[Peace-discuss] Gaffe, from Juan Cole

[Morton K. Brussel]

Friday, June 29, 2007

Bush Turns Iraq into Israel/Palestine;
Gaffe endangers US Troops


Bush said in a speech on Thursday that he hopes Iraq will be like  
Israel, a democracy that faces terrorist violence but manages to  
retain its democratic character:


     ' In Israel, Bush said, "terrorists have taken innocent human  
life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a  
functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its  
responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're  
looking for in Iraq." '



These words may be the stupidest ones ever uttered by a US president.  
Given their likely impact on the US war effort in the Middle East,  
they are downright criminal.

The US political elite just doesn't get it. Israel is not popular in  
the Middle East, and it isn't because Middle Easterners are bigots.  
It is because Israel is coded as the last European colonial presence  
in the region, an heir to French Algeria, British Egypt, and Dutch  
Indonesia-- and because the Israelis pugnaciously continue to try to  
colonize neighboring bits of territory. (This enmity is not  
inevitable or eternal; in 2002 the Arab League offered full  
recognition of Israel in return for its going back to 1967 borders,  
but the Israeli government turned down the offer.) But for the  
purposes of this analysis it does not really matter why Israel is  
unpopular. Let us just stipulate that it is. Why would you associate  
American Iraq with such an unpopular project, if you were trying to  
do public diplomacy in the region? Bush had just announced a new push  
to get the American message out to the Muslim world, the day before.

Let's just take the analogy seriously for a moment. Israel proper is  
a democracy of sorts, though its 1 million Arab citizens are in a  
second class position. But it rules over several million stateless  
Palestinians who lack even the pretence of self-rule. It is hard to  
characterize a country as a democracy when it has millions of  
disenfranchised subjects. Bush manages to only think about Jewish  
Israelis in the above analogy, wiping out millions of other residents  
of geographical Palestine who don't get to participate in 'democracy'  
or exercise popular sovereignty.

It is true that the Israelis managed to blunt the terror attacks of  
Islamic Jihad, the Qassam Brigades, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades  
over the years after the eruption of the 2nd Intifada. But there are  
still attacks, including by rocket. The reason for those attacks is  
that the Palestinians had mostly been driven from their homes and off  
their land, and were militarily, politically and economically  
subjected to the Israelis. The Israelis reduced the terror attacks by  
essentially imprisoning millions of stateless Palestinians in the  
territories, further restricting their movements, destroying their  
trade and livelihoods. The Israeli government continues to grab  
Palestinian land and put more colonists on it, even as we speak.

Israel-Palestine is among the world's hottest trouble spots, and the  
conflict has poisoned politics throughout the Middle East. It was  
among the motives for Bin Laden's attack on the US on September 11,  
so it has spilled over on America, too. A second one of those would  
be a good thing?

So who would play the Palestinians in Bush's analogy? Obviously, it  
would be the Sunni Arabs, who apparently are meant to be cordoned off  
from the rest of Iraqis and put behind massive walls and barbed wire,  
and deprived of political power. That is not a desirable outcome and  
is not politically or militarily tenable in the long run.

And, let's just stop and think. Even if it were true that an Israel- 
Palestine sort of denouement were in Bush's mind for Iraq, was it  
wise for him to make it public?

That sort of scenario is precisely the propaganda message broadcast  
by the Jihadi websites in Iraq and the Arab world! They say that the  
US military occupation of Iraq, in alliance with Shiites, has turned  
the Sunni Arabs into Palestinians! Bush could not have handed the  
guerrillas a better rhetorical gift. I do not think it is an  
exaggeration to say that DVD's of Bush's comments will be spread  
around as a recruiting tool for jihadis, and that US troops will  
certainly be killed as a result of this speech. You could say that  
the US military presence is already pretty unpopular in the Sunni  
Arab areas. But what of the progress in al-Anbar Province? Will  
Bush's speech help or hurt Sunni Arabs who want to ally with the US  
against the foreign Salafi Jihadis? Hurt, obviously.

If Bush had said something like that in 2002, you could have written  
it off as inexperience and lack of knowledge of the Middle East. But  
he has been the sitting president for so many years, and has had so  
much to do with the Middle East that this faux pas is just  
inexcusable. I don't know the man and can't judge if he is just not  
very bright. I can confirm that he says things that are not very  
bright. And, worse, he says things that are guaranteed to put more US  
troops into the grave in Diyala, Baghdad, Salahuddin and al-Anbar  
Provinces.

I don't know whether to sob in grief or tear my hair out in  
frustration. How much longer do we have to suffer?

Labels: monumental stupidity

posted by Juan Cole @ 6/29/2007 06:35:00 AM