the Surrender Now Democrats throw it away? I suspect NO he will not
http://icasualties.org/oif/
http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Security_Forces
If he lived in the US, he'd probably vote for the extreme-left Socialist Equality Party or something like that...
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