EVENTS in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are now revealing yet again the utter failure of the Middle East policy of the Administration of George W Bush, much of which is being continued by the Obama Administration.
One of the many shifting justifications for the Iraq war was to free people from the oppression of a tyrant.
This week the US, with is stocks in the Islamic world at a nadir, has had to sit back helpless while the Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi uses African mercenaries to randomly murder protestors on the streets of Tripoli.
Let’s look at the other reasons for the mainly US-British invasion of Iraq and their Middle East policies in general in the light of events of the past two weeks.
Bush and former Prime Minister Tony Blair have given various justifications for going into Iraq: overthrowing a tyrannical regime which oppressed and killed its own people; seeding democracy in the Middle East; containing terrorism and stopping the spread of terrorist organisations; stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction; promoting pro-western market-based economies that would give employment and meaning to young men who would otherwise be prey to fundamentalism; promoting the rise of Arab governments that would live in peace with Israel; containing Islamic fundamentalism and securing oil supplies.
On every count the war and the US’s Middle East policies have been an abject failure and recent events highlight that failure.
On overthrowing murderous tyrannical regimes, the US has in fact tolerated or even actively supported tyrants, particularly Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. For decades the US bolstered Mubarak with $2 billion a years worth of aid in the misguided belief that it would stop the rise of what the US saw as the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
As a result of the US gifts to Mubarak and his murderous security forces, the Brotherhood became more militant.
So the tyrant remained, until at last the Egyptian people had enough — and the US under a different Administration did not actively support the oppressor, but rather shuffled its feet in embarrassment until he was gone.
As for Britain and tyrants, Britain’s rapprochement with Gaddafi’s Libya was a classic of pragmatism before principle which has badly backfired.
The US and Britain supported tyrants across the Middle East while speaking about freedom, liberty and democracy, and wondered why they were not believed.
Yes, Iraq’s tyrant Saddam Hussein was overthrown, but at what cost? And Iraq is still no nearer democracy. If democracy comes to the Islamic world it is more likely to come from mass street demonstration than invasion by a foreign power.
Seeding democracy in the Middle East by launching a war was utterly misguided. The US imagined democracy would flourish after it toppled Saddam. But war begat war. The US had no post-regime plan. Iraq descended into a Sunni-Shia civil war. The invasion resulted in the formerly ruling minority Sunnis becoming disempowered and reduced to terrorist insurgency.
In that environment al-Queda arrived in Iraq where it had not been tolerated in Saddam’s day – contrary to the misinformation put out by the Bush Administration to justify its invasion.
In short, the Iraq invasion spawned terrorism and resulted in the spread of a terrorist group to where it had never been before – exactly the opposite of the war’s aims.
Further, the newly powerful Shia majority in Iraq developed closer ties with Iran. Iran became more emboldened and more rogue in its attempts to gain nuclear weapons. Before the Iraq invasion it had co-operated with international protocols on nuclear energy and weapons.
Before the invasion UN nuclear weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq. It was entirely concocted by the US that Iraq had nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction or could easily develop them. So on the weapons front, the invasion had the opposite of the desired effect.
As for pro-western market economies, Iraq’s economy is still in ruins. Iraq was not the seed for the present democratic moves in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya. To the contrary, they happened despite the Iraq invasion and the US propping up Mubarak and Britain giving succour to Libya.
US military aid to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States spawned resentment and poor-employment economies, giving reason for angry, idle young men to join fundamentalist groups.
As to whether whatever government arises from the popular protests in Egypt can continue the peace treaty with Israel and engage in closer co-operation, it will only be after a mighty effort not to shake off everything the Mubarak regime supported or stood for. In short it will be despite earlier US policy, not because of it.
It will be similar for any other democratic regimes that might arise from the protests elsewhere.
As for the supply of Middle East oil, it is no more secure now than before the invasion. It would have been far smarter to turn to other sources of energy.
If the US had not invaded Iraq, it is likely that the democratic protests would still have happened. Democracy would still have made its push in the Arab world without any misguided US effort.
Nonetheless, the US could seize this chance. Give someone a job and a say in their future and they will not want to join bin Laden in a cave plotting violence.
The war on terror might now end, or fade to less significance if:
The US gets out of Iraq and lets it break into its natural three parts: Kurdistan; the Sunni centre and the Shia south.
The US gets out of Afghanistan and lets those tribes sort themselves out.
Ends military and other aid to non-democratic regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere.
And perhaps more importantly of all, tells Israel the game is up: no more blind eyes to Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands; no more massive military aid and gives an injunction to both Israel and the Palestinians that they have to draw their own road map to peace without US and European aid.
US policy to date has been a signal failure and I have not even mentioned the loss of 4439 American soldiers and $775 billion in direct economic cost to the US just for Iraq, and $3,000 billion in the long term. The cost in Iraqi lives and displacement is much higher. Even if done with the best intentions, which I doubt, the US policy in the Middle East has been a fiasco.
The US squandered all the international goodwill that rightly came its way after the evil attack in September 2001. It should have knocked out the Taliban in Afghanistan, which was definitely supporting al-Qaeda, and left.
The world is a much worse place because of George W Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney’s invasion of Iraq, as the past month’s events so amply demonstrate. Invasion of Iraq was not the path to peace, democracy and stability. The invasion of Tahrir Square by peaceful demonstrators in Cairo was.
Perhaps, most significantly of all, if the US had not invaded Iraq, there would have been protests this week in Bagdad along Egyptian lines, and the tyrant Saddam would have been toppled anyway.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 26 February 2011