Urged on by his neo-conservative advisers--among them Cheney, Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz, and Rice--President Bush ordered America's armed forces to
eradicate first Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and then Saddam
Hussein's brutal regime in Iraq. The neocons' hopes ran high that the
two campaigns would be over in a few weeks and the natives would welcome
their liberators. Alas, both ventures proved to be far more difficult
and costly than predicted.
America's superior fighting force easily overran Afghanistan and Iraq,
but death-defying guerillas in both countries continue to attack, indiscriminately,
targets of value to the occupation. They have been victimizing not only
Americans and other foreigners with unpredictable timing and force but
also turned on their own countrymen suspected of collaborating with
the occupiers.
Far from being in retreat in the face of the American invasion of Iraq,
Islamist and anti-Western guerilla activity has continued to spread
across the globe and particularly throughout the Muslim world. Neither
Morocco, nor Jordan, nor Pakistan, nor Saudi Arabia, nor Kenya, nor
Indonesia have been spared. No Muslim befriending infidels seems safe
from the wrath of Bin Laden's legions.
Instead of resolutely concentrating its anti-Islamist campaign upon
the world-wide Al-Qaeda conspiracy and its minions, the President's
hawkish advisers misled him into unilaterally launching a side show:
the conquest and reform of Iraq. In sharp contrast to Saddam's Ba'ath
regime that had little use for any religion, the Islamic fundamentalists
known as Islamists are driven by unrelenting opposition to Western meddling,
influence, and control in Islamic societies. Saddam in fact was willing
to collaborate with any non-Islamic country, including the U.S., if
it helped him dominate the Middle East.
The neocons, itching to shape the whole Middle East in their image and
the image of Israel's Ariel Sharon, were right in predicting the rapid
collapse of Iraq's armed forces. They miserably failed, however, to
consider the likelihood of a protracted guerilla campaign against any
occupation by foreign forces.
The leaders of Russia, France, and Germany, among others, deemed the
invasion of Iraq an ill-timed and ill-prepared adventure, while Britain's
Tony Blair tried to please President Bush by concocting a dossier of
exaggerated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Ironically, while Condi Rice denounced as "poisonous" the
German chancellor's refusal to join the war on Iraq, some 4,000 German
and Dutch soldiers were replacing American units in Afghanistan in order
to protect at least the capital of Kabul and President Karzai's fledgling
government. Now hard-pressed to pacify a turbulent Iraq, the U.S. needs
the NATO contingent to secure the rest of Afghanistan against the heroin-trading
warlords and hidden remnants of Taliban and Al- Qaeda.
Wherever the Islamist and Ba'athist terrorists strike, their fundamental
demand is essentially the same: They want to end all foreign domination,
even the United Nations involvement, in the affairs of the Muslim world.
Since, however, neither the U.S. government nor the United Nations,
nor the leaders of the Muslim states have any intention to yield to
guerilla violence, there is no end in sight for the war of attrition
between the American-led invaders and the terrorists.
The Bush administration certainly is not willing to veer from the design
to impose upon Iraq, and possibly the whole Middle East, what the neocons
deem best for all concerned. Max Boot, fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, asserted most succinctly that "America's destiny is
to police the world." The Pentagon already divides the world up
into five military commands, each headed by a four-star general. If
controlling the rest of the world remains the overall objective of America's
foreign policy, we better be prepared for protracted terrorist resistance
and painful sacrifices in manpower and money, hundreds of billions of
dollars, for years to come.
We Americans certainly would never allow others to occupy us and meddle
in our affairs. If we could only persuade ourselves to treat other societies
the way we want to be treated, surely much of the anger and hostility
against us could be defused