17 posts tagged “war on terror”
Daniel Pipes writes a brief summary of President Bush’s historical legacy followed by conclusions about the success or failure of the Bush Agenda. I agree with Pipes’ outline of President Bush’s outstanding beginning and half heartedly agree with Pipes’ conclusions.
The conclusions are wholly negative. I have to admit deservedly so.
For me President Bush’s two terms in office is like Bush my hero and Bush my disappointment. The Bush agenda is still valid except maybe the valiant effort to export Western Democracy to a people whose Theo-political belief system purely cannot grasp or agree with the concepts of individual liberty and civil freedoms.
The Bush Agenda would have to become a true imperialist (as were the early Mohammedan conquerors) to force a change in religiously held beliefs of submission to Allah which over the years has given incredible social power to Mohammedan clerics and the rulers that manage or support the clerics.
In the Western World 21st century that would be totally be politically incorrect and would probably start a coalition of Westerners to bring down American geopolitical hegemony even though concepts of American Liberty more than once saved Western Europe from Statist despotism.
The Bush political interference in military strategy in post Saddam Iraq has prevented an outright victory against terrorism there. If the initial strategy was comparable to the current “Surge” then the implementation of civil administration would probably be more assured today. It may have alienated both Sunni and Shia factions initially; however without terrorist enclaves the Mohammedan understanding of power would have pacified violent opposition to American occupation and allowed time to build a new Iraqi political infrastructure. Admittedly the new infrastructure would not resemble Western Democracy. It would probably resemble more a democratic republican oligarchy in which tribes and clerics managed a system based on Mohammedan culture (hopefully not a total reliance on Sharia Law).
President Bush the disappointment is the Bush that implemented a faulty post Saddam clean up fearing the wrath of the Arab supporting/oil dependant Western allies that combined could hamper American National Interests. The coalition of the willing were militarily weaker mostly Eastern European governments that have admired American Liberty and wished to court American favor in case the big bear of Russia tried to rebuild its empire realized under Soviet Communism.
The Bush failure to date in the War on Terror was not the agenda but the failure of West Europeans controlling the European Union to comprehend the danger to Western Culture presented by Islamofascist transnational terrorists and Islamist rogue nations and individual Islamist billionaires (Mostly Saudi) who support the concept of a Global Jihad.
The EU failure to join the Bush Agenda could potentially weaken the Western Culture of the future to withstand Islamist attacks. And I am not necessarily writing of military or terrorist attacks, but the allowance of a Mohammedan Trojan Horse to infiltrate our culture and weaken our resolve to retain Liberty, Freedom and Democratic Institutions.
The Bush disappointment is a failure of realization of European Union peoples to comprehend the threat.
With the passing of the anniversary of the last foreign attack on American soil that killed thousands of lives, Jihad/terrorist watchers have been warning of an impending attempt to duplicate the carnage of 9/11.
The focus of the warnings typically have centered on some sort of Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) instrument to reap the largest amount of loss of American lives. Apparently the WMD predictions seem to be of the nuclear or chemical nature.
This does not mean Islamofascists have abandoned their tried and infamously true tactics of the past. What are those tactics? Simply the utilization of bad old fashioned terror in which Islamofascist individuals or teams execute carnage via the notorious homicidal suicide bomber or the occasional fear tactics of thugs using guns to kill civilian bystanders.
To what purpose does the bad old fashioned terrorist tactics serve? The old tactics become news events in which the media reports about the carnage thus enabling the free usage of propaganda to strike fear in a populace to transform the populace into fear ruled appeasers that will make any concession under the delusion an Islamofascist will keep a bargain to not strike again. Of Course the Islamofascist waits a period of time to provide the illusion of honor of agreements, and then a lying pretext is used in the name of Allah and his prophet Mohammed to exact more terrorism. Often times “more” is a word that means a greater intensity of terrorist acts of murder in the most heinous graphic way to continue to get the media to spread Islamofascist propaganda for free because it is news that sells.
I want to make our readers aware of this because Intelligence resources captured some video in Afghanistan (c. 2002) that portrays this very scenario of terrorism to be used in America.
The tape portrays home invasions, drive-by shootings, ambushing police officers via subterfuge, public kidnappings, Golf Course assassinations, public building mass murder (i.e. malls, schools and use your imagination) and so on.
Israel has been victimized with this kind of terrorism nearly since its modern inception as a modern sovereign nation. Most Western Democracies have heard it so much that our public has been desensitized to hearing the news of cruel Jewish deaths. The cruelty has occurred so long in Israel that non-religious Jews are being duped to give land to their mortal enemies under the delusion that Islamofascist Arab terrorists will live in peace next door as a sovereign nation. The Islamofascist pattern does not line up with the land for peace delusion.
Imagine though if the despicable tactics perpetrated on Israeli Jews comes close to home. This exported Islamofascist terrorism has reached Europe and Russia. Attempts have been initiated in America; however the lack of success is not newsworthy enough to sell on the printed page and television/radio. If successful Islamofascist attacks become the norm, expect the free publicity of terror from the MSM disseminating fear for terrorism. That is what the captured al Qaeda tapes in Afghanistan imply: the exportation of the bad old tactics of attrition terrorism. Attrition - that is the meaning of long term execution of terrorism to wear down the enemy of Islamofascists to acquire more and more concessions from those more desperate for peace than for victory.
Kind of sounds like a cut-n-run Democrat does it not?
There is no doubt that the Middle East is becoming more and more complex in the interaction of the nations and their agendas in the region.
Who is aligned with whom? Does Israel have any friendly Arab nations that will fight on its side? Since the Palestinian-Arab people are apparently divided between Hamas and the Palestine Authority, will the PA become an ally of Israel to squash Hamastan? Will Israel attack Syria? Will Syria attack Israel? Will Hezbollah attack Israel at the bequest of Iran? Will Shi’ite Hezbollah team up with Sunni Hamas (add a smidgeon of the Syrian military into the mix) in a two front assault on Israel with Iran waiting in the background to decide whether or not to become personally involved in such a fracas? Will Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel team up to confront Iranian aspirations to be the hegemon of the Middle East? Will America abandon the Middle East (and its Western Democratic ally Israel) to allow the nations to duke it out and enter a weakened battle weary area to indulge on perceived (depending who runs the White House) National Interests? OR will the dang Middle Eastern erupt into global war because of outside National Interests such as Russia, China, Japan, India, America and the EU? AND if a global war erupts who will side with whom?
Yeah man this is what I am talking about: Wars and Rumors of Wars. I did not even mention transnational Islamist multiple terrorist organizations which are more numerous than just al Qaeda.
Here is what got me thinking on this geopolitical lava dome ever growing until some kind of pressurized explosion occurs: Guy Bechor writing for the YnetNews.com Opinion section speculates that all these juicy arms deals to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel is a message that America will eventually pull out of the Middle Eastern region to allow those nations to deal with the nuke WMD aspirations of hegemonic hungry Iran.
Now think about that speculation! Saudi Arabia (Wahhabi Sunnis), Egypt (Muslim Brotherhood Sunnis) and Israel (secular and religious Jewish Zionists) as a Middle East team against radical Shi’ites managed by Iran (including a remarkable smattering Sunnis). Could the Saudi’s and Egypt cooperate militarily with Israel for a common goal of neutralizing an Iran ramping up to become armed with nuclear WMD?
The only thing I see is chaos!
Michael Rubin of AEI addresses President Bush’s Foreign Policy agenda and how failure to keep promises has even allies he counted as friends wondering about Bush’s trustworthiness.
This is related to a post at SlantRight.com entitled, The Bush Doctrine Fizzle.
President Bush’s promising campaign to address terrorism world wide is quickly degenerating into the same Appeasement route the EU nation have taken in the false hope short term peace. What will be the long term price? The EU is already being dubbed Eurarabia. Will the USA follow the same path to dhimmitude because of Bush Foreign Policy flip flops?
Note: I need to bring to attention that AEI is one of the most prominent of Neoconservative Think Tanks. Evidently President Bush has even irritated one of his greatest supporters with his implimentation of the War on Terror.
JRH 8/8/07
******************************************
President Bush's Broken Promises
By Michael Rubin
Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2007
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
(A version of this article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on July 31, 2007.)
President George W. Bush’s failure to uphold an assurance to Turkish officials that the United States would take action against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a terrorist group, is merely the latest in a series of broken promises. Bush has backtracked on both the philosophical underpinnings of his foreign policy as well as individual promises to specific nations and world leaders. The president’s record of broken promises will haunt future administrations and mar Bush’s foreign policy legacy.
Promises matter. While pundits blame the loss of U.S. standing on the Iraq war alone, the deterioration of Washington's relations with once-staunch allies has less to do with a lack of diplomacy and more to do with its kind. Too often, the Bush White House has sacrificed long-term credibility for short-term calm. Pledges must have meaning. If they are forgotten or issued lightly, the failure to uphold them can aggravate crises.
The Debacle with Turkey
Take Turkey: today, the Turkish army remains poised to enter Iraqi Kurdistan to eradicate Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorist camps. Turks blame the Maoist group for the deaths of 30,000 people between 1984 and 1998. But Iraqi Kurdish leader Masud Barzani sees the PKK as an outgrowth of legitimate Kurdish nationalism. On June 29, 2007, two weeks after ruling out expulsion of the PKK from his territory, he warned Ankara of a "catastrophe for the entire region" if Turkish forces crossed the border. There is no sign of a peaceful resolution. "I'm afraid they're getting themselves worked up into a position where they can't back down from the statements that they have made," a U.S. official told Reuters on July 19. On July 29, the Turkish army shelled PKK positions inside Iraq near the city of Zakho.
Anti-Americanism in Turkey has increased in proportion to PKK attacks. While Turks once embraced the United States as perhaps their closest friend, today ordinary Turks do not understand why the global War on Terror ignores terrorists who attack them. At the June 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul, President Bush promised Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the United States would take action against the PKK. Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice repeated the promise, but Washington has yet to sanction Barzani or direct U.S. forces to take action against known PKK bases in his territory. While more than 225 people have died in PKK-related violence in Turkey this year, PKK officials are now so brazen as to sleep in the same Erbil hotels as U.S. government contractors.
A June 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project poll found that Turkey has, over the course of just four years, become the most anti-American country in the world. Only 9 percent of Turks have a favorable impression of the United States; 83 percent of Turks hold the opposite view. Turkey has become an example of the cost of sacrificing long-term credibility for short-term calm.
Flip-Flopping on Foreign Policy
When Bush entered office, he repudiated such a vision. Speaking at the twentieth anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy on November 6, 2003, Bush spoke of the cynicism directed by many European allies toward Ronald Reagan when he refused to make accommodation to Soviet satellites. About the Middle East, Bush declared, "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe--because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. . . . It would be reckless to accept the status quo."
The status quo improved neither stability nor security. During the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, diplomats sought to engage adversaries, even those who tried to leverage terrorism into political gain. From the high point of the 1993 Oslo Accords, terrorism eroded security until, in the spring of 2002, the situation hit its nadir. In March and April 2002, there were suicide bombings almost every day in Israel. More than a hundred Israelis died and many more were wounded.
In a high-profile speech on June 24, 2002, Bush eschewed the status quo and instead enunciated a zero-tolerance policy toward terrorism. He declared, "The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure." But less than a year later, his State Department reversed course when it interpreted the "Road Map for Peace" to drop cessation of terror as a precondition for engagement. While isolation of Yasir Arafat continued until his death, U.S. officials began to reach out to Arafat's lieutenants. As their isolation faded, Palestinian terrorism grew. Suicide bombings, which declined after Bush's speech, again grew frequent in 2005. Rocket attacks on the Israeli town of Sderot have become commonplace ever since.
While the White House now condemns Hamas terrorism, President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement has been just as culpable as Hamas. The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, its military branch, ridicules the State Department notion that Fatah's political and military wings are separate entities. On October 4, 2006, Abu Ahmad, an Al Aqsa commander in northern Gaza, said that the brigade was "one and the same" with the Fatah movement. On April 17, 2006, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv bus station that killed nine and wounded thirty. The next month, it issued a leaflet threatening to "strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries [the United States and Israel], here and abroad," and on June 24, 2007, it claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on Sderot. Yet far from abiding by his promise of zero-tolerance for groups embracing terror, Bush reverted to the status quo of years past, which he had once condemned. He endorsed Abbas's "vision" and announced $500 million in financial assistance, including $80 million for the security forces complicit in terrorism against Israel.
Breaking Individual Promises
Such broken promises undercut the wider War on Terror, as political leaders conclude that--lofty rhetoric aside--terrorism provides the fastest way to win political concession. While terrorists and dictators benefit, Arab liberals pay a high price for having accepted Bush's word. Bush's second inaugural declaration that "[i]t is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture" rings hollow as Egyptian police beat, arrest, and then sodomize protestors who rally peacefully to demand the rule of law. For example, on May 25, 2006, Egyptian security forces detained Muhammad al-Sharqawi--a twenty-four-year-old blogger and member of the reformist Kifaya (Arabic for "enough") movement's Youth for Change offshoot--after he had displayed a sign reading "I want my rights." After inflicting severe abuse, Egyptian authorities denied him medical care for four days. It was not an isolated case. That autumn, videos taken from an Egyptian policeman's cell phone surfaced showing similar abuse of a number of secular and liberal political detainees.
Changing the political status quo can be difficult. Many in the foreign policy establishment resented Bush's rhetoric; some sought to undercut implementation of his policies. Bush might be sincere, but absent the ability to follow through on promises, disillusionment rises. Some Arab liberals and democracy activists note that Bush's record of abiding by commitments remains spotty not only in the case of broad shifts, but also with individual promises. At the Democracy and Security Conference in Prague on June 5, 2007, Bush, together with National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, met with several liberals and dissidents, many of whom have found the U.S. bureaucracy less than supportive of their cause. Rather than just listening and empathizing, Bush promised specific actions to resolve their cases. Almost two months later, though, the president has yet to act on his personal pledge to resolve the case of Palestinian banker Issam Abu Issa, whose visa the Powell State Department revoked in February 2004 as he prepared to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on mechanisms of Arafat's corruption. Nor has Bush yet fulfilled a promise to demand the release of Libyan dissident Fathi El-Jahmi, whom Muammar Qadhafi imprisoned on March 26, 2004, two weeks after Bush cited his release as a sign that the Libyan leader had changed. Instead, State Department officials say Bush will send Rice on a victory lap to Tripoli this autumn, regardless of El-Jahmi's fate.
As his speech in Prague concluded, the president drew a standing ovation when he not only endorsed the Prague Declaration, which calls upon governments to "instruct diplomatic emissaries to non-democratic countries to actively and openly seek out meetings with political prisoners and dissidents committed to building free societies through non-violence," but also when he announced that he had tasked Rice to implement it. Many dissidents took the president at his word. Rice, after all, is his appointee and one of his closest advisors. His commitment, though, remains unfulfilled. U.S. embassies in the Middle East have yet to reach out to any democratic dissident or political prisoner. While the promise may be forgotten in Washington, its violation leads friends and foes to conclude, respectively, that the United States is an unreliable ally and a paper tiger. Long after Bush leaves office, potential allies, be they individuals or governments, will think hard before they tie their future upon the promise of the president. Adversarial regimes will conclude Washington's redlines to be ephemeral and its commitments to its allies easily erased.
A National Security Nightmare
While the Middle East might be the focus of immediate concern in Washington as Congress debates the Iraq war, the State Department seeks to reinvigorate the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, and the Iranian nuclear crisis looms. In the long term, Bush's failure to fulfill his promises to U.S. allies may have far greater consequence in Asia should nuclear powers such as China or North Korea conclude White House commitments to be more rhetorical than real. It is this latter possibility that threatens to transform Bush's broken promises into a national security nightmare. On April 25, 2001, Bush established a clear, moral redline when he declared that the United States would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself" in the face of Chinese aggression. But then Bush backtracked. Amid Beijing's steady military build-up, the president stood beside Wen Jiabao, the People's Republic's premier, in the Oval Office and condemned Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian for holding a referendum on missile defense. Unlike President Clinton, Bush has yet to send a single cabinet-level official to demonstrate commitment to the island nation. Even in the confines of multilateral organizations in which U.S. influence still matters, he was less than energetic in opposition to Beijing's veto of World Health Organization (WHO) assistance to Taiwan during the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic. The United States, for example, did not prevent a Chinese official from subsequently assuming leadership of the WHO. When Bush does not exert minimal leverage within the confines of a multilateral organization to fulfill a very public commitment to a threatened ally or show that Chinese threats and actions have consequence, it raises dangerous doubts about U.S. resolve and may encourage Chinese officials to test U.S. resolve.
Failure to uphold promises and declarations may convince other nations that aggression pays dividends. After promising Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi in May 2003 that Washington would "not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of the nuclear weapons program," Bush directed his administration to settle for less. Amid the self-congratulations over its ephemeral February 2007 deal with North Korea remains the fact that, against its allies' wishes, Washington acquiesced to Pyongyang's continued custody of its reactor and nuclear weapons. It is a broken promise guaranteed to haunt the next U.S. administration. Not only might North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il conclude that intransigence will be rewarded, but the Iranian leadership and other proliferators could also conclude that development of nuclear weapons is the fast path to prestige and reward.
Kicking diplomatic problems down the road is not a strategy. Addressing crises with insincere promises is as counterproductive as treating a hemorrhagic fever with a Band-Aid. Empty promises amplify crises; they do not solve them. While farsighted in vision, Bush's failure to abide by his word will most shape his foreign policy legacy.
_________________________________
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.
© 2005 (sic) American Enterprise Institute. All Rights Reserved.
Michael Rubin of AEI addresses President Bush’s Foreign Policy agenda and how failure to keep promises has even allies he counted as friends wondering about Bush’s trustworthiness.
This is related to a post at SlantRight.com entitled, The Bush Doctrine Fizzle.
President Bush’s promising campaign to address terrorism world wide is quickly degenerating into the same Appeasement route the EU nation have taken in the false hope short term peace. What will be the long term price? The EU is already being dubbed Eurarabia. Will the USA follow the same path to dhimmitude because of Bush Foreign Policy flip flops?
Note: I need to bring to attention that AEI is one of the most prominent of Neoconservative Think Tanks. Evidently President Bush has even irritated one of his greatest supporters with his implimentation of the War on Terror.
JRH 8/8/07
******************************************
President Bush's Broken Promises
By Michael Rubin
Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2007
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
(A version of this article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on July 31, 2007.)
President George W. Bush’s failure to uphold an assurance to Turkish officials that the United States would take action against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a terrorist group, is merely the latest in a series of broken promises. Bush has backtracked on both the philosophical underpinnings of his foreign policy as well as individual promises to specific nations and world leaders. The president’s record of broken promises will haunt future administrations and mar Bush’s foreign policy legacy.
Promises matter. While pundits blame the loss of U.S. standing on the Iraq war alone, the deterioration of Washington's relations with once-staunch allies has less to do with a lack of diplomacy and more to do with its kind. Too often, the Bush White House has sacrificed long-term credibility for short-term calm. Pledges must have meaning. If they are forgotten or issued lightly, the failure to uphold them can aggravate crises.
The Debacle with Turkey
Take Turkey: today, the Turkish army remains poised to enter Iraqi Kurdistan to eradicate Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorist camps. Turks blame the Maoist group for the deaths of 30,000 people between 1984 and 1998. But Iraqi Kurdish leader Masud Barzani sees the PKK as an outgrowth of legitimate Kurdish nationalism. On June 29, 2007, two weeks after ruling out expulsion of the PKK from his territory, he warned Ankara of a "catastrophe for the entire region" if Turkish forces crossed the border. There is no sign of a peaceful resolution. "I'm afraid they're getting themselves worked up into a position where they can't back down from the statements that they have made," a U.S. official told Reuters on July 19. On July 29, the Turkish army shelled PKK positions inside Iraq near the city of Zakho.
Anti-Americanism in Turkey has increased in proportion to PKK attacks. While Turks once embraced the United States as perhaps their closest friend, today ordinary Turks do not understand why the global War on Terror ignores terrorists who attack them. At the June 2004 NATO summit in Istanbul, President Bush promised Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the United States would take action against the PKK. Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice repeated the promise, but Washington has yet to sanction Barzani or direct U.S. forces to take action against known PKK bases in his territory. While more than 225 people have died in PKK-related violence in Turkey this year, PKK officials are now so brazen as to sleep in the same Erbil hotels as U.S. government contractors.
A June 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project poll found that Turkey has, over the course of just four years, become the most anti-American country in the world. Only 9 percent of Turks have a favorable impression of the United States; 83 percent of Turks hold the opposite view. Turkey has become an example of the cost of sacrificing long-term credibility for short-term calm.
Flip-Flopping on Foreign Policy
When Bush entered office, he repudiated such a vision. Speaking at the twentieth anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy on November 6, 2003, Bush spoke of the cynicism directed by many European allies toward Ronald Reagan when he refused to make accommodation to Soviet satellites. About the Middle East, Bush declared, "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe--because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. . . . It would be reckless to accept the status quo."
The status quo improved neither stability nor security. During the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, diplomats sought to engage adversaries, even those who tried to leverage terrorism into political gain. From the high point of the 1993 Oslo Accords, terrorism eroded security until, in the spring of 2002, the situation hit its nadir. In March and April 2002, there were suicide bombings almost every day in Israel. More than a hundred Israelis died and many more were wounded.
In a high-profile speech on June 24, 2002, Bush eschewed the status quo and instead enunciated a zero-tolerance policy toward terrorism. He declared, "The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure." But less than a year later, his State Department reversed course when it interpreted the "Road Map for Peace" to drop cessation of terror as a precondition for engagement. While isolation of Yasir Arafat continued until his death, U.S. officials began to reach out to Arafat's lieutenants. As their isolation faded, Palestinian terrorism grew. Suicide bombings, which declined after Bush's speech, again grew frequent in 2005. Rocket attacks on the Israeli town of Sderot have become commonplace ever since.
While the White House now condemns Hamas terrorism, President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement has been just as culpable as Hamas. The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, its military branch, ridicules the State Department notion that Fatah's political and military wings are separate entities. On October 4, 2006, Abu Ahmad, an Al Aqsa commander in northern Gaza, said that the brigade was "one and the same" with the Fatah movement. On April 17, 2006, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv bus station that killed nine and wounded thirty. The next month, it issued a leaflet threatening to "strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries [the United States and Israel], here and abroad," and on June 24, 2007, it claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on Sderot. Yet far from abiding by his promise of zero-tolerance for groups embracing terror, Bush reverted to the status quo of years past, which he had once condemned. He endorsed Abbas's "vision" and announced $500 million in financial assistance, including $80 million for the security forces complicit in terrorism against Israel.
Breaking Individual Promises
Such broken promises undercut the wider War on Terror, as political leaders conclude that--lofty rhetoric aside--terrorism provides the fastest way to win political concession. While terrorists and dictators benefit, Arab liberals pay a high price for having accepted Bush's word. Bush's second inaugural declaration that "[i]t is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture" rings hollow as Egyptian police beat, arrest, and then sodomize protestors who rally peacefully to demand the rule of law. For example, on May 25, 2006, Egyptian security forces detained Muhammad al-Sharqawi--a twenty-four-year-old blogger and member of the reformist Kifaya (Arabic for "enough") movement's Youth for Change offshoot--after he had displayed a sign reading "I want my rights." After inflicting severe abuse, Egyptian authorities denied him medical care for four days. It was not an isolated case. That autumn, videos taken from an Egyptian policeman's cell phone surfaced showing similar abuse of a number of secular and liberal political detainees.
Changing the political status quo can be difficult. Many in the foreign policy establishment resented Bush's rhetoric; some sought to undercut implementation of his policies. Bush might be sincere, but absent the ability to follow through on promises, disillusionment rises. Some Arab liberals and democracy activists note that Bush's record of abiding by commitments remains spotty not only in the case of broad shifts, but also with individual promises. At the Democracy and Security Conference in Prague on June 5, 2007, Bush, together with National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, met with several liberals and dissidents, many of whom have found the U.S. bureaucracy less than supportive of their cause. Rather than just listening and empathizing, Bush promised specific actions to resolve their cases. Almost two months later, though, the president has yet to act on his personal pledge to resolve the case of Palestinian banker Issam Abu Issa, whose visa the Powell State Department revoked in February 2004 as he prepared to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on mechanisms of Arafat's corruption. Nor has Bush yet fulfilled a promise to demand the release of Libyan dissident Fathi El-Jahmi, whom Muammar Qadhafi imprisoned on March 26, 2004, two weeks after Bush cited his release as a sign that the Libyan leader had changed. Instead, State Department officials say Bush will send Rice on a victory lap to Tripoli this autumn, regardless of El-Jahmi's fate.
As his speech in Prague concluded, the president drew a standing ovation when he not only endorsed the Prague Declaration, which calls upon governments to "instruct diplomatic emissaries to non-democratic countries to actively and openly seek out meetings with political prisoners and dissidents committed to building free societies through non-violence," but also when he announced that he had tasked Rice to implement it. Many dissidents took the president at his word. Rice, after all, is his appointee and one of his closest advisors. His commitment, though, remains unfulfilled. U.S. embassies in the Middle East have yet to reach out to any democratic dissident or political prisoner. While the promise may be forgotten in Washington, its violation leads friends and foes to conclude, respectively, that the United States is an unreliable ally and a paper tiger. Long after Bush leaves office, potential allies, be they individuals or governments, will think hard before they tie their future upon the promise of the president. Adversarial regimes will conclude Washington's redlines to be ephemeral and its commitments to its allies easily erased.
A National Security Nightmare
While the Middle East might be the focus of immediate concern in Washington as Congress debates the Iraq war, the State Department seeks to reinvigorate the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, and the Iranian nuclear crisis looms. In the long term, Bush's failure to fulfill his promises to U.S. allies may have far greater consequence in Asia should nuclear powers such as China or North Korea conclude White House commitments to be more rhetorical than real. It is this latter possibility that threatens to transform Bush's broken promises into a national security nightmare. On April 25, 2001, Bush established a clear, moral redline when he declared that the United States would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself" in the face of Chinese aggression. But then Bush backtracked. Amid Beijing's steady military build-up, the president stood beside Wen Jiabao, the People's Republic's premier, in the Oval Office and condemned Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian for holding a referendum on missile defense. Unlike President Clinton, Bush has yet to send a single cabinet-level official to demonstrate commitment to the island nation. Even in the confines of multilateral organizations in which U.S. influence still matters, he was less than energetic in opposition to Beijing's veto of World Health Organization (WHO) assistance to Taiwan during the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic. The United States, for example, did not prevent a Chinese official from subsequently assuming leadership of the WHO. When Bush does not exert minimal leverage within the confines of a multilateral organization to fulfill a very public commitment to a threatened ally or show that Chinese threats and actions have consequence, it raises dangerous doubts about U.S. resolve and may encourage Chinese officials to test U.S. resolve.
Failure to uphold promises and declarations may convince other nations that aggression pays dividends. After promising Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi in May 2003 that Washington would "not settle for anything less than the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of the nuclear weapons program," Bush directed his administration to settle for less. Amid the self-congratulations over its ephemeral February 2007 deal with North Korea remains the fact that, against its allies' wishes, Washington acquiesced to Pyongyang's continued custody of its reactor and nuclear weapons. It is a broken promise guaranteed to haunt the next U.S. administration. Not only might North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il conclude that intransigence will be rewarded, but the Iranian leadership and other proliferators could also conclude that development of nuclear weapons is the fast path to prestige and reward.
Kicking diplomatic problems down the road is not a strategy. Addressing crises with insincere promises is as counterproductive as treating a hemorrhagic fever with a Band-Aid. Empty promises amplify crises; they do not solve them. While farsighted in vision, Bush's failure to abide by his word will most shape his foreign policy legacy.
_________________________________
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.
© 2005 (sic) American Enterprise Institute. All Rights Reserved.
America is at War. It is currently called the War on Terror. If one disagrees with the decision to engage in War that is their Constitutional right. However it is not a Constitutional right to undermine the government’s ability to wage the War that was Congressionally approved with the President.
My God fellow Americans giving aid to the enemy during War is treasonous is it not?
Well check this out: some of the biggest publishers of the Mainstream Media (MSM) have given a voice to Jihadists as a forum to justify their hatred and their reason for War with America (and probably Israel).
Excuse me: I don’t care how Leftist or how much a Leftist hates Bush for engage Terrorists after years of attacks against American resources and military assets only for the final straw of toleration to be snapped with an attack on America’s Homeland murdering thousands of American men, women and children.
Was Bush wrong to engage Terrorists? NO! Bush should have gone after more rogue States harboring Terrorists than just and .
Was Bush wrong on his choice of strategy to achieve a goal of victory? YES! Just because Bush screwed up strategically does not mean surrenders, it means the strategy or leadership must change. A leadership change does not mean finding defeatists who wish to surrender, it means finding leadership to carry out a strategy that ends in American Victory. Losing should never be an option for . We need a General Patton attitude about spilling the blood of the enemy and not tolerating the enemy to spill American blood (the sanitized version, Patton would have been more graphic).
God bless America and shut down the MSM that supports the enemies of America. Freedom of the Press is not the freedom to undermine American morale. The MSM should be exposing the character of Jihadists not providing them a forum. The Jihadist has their own media to spread their lies and opinions.
Go to Counterterrorism Blog to read the specifics of this heinous abuse of First Amendment Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of the Press.
Shi’ite Iran and Wahhabi Sunni Taliban have been fierce enemies in the past, so much so that Iran did not complain when America invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime and it Stateless ally al-Qaeda.
Apparently the deep hatred Sunni and Shi’ites have had for centuries has transformed by mutual hatred of the United States. There have been major indicators that Iran has been supplying weapons and supplies to the Taliban hiding in the Afghan mountains enabling them to be a continuous threat to the anti-Taliban government and American/coalition forces trying to secure Afghanistan.
So here is the picture: Iran says that Israel will soon be wiped off the map; Iran trains and supplies terrorists Hamas (Sunnis in the Gaza), Islamic Jihad (Shi’ites in Gaza) and Hezbollah (Shi’ites in Lebanon); Iran has made mutual defense pacts with Syria and Sudan; Iran has trained and anti-American militant Shi’ites in Iraq; Iran as stated above is aiding the Taliban AND I would say it is a pretty good guess that NOW Iran is aiding al-Qaeda in some form or fashion. This is a bleak picture for Middle Eastern peace particularly as it affects the National Interests of America and Israel.
I must note that these Sunni/Shi’ite alliances are tenable. There mutual hatred could blow up into a division followed by unification due to a perceived American threat. It is quite complicated on who are enemies and friends at any given moment. The only thing that seems to be linear is both Wahhabi and Shi’ite schools of thought desiring a return to medieval harsh Sharia Law, it is only the interpretation that separates the sects and an American ideology of democratic Liberty and an American military presence that unites them.