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Old Wednesday, March 21, 2007
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Lightbulb Reshaping the Muslim world

What is driving America towards another war with Iraq? We began to address this question in this space last week, suggesting that finding an answer to it will be enormously helpful for Pakistan to develop its own response to the rapidly developing situation in the Middle East. We cannot afford to be passive spectators of this drama not only because it is being staged in our neighbourhood. We have to be mindful of the script that has been prepared to stage this play because it could affect our own relations with America and the Middle East. And - most important of all - Islamabad will have to deal with the "Muslim" street, particularly if the war in the Middle East does not go well.
The fact that the Muslim Street could erupt as a consequence of the coming war with Iraq was voiced by several speakers who addressed the two-day session of the Security Council summoned at the request of the 116-nation non-aligned movement. The meeting was held on February 17 and 18. The sternest warnings concerning a war's possible consequences came from Muslim nations, which laced their calls for peace with denunciations of Israel as an aggressor but then offered very specific assessment of potential destabilization in the impending conflict.
Representatives of states from Morocco to Yemen echoed the words of the Iranian envoy, Javad Zarif, who said that "the extent of destabilization in the region and uncertainty in Iraq in the case of a war may go far beyond our imagination today." But one outcome is almost certain, he went on to say, which is that "extremism stands to benefit enormously from an uncalculated adventure in Iraq."
Given these widely shared apprehensions and given the enormous outpouring of popular support for attempting a non-war solution to the Iraq problem, why was the Bush administration prepared to take such an enormous risk? In last week's article we had assigned smaller weight to the two popular explanations for Washington's real motives as simplistic. Interest in providing Israel with a more secure environment and having oil continue to flow into western pipelines may have contributed to the push for war. But these are not the only reasons, nor the primary ones. The real reason is much more complex. There are three strands woven into it.
The first is a strong moral streak which has persuaded American policymakers for decades that the country has the right - perhaps even the obligation - to spread to the world the system of values on which it was founded. Providence, it is often suggested, has entrusted the Americans with the great experiment of liberty and federative development of government. In the words of historian Alan Brinkley, what the Americans have is akin to the "right such as that of the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expression of its principle and destiny of growth."
This belief was to be encompassed over time in a point of view which came to be called "manifest destiny." America, during the years of territorial expansion, used the concept of manifest destiny to move westwards and southwards and occupy much of the continent that now makes up the country. Later, it used the same approach to bring under its influence the countries and the people who could benefit from learning the system of values America espoused.
Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, a number of serious thinkers in the Bush administration are convinced that the moment has arrived when America could influence - and, wherever necessary, also force - the rest of the world to adopt its system of values. The values America wants to export embrace all aspects of human endeavour - politics, economics, finance, family and community relations. This point of view is held by a group generally known as the neo-conservatives. Several members of this group hold important positions in the administration of President George W. Bush.
To understand how this group has begun to influence American foreign policy we should go back in history a bit and refer to the document on national security unveiled by Washington on September 20, 2002. The 34-page document combined the Jacksonian assertion of American interests and the Wilsonian promise to "bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets and free trade to every corner of the world." As one commentator suggested, the policy's ambition was breathtaking.
"The United States possesses unprecedented - and unequalled - strength and influence in the world. Sustained by faith in the principles of liberty and the value of a free society, this position comes with unparalleled responsibilities, obligations and opportunity. The great strength of this nation must be used to promote a balance of power that favours freedom," said the strategy's opening paragraphs. It was recognized that America now faced a challenge different from the one it had to deal with during the cold war. "America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets of armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few. We must defeat these threats to our nation, allies, and friends...
"However, the nature and motivation of these new adversaries, their determination to obtain destructive power hitherto available only to the world's stronger states, and the greater likelihood that they will use weapons of mass destruction against us makes today's security environment more complex and dangerous.
" How should America deal with this new challenge? The new strategy gave up on containment - the approach that had worked during the cold war and ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead, it opted for preemption. "We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. Our response must take full advantage of strengthened alliances, the establishment of new partnerships with former adversaries, innovation in the use of military forces, modern technologies ... and increased emphasis on intelligence collection and analysis...
"It has taken almost a decade for us to comprehend the true nature of this new threat. Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today's threats, and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries' choice of weapons do not permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike first."
This was a clear and unambiguous message. America was now arming itself with the right to strike preemptively at the states or "stateless people" when it determined that it could be hurt by them. Not only that. It was also certain that its values - economic, political and social - were the right values to be pursued by all peoples around the world. When there was too sharp a deviation from the pursuit of these values it could use force to bring the errant states and people in line. Providence had chosen America and its leaders to act out this role on the world scene.
This then - and not necessarily to aid Israel and preserve the flow of Iraqi oil into its economy - is the real reason behind the formulation of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. "September eleven" had demonstrated America's vulnerability to attacks launched by people who operated on the fringes of the civilized world. These people had to be deterred by whatever means since they were so deeply committed to the pursuit of their cause that they were prepared to lay down their lives in the process. All the calculus of the cold war and the arithmetic behind the strategy of mutually agreed destruction (MAD) was no use in a conflict in which the enemy feared nothing, including its own destruction. From the enemy's perspective the cost-benefit ratio of an event such as "nine-eleven" was weighed enormously in its favour.The new American strategy was in the works even before nine-eleven. The terrorist attack gave it the backdrop needed to reveal it to the world. It was made public in September 2002, a year after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon and nine months after the collapse of the Taliban regime in Kabul, Afghanistan. America was triumphant; it looked good and felt good.
The easy triumph over the Taliban in Afghanistan brought about by the support of the entire world community helped reinforce the three strands of thinking that have defined the approach of the Bush administration toward international affairs: that American power was the natural outgrowth of American 'righteousness'; that it was America's 'manifest destiny' to use that power in favour of 'good over evil'; and that, eventually, America always triumphs in pursuing its manifest destiny. These beliefs were now formally translated into a statement of national strategy.
Iraq offered the first opportunity to apply this strategy - to opt for war in pursuit not only of national interest but not to "allow the triumph of hatred and violence in the affairs of men." These words were used by President Bush in a much anticipated speech given on February 26 at a dinner organized by the American Enterprise Institute. The speech was directed more at the international audience - in particular the Muslim populations in the Middle East - whose opposition to the coming war against Iraq had begun to draw attention in Washington. "We meet here during a crucial period in the history of our nation and of the civilized world. Part of the history was written by others; the rest will be written by us."
The message that came out of Washington on the eve of the second Iraq war was clear. The Bush administration was about to go on a 'mission' to redesign the Muslim world; to bring that world closer to the West in terms of social and political values it pursued. A large number of people who had weight in Washington wished to follow a course they were convinced was right not only for America but for the Muslim world.

<STRONG>Muslim countries were in the grip of obscurantist forces or were held in the clutches of rapacious elites. They had to be freed. Iraq was the first step in that mission and it was America's manifest destiny to undertake it. <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">
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