A question: WHY? [Archives:2003/02/Focus]

COMMON SENSE
By Hassan Al-Haifi
President George W. Bush, of the United States has apparently shifted the War on Terror from a yet to be completed war of chasing some renegade mountain guerillas in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan to a more costly and sophisticated operation involving massive troop build-ups and the mobilization of heavy land, sea and air battle gear. This sudden shift in superpower global strategy has taken the crux of all the news covering events in the world.
Notwithstanding all the coverage and war talk coming out of Washington against a more stagnant Baghdad, not to mention all the diplomatic activity for or against such a presumably eminent war, we probably may never see a war. There is still an high degree of mystery and shrouded tough talk that needs to be deciphered in order to have a proper perception of what is really going on.
Whatever the case, it is clear that much of the policy and strategic thinking that lies behind this massive preparation does not have any major substance on the surface to give it any justifiable credence. Never has transparency become so aloof from major shifts in American foreign policy, as all this saber-rattling that we are getting from Washington these days. Even the British government, America’s staunchest allies, seem to be at a loss, trying to satisfy British public opinion’s heavy thirst for information, as to what America is dragging them into now.
We are convinced that the UK had a much easier time tagging along with the United States on such policy shifts, as facing up to the madness of Slobodan Milosovitch in the Balkans less than five years ago. In fact, some allies, such as Germany, seem to be openly opposed to the latest American might-makes-right orientation, because they simply cannot make it clear that a Bush vs. Saddam Showdown II, is now called for and understandable.
So it is quite obvious that the question “WHY” is still pointed at Mr. Bush in capital letters, from friends and foes alike, because there is simply nothing concrete at the surface that clearly justifies, or even points to an eminent unleashing of superpower might in the Fertile Crescent. One wonders if all we are seeing is solely the product of the present White House administration strategists, or dictated by ominous other interests that must be taken into consideration, for political clout, to make up for a lot of the retraction, that seems to emerge along a number of fronts in the United States, led by the economic situation and the absence of a decisive end to the Afghan adventure.
Many observers have also queried ‘Why Iraq and not North Korea?’ After all the latter apparently poses a more serious immediate threat if we take on the White House outlook on the evils of the Axis of Terror as a clear perception of the looming threats to world peace.
This observer is inclined to believe that the present American administration, after sensing on the ground of Afghanistan the complexity of trying to establish firm footings on the Central Asian oil basin, has realized that the Middle East should be the real focus of its attention. After all the oil basin of the region is already firmly in hand. Moreover, with the prodding of Zionist ideologists in the Untied States and Tel Aviv, the origins of Islamic Terror, as it has been openly called on more than one occasion by administration officials, and a hundred times more so by Israel and her friends, are in the Arab World.
The threat to the intransigence that American and Israeli right wingers would like the United States to pursue is nowhere more dangerous than in the Arab World. But even that is not sufficient to justify such heavy amassment of military gear and loud war rhetoric. The truth of the matter is that most of the Arab States, including Iraq, are as weak as lambs to pose any noticeable threat to anyone (except their own poor politically entrapped people), when looking at the comparative strategic arithmetic of where world power and muscle lie, militarily and economically.
The most likely objective of all this is to ensure that Iran, the only nation in the region that seems to be on the right track, in such important areas as economic and technological, as well as institutional development, if we take out all the misleading misinformative smear campaigns being waged against this nation. In fact, judging from all the indicators of development that are readily available in the development reports of the United Nations and the World Bank, and many western journalistic eyewitness accounts, Iran, on the ground, appears to be more dynamic than we are erroneously led to believe by the obvious strong efforts by Israel and her friends to present that country as the number one threat to Western Civilization!
Israel may have her reasons for being scared of Iran, but they really have nothing to do with the defense of Western civilization or serving the interests of the United States in the short or long run.

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