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 Bush’s Tragic Dream WorldPosted on Jan 18, 2008By Robert Fisk Originally published in The Independent on Jan. 16, 2008. The President sat chummily beside the all-too-friendly monarch yesterday, enthroned in what looked suspiciously like the kind of casual blue cardigan he might wear on his own Texan ranch; he had even received a jangling gold “Order of Merit”—it looked a bit like the Lord Chancellor’s chain, though it was not disclosed which particular merit earned Mr. Bush this kingly reward. Could it be the hypocritical merit of supplying yet more billions worth of weapons to the Kingdom, to be used against the Saudi regime’s imaginary enemies? It was illusory, of course, like all the words that the Arabs have heard from the Americans these past seven days, ever since the fading President began his tourist jaunt around the Middle East. You wouldn’t think it though, watching this preposterous man, prancing around arm-in-arm with the King, in what was presumably meant to be a dance, wielding a massive glinting curved Saudi sword, a latter-day Saladin, who would have appalled the Kurdish leader who once destroyed the Crusaders in what is now referred to by Mr. Bush as “the disputed West Bank”. Is this how lame-duck American presidents are supposed to behave? Certainly, the denizens of the Middle East watching this outrageous performance will all be asking this question. Ever since the 1979 Iranian revolution, a Muslim Cold War has been raging within the Middle East—but is this how Mr. Bush thinks one should fight for the soul of Islam? Already by dusk last night, the U.S. President’s world was exploding in Beirut when a massive car bomb blew up next to a 4x4 vehicle carrying American embassy employees, killing four Lebanese and apparently badly wounding a U.S. embassy driver. And while Mr. Bush was relaxing in the Saudi royal ranch at Al Janadriyah, Israeli forces killed 19 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, most of them members of Hamas, one of them the son of Mahmoud Zahar, a leader of the movement. He later claimed that Israel would not have staged the attack—on the day an Israeli was also killed by a Palestinian rocket—if it had not been encouraged to do so by George Bush. The difference between reality and the dream-world of the U.S. government could hardly have been more savagely illustrated. After promising the Palestinians a “sovereign and contiguous state” before the end of the year, and pledging “security” to Israel—though not, Arabs noted, security for “Palestine”—Mr. Bush had arrived in the Gulf to terrify the kings and oligarchs of the oil-soaked kingdoms of the danger of Iranian aggression. As usual, he came armed with the usual American offers of vast weapons sales to protect these largely undemocratic and police state regimes from potentially the most powerful nation in the “axis of evil”. It was a potent—even weird—example of the US President’s perambulation of the Arab Middle East, a return to the “policy by fear” which Washington has regularly visited upon Gulf leaders. He agreed to furnish the Saudis with at least £41m of arms, a figure set to rise to more than £10bn in weaponry to the Gulf potentates under a deal announced last year—all of which is supposed to shield them from the supposed territorial ambitions of Iran’s crackpot President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As usual, Washington promised the Israelis that their “qualitative edge” in advanced weapons would be maintained, just in case the Saudis—who have never gone to war with anyone except Saddam Hussein after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait—decided to launch a suicidal attack on America’s only real ally in the Middle East. This, of course, was not how the whole shooting match was presented to the Arabs. Mr. Bush could be seen ostentatiously kissing the cheeks of King Abdullah and holding hands with the autocratic monarch whose Wahhabi Muslim state had only recently showed its “mercy” to a Saudi woman who was charged with adultery after being raped seven times in the desert outside Riyadh. The Saudis, needless to say, are well aware that Mr. Bush’s reign is ending amid chaos in Pakistan, a disastrous guerrilla war against Western forces in Afghanistan, fierce fighting in Gaza, near civil war in Lebanon and the hell-disaster of Iraq. The bomb in Beirut, just before five in the evening, must still have come as a rude shock to the luxuriating President who has such close ties with the Saudi regime—despite the fact that the majority of hijackers in the crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 came from the Kingdom—that he allowed its junior princes to fly home from the United States immediately after the attacks. Two trips to Mr Bush’s Texas ranch by King Abdullah [were] apparently enough to earn the U.S. President a night in the Saudi king’s palace-farm, surrounded by groomed lawns and grassy hills. Heard across many miles of the Lebanese capital, the bomb devastated buildings in a narrow street in the east of the city through which the vehicle was passing, just as the U.S. ambassador—on a different route into the city—was traveling to a central Beirut hotel reception before leaving for Washington. A State Department spokesman, however, insisted that no U.S. citizens had been hurt. The American SUV had taken an obscure laneway close to the Karantina bridge to travel north of Beirut along the bank of the city’s only river when it was struck, leading local Lebanese military officials to ask themselves if the bomber had inside knowledge of the route they were taking. There was talk that this was a “dummy” convoy staged to distract potential bombers from the journey which Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman was taking to a reception at a downtown hotel. A carpet manufacturer’s factory was smashed by the blast which tore down roofs and smashed windows more than half a mile from the scene. For Arab leaders, Mr. Bush’s message to the Gulf leaders was wearily familiar. In the 1980s, when the Reagan administration was supporting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran, Washington spent its time warning Gulf leaders of the danger of Iranian aggression. Once Saddam invaded Kuwait, America’s emphasis changed: It was now Iraq which posed the greatest danger to their kingdoms. But once the emirate was liberated, the oil-wealthy monarchs were told that—yet again—it was Iran that was their enemy. Arabs are no more taken in by this topsy-turvy “good-versus-evil” narrative than they are by Washington’s promises to help create a Palestinian state by the end of the year, scarcely a day before Israel publicly admitted to plans for yet more houses for settlers on Arab land amid Jewish colonies illegally built on Palestinian territory. Yet to understand the nature of this extraordinary relationship with the Gulf monarchs, it is necessary to recall that ever since the President’s father promised a weapons-free “oasis of peace” in the Gulf, Washington—along with Britain, France and Russia—has been pouring arms into the region. Over the past decade, the Gulf Arabs have squandered billions of their oil dollars on American weapons. The statistics tell their own story. In 1998 and 1999 alone, Gulf Arab military spending came to £40bn. Between 1997 and 2005, the sheikhs of the United Arab Emirates—Mr. Bush’s hosts before he continued to Riyadh—signed arms contracts worth £9bn with Western nations. Between 1991 and 1993—when Iraq was the “enemy”—the U.S. Military Training Mission was administering more than £14bn in Saudi arms procurements and £12bn in new U.S. weapons acquisitions. By this time, the Saudis already possessed 72 American F-15 fighter-bombers and 114 British Tornados. How little has changed in the past 17 years. On 17 May 1991, for example, George Bush Sr. said there were now “real reasons to be optimistic” about a peace in the Middle East. “We are going to continue to work in the [peace] process,” he said then. “We are not going to abandon it.” James Baker, who was the American Secretary of State, warned on 23 May 1991 that the continued building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land “hindered” a future Middle East peace, just as the present Secretary of State said last week. At the time, the Israelis were reassured by Dick Cheney that the U.S. would safeguard their “security”.
The West may have a short memory. The Arabs, who happen to live in the piece of real estate which we call the Middle East and who are not stupid, have not. They understand all too well what George W. Bush now stands for. After advocating “democracy” in the region—a policy which gained electoral victories for Shia in Iraq, for Hamas in Gaza and a substantial gain in political power for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt—it seems to have dawned on Washington that something might be slightly wrong with Bush’s priorities. Instead of advocating a “New Middle East”, Mr. Bush, lying amid his silken sheets in the Saudi king’s palace, is now pursuing a return to the “Old Middle East”, a place of secret policemen, torture chambers—to which prisoners can be usefully “renditioned”—and dictatorial “moderate” presidents and monarchs. And which of the Gulf despots is going to object to that?
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By Terry, January 22 at 5:24 pm # make it up as you go alongDoes the right wing have sites that praise bush, we (on the left) know that bush is an evil rotten to the core dog, we have written millions of words on his uselessness from being born to hijacking two elections as if the US was some kind of tinpot dictatorship, say like Kenya, Zimbabwe, Russia where vote rigging, voter intimidation etc are the norm, as I haven’t looked can someone tell me a site that says bush has been a force for good in the world, that his policies have been inspired, his choices for government office have been based purely on skill, merit and intelligence. That he cares about people so much that when told of 9/11 he continued reading to those adorable little children for 7 minutes, is well known, maybe we have all been wrong all this time and he is just misunderstood, mistaken or misinformed, but never wrong, so please let me know a site I can go to and read about all the good things he’s done in his 7 years in office, apart from causing the deaths of 4k Americans and 150k Iraqis, creating the largest narco state in the world in Afghanistan, ruining the economy and will probably go onto being responsible for a global recession. Other than that I have no strong feelings wither way.
By cyrena, January 23 at 4:03 am # Re: make it up as you go alongUh...I don’t really know of any sites like this, but admittedly, I haven’t been looking. Now there are a few posters here that have continued to claim allegiance to georgie. Driving Bear once mentioned that he was still ‘for’ him. So, maybe he’ll check in, and give you all of his ‘goodnesses’. Otherwise, it’s good to know that other than what you’ve mentioned, you don’t have any strong feelings either way. I guess that aside from what you’ve already mentioned, I don’t either. I suspect that you’ve covered it pretty well, although I think it’s closer to a million Iraqis that he’s killed, not to mention the few million that have been displaced.
By Really?, January 20 at 6:28 pm # Do you really think theDo you really think the average American knows this information? If so, why aren’t they screaming for the heads of their President, Vice-Pres? If so, why is America still the most undemocratic place on earth?
By anonymous, January 20 at 5:53 pm # Bush is truly the CEOBush is truly the CEO President. He merely acted as the salesman for the arms industry. All at tax-payer expense. Wonder how soon we’ll see these arms being used against Americans in Iraq by they Sunnis? So the Bush Crime Family decides we need to sell more arms to The Kingdom because of the threat of Iran. Off goes the bumbling salesman from Crawford.
By cyrena, January 20 at 11:56 pm # Re: Bush is truly the CEONot really sure how bumbling he is. (bush that is). And, Fisk is as knowledgeable as anybody else on the subject. “Outsider” would clearly depend on where one happens to be situated, more mentally than physically. I agree that Iran is not now, nor have they ever been, the ‘threat’ that SA could become. I’ve yet to understand how as remarkably ‘christian’ as the Bush cabal is, they’ve always been so overwhelmingly welcome in SA, when any other “christian’ would have their heads immediately whacked off.
By kesa, January 19 at 5:48 pm # Curl up?Curl up into a fetal position? Bury your head in the sand? Roll over and die? What can you do when there’s nothing you can do?
By FrostedFlakes, January 19 at 3:28 pm # We did not elect him.YouWe did not elect him.You duplicitous voters who say one thing outside the voting booth and then do the opposite in the privacy of the booth elected (or should I say, selected) this foolish criminal twice. That same game is going to be played out with the new hero of the day Obama.
By lawlessone, January 19 at 12:36 pm # Why We Need to Impeach the Prez and Darth Vader Today!If you still need a reason why we need to commence impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney immediately instead of just waiting for their term to expire, here’s several: 1. Their arrogance, aggression, carelessness or simple ignorance could drag us into a war against Iran or any of several other countries he doesn’t happen to like or make one of them angry enough to attack us. 2. They could finish pissing off what few allies we have left that still trust or like us. 3. They could finish their depletion of our military capability and morale. 4. They could auction off the national forests, parks or other important assets. 5. They could appoint still more unremovable, partisan and injudicious judges who would then be able continue enforcing Bush’s bankrupt ideology for decades to come. 6. They could pardon all the criminals within their current administration and among their campaign contributors. 7. Their spying on opposition leaders could find enough material to blackmail them into submission, although it appears that may have already happened. 8. They could initiate a coup to keep them selves in power by suspending the Constitution to “protect” us, rounding up and permanently jailing or torturing anyone protesting as an “enemy of the state.” Or if not, what they have done already will likely insure that future administrations will be able or at least attempt to be equally dictatorial. 9. They could drive us into a deadly recession or depression. Oops. Probably too late for that one. 10. The mere fact that they escape without punishment of some sort pretty much invalidates all that this country once stood for.
By GW=MCHammered, January 19 at 8:37 am # Exile the Mutant BeastThe BushCheneyRoveRumsfeldRice animal is a Manifest Destiny Creature turned Self-fulfilling Prophet Demon. It toils to bring about Armageddon. And History is piled with souls that pay for such psychotic nihilism. Exile the Mutant Beast before its work is done.
By nomorebombs, January 18 at 10:49 pm # Re: Re: NOW CAN WE IMPEACH????right on cyrena
By weather, January 18 at 2:57 pm # Re: The silence of the TruthdigLeft-out, kindly take the nxt. flight out for Israel and stay there. We’ll keep in touch.
By Ray Wilkie, January 18 at 12:50 pm # He really is your (USA)He really is your (USA) man.It can be reasoned that to elect him the first time was a mistake, but for a second time, me thinks not.
By lawlessone, January 18 at 10:03 am # A Reflection After Watching Bush’s Latest InterviewMaybe Bush is a clone. He certainly seems to have the combined DNA of Harding, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton. In that order - contemptible, criminal, clueless, and too cowardly to brave bullets in wartime. Add Your Comment |
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