US President George W. Bush is approaching a critical turning point in his controversial political career. On November 7, mid-term congressional elections will either enhance or severely limit his powers. The outcome of these elections is, therefore, of great importance, not just for the United States, but also for much of the world.
If the Democrats win control of the Senate or the House of Representatives -- or possibly both, as they fervently hope -- Bush could be reduced to being a 'lame duck' president for the rest of his term, his policies challenged and even overturned. If, on the other hand, the Republicans retain a majority in both chambers, Bush will feel vindicated in pursuing his "global war on terror," and in particular his war in Iraq.
The war is the issue on which Bush is most vulnerable. The American public is tired of it. The Democrats, who smell blood, are making it the focal point of their election campaign. In fighting off their attacks, Bush's argument is that the Iraq war must be won, whatever the cost, to make America safe from terrorism.
"Some people say 'Get out, leave, before the job is done.' I believe they are absolutely wrong," he declared at the White House. Standing at his side was the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, an ally in the GWOT and himself in deep trouble in his own country.
Almost at the same moment, the same view was being forcefully expressed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's faithful British ally. Speaking at the Labour party conference in Manchester -- delivering in effect his farewell speech as party leader -- Blair declared: "If we retreat now [from Iraq], we will not be safer. It would be a craven act of surrender that would put our future security in the deepest peril."
Are Bush and Blair right, or are they totally wrong? This is the great debate now raging on both sides of the Atlantic. Has the Iraq war made America and Britain safer or, on the contrary, has it exposed them to terrorist attack as never before?
To Bush's discomfort, a US National Intelligence Estimate -- leaked to the American press and now largely declassified -- has concluded that the war in Iraq has made the overall terrorism worse. Far from being in retreat, radicalism has spread across the globe.
Entitled Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, the NIE represents the consensus view of America's 16 intelligence agencies. It is not a report Bush can easily dismiss. Needless to say, the Democrats are making hay with it.
So, is the war on radicalism a necessary and legitimate defensive war waged by the West against an enemy -- as Bush and Blair claim -- or is it a gigantic strategic mistake which creates more terrorists than it eliminates? Is it a wise policy or is it based on an ideological and political muddle? If Bush and Blair are right, then the West must, of course, defend itself and make the appropriate sacrifices. But if they are wrong, if the United States and Britain are in fact less safe today than before, then what is the war for? Should it not be ended as soon as possible?
It needs to be recalled that the war in Iraq, launched in 2003, was very largely the invention of Washington's pro-Israeli neo-cons, and especially of a group of men who had secured positions of great influence in the Pentagon, the National Security Council and Vice-President Dick Cheney's office.
A leading neo-con, Paul Wolfowitz -- then deputy Defence Secretary, now president of the World Bank -- is widely seen as the principal architect of the Iraq war. Within 24 hours of al Qaida's terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, Wolfowitz was urging the United States to attack Iraq, rather than Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden had taken refuge. Wolfowitz and his neo-con friends had, in fact, been pressing for an attack on Iraq for much of the previous decade. They seized the opportunity presented by 9/11 to push America into war.
Their main motive appears to have been to enhance Israel's strategic environment. Smashing Iraq and its army would, they believed, remove any threat to Israel from the east. It would be a defeat for the forces of Arab nationalism, "Islamic" extremism and Palestinian militancy.
They preached that American and Israeli interests were identical, and that a global campaign against what is now fashionably called "Islamo-fascism" would benefit them both. More ambitiously, they saw the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as the first move in a programme to reform and remodel the whole Middle East to make it pro-American and pro-Israeli.
In formulating and implementing these policies, Israel's friends and supporters -- whether inside the Bush administration, in the Jewish lobby or in the many right-wing Washington think-tanks -- demonstrated their unparalleled influence in shaping America's Middle East policy. Theirs, however, was a geopolitical fantasy which has now turned sour.
Instead of being a shining model for the region, Iraq has turned into a deadly quagmire, swallowing up American lives and billions upon billions of American tax-payers' dollars -- over $400 billion at the last count with the cost increasing at the rate of $9 billion a month. There is no end in sight to the catastrophe.
Iraq is in ghastly turmoil. It is struggling in the murderous grip of a sectarian civil war. Nearly 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in July and August alone, over 5,000 of them in Baghdad. The morgues are full. Savagely mutilated corpses are thrown into the street every day. Some 200,000 people have fled their homes. A recent United Nations report says that torture is now worse than under Saddam Hussein.
Far from making Israel more secure, Iraq's destruction has played into the hands of Iran -- a more formidable adversary of Israel than Iraq ever was -- and has empowered Iran's allies, such as Hizbullah. Israel's war against Hizbullah in Lebanon has contributed to the wall of hate by which Israel is surrounded, while America's authority and prestige in the Arab and Muslim world have sunk to an all-time low.
What then is to be done about Iraq? American opinion is deeply divided. The neo-cons are pressing for more US troops to be sent -- over and above the 140,000 already there, which American commanders say will be needed well into next year.
On the other hand, Bush's own church has called for the withdrawal of American troops. Speaking at a protest rally in front of the White House, Bishop Morrison of the United Methodist Church declared: "Our demand as a movement is to end the war now!"
Three recently-retired American generals have called for the resignation of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom they describe as arrogant and incompetent. A Marine colonel, Thomas Hammes, has said that America would need ten years to win the war. Influential voices like that of George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist, has sharply criticised the whole notion of a "global war on terror."
Among other mistakes, it lumps together fundamentally different political movements such as Hamas, Hizbullah, al Qaida, the Sunni insurrection and the Shiite militias in Iraq. Each one, he argues, needs to be understood and treated separately.
Another gloomy report on the Iraq war was published in mid-September by the US Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress responsible for auditing, investigating and evaluating government policies. It concludes that the insurgents are recruiting new fighters; that Iraq's American-trained army, divided on sectarian and party lines, is not up to the job; that essential services have not been restored; that Iraq's national identity has weakened; and that "the worsening security situation has made it difficult for the United States to achieve its goals." When will George W. Bush, stubborn and misguided as ever, understand that it is time to change course and get out?
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Agence Global Feature