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Feb 02 2009

Published by vetmichael at 7:18 pm under Politics and History Edit This

After a person’s death, most people prefer to remember the good things about the dead; humorous sayings, delightful moments, brilliant observations and all that. They also tend to minimize the less-pleasant aspects; the drunken fights, the arguments, the fiery temper, and so on. Similarly, Presidents’ reputations are revised - for ill or for good - after they leave office. It happens all the time, actually: FDR tried to expand the Supreme Court in order to stock it with people who supported his programs because the Conservative justices kept ruling his social programs “unconstitutional” yet that aspect is rarely remembered. Similarly, poor Hoover is blamed for the collapse of the stock market in 1929, which is not totally his fault; he had barely been in office when it happened. But now that we have added another former President to the roster, the effort to rehabilitate George W. Bush’s image is well underway by conservatives; one wonders if Mr. Bush will be remembered as fondly by social and religious conservatives as Mr. Reagan is.

One of the most…irksome…assertions is that Mr. Bush was actually a visionary when it came to Middle East peace and stability. That the war in Iraq was (or is) just. My colleague over at “All that is necessary ” posted a rather interesting article by Dr. Fouad Ajami as well as some of his own personal feelings about President Obama’s “reaching out to the Muslim world.” I, of course, replied, but I feel it incumbent upon me to post a little here and expand in a way that a comment just can not.

President Obama said that he would like to return to the “Respect and partnership” the United States and the Muslim world enjoyed 20 or 30 years ago. To which many have taken umbrage; 20 years ago, Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland was destroyed by Libyan intelligence officers who worked for Qadaffi and 30 years ago Iranian students in a surge of patriotism and fervor, overtook the American Embassy and held the occupants hostage until the new Reagan administration came to power. To many conservatives, my colleague Kirk among them, Mr. Bush’s invasion of Iraq (and threat to do so to Libya) toppled one dictator and put another in his place, his firm stance against Syria and Hamas forced those regimes to retreat, his rhetorical desire to spread “democracy,” and the pre-emptive war of the so-called “Bush Doctrine” had rectified an American stance gone soft over the decades.

Unfortunately, Mr. Bush shall not get off so easy, particularly with historians. The acquiescence of Qadaffi had more to do with European promises to extend special trade relations with Libya (whose natural gas resources offer an alternative to Russia’s Gazprom) . In fact, if Libya were so worried that the United States was going to invade it after seeing the “shock and awe” campaign in March of 2003 in Iraq, why did it stall agreements to compensate victims of Lockerbie in September of 2003? Maybe they didn’t get the sattelite images of smart bombs andB-52s and Marines pulling statues down? Didn’t they know the “Mission Accomplished” banner had been hung? Evidently not because Libya did not agree to compensate American victims of Pan Am 103 until August, 2008. No, it is far, far more likely that the economic benefits of dealing nicely with the West far outweighed the “fear” of American aggression - therefore Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld’s “example” to the world did little to change Libya’s mind and so Mr. Bush can not rightfully claim credit here.

30 years ago, when the Iranians had taken hostages and held them despite all the efforts of the American military and State Department, we enjoyed the sympathy and cooperation of the Saudi, Iraqi, Jordanian, Qatari, UAE, Kuwaiti, and Syrian governments. In fact, Saddam Hussein would find himself the beneficiary of arms and intelligence that would have gone to the Shah of Iran had there been no revolution. With those arms (as well as vehicles from Great Britain, aircraft from France and chemicals from Germany to augment Soviet equipment), Iraq would invade Iran a few short months later and start a war that lasted for eight long years. Saddam, at first, used mustard gas and sarin nerve agents against Iranian troops, but eventually would use them against the Kurds in the north (who, he suspected, would ally with Iranians) and for which the United States would do…nothing. In fact, our beloved ally and defender of the Middle East, Saddam Hussein, was being played for a fool by the Reagan administration who gave him only enough intelligence to keep from being overrun by the much more motivated Iranians. To cap it all off, Reagan may have ordered Oliver North to sell weapons to Iran in order to pay for illegal arms shipments to the Contras in El Salvador - I say “may” because we all know how roguish Marine colonels are able to engineer the sale of millions of dollars in high-tech equipment in order to support a war in central America that the President was heavily in favor of without the knowledge or assistance of said President; I hear it happens all the time. But I digress.

Professor Ajami, a Lebanese scholar who taught at Princeton, also mentioned the evacuation of the Syrian military from their holdings in Lebanon and attributed it to the “irony” of the Bush doctrine. This is a most surprising revelation coming from a Lebanese patriot, if he is one. In deference to my esteemed colleague Dr. Ajami, I should like to remind him that the assassination of popular former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri by what everyone supposed was Syrian assassins which sparked huge anti-Syrian demonstrations and riots in Beirut and collapsed the pro-Syrian government. In fact, dear Dr. Ajami, Syria was being pressured not just by the United States, but by the Saudis, the UnitedNations, and (most importantly) the people of Lebanon. Still, if fear of George W. Bush’s anger was the motivating factor, why is Syria still interfering in Lebanese life and politics in 2008? Or, as Paul Selim of the Carnegie Center for Middle East affairs put it “Syria no longer manages Lebanon’s affairs but it does maintain a very important influence through its allies and perhaps through its intelligence services.”I’m certain that Syria’s recent closeness with “axis of evil” regime Iran is merely a happy coincidental alliance between two autocratic, anti-American regimes and not a direct result of Mr. Bush’s failed Wolfowitzian/Rumsfeldian militaristic adventurism.

My conservative friends will point (and, to a degree, rightfully so) to the Democratic votes in Iraq. But what a long road to get there. First, Mr. Bush and his advisors seriously underestimated the anger and resentment invasion would engender in the Iraqi people. Or, as former Marine General Anthony Zinni said in 2004, “They’ve screwed up.”Perhaps we all remember when General William Walalce said that the United States seriously underestimate the nature of the war and suggested that political compromises be made in order to ensure stability? We should, he was almost fired for it. In all actuality, while Mr. Bush kept repeating “stay the course” and conservatives called the idea of withdrawal from Iraq “surrender” the Bush administration was eventually forced to realize facts on the ground and begin a series of political compromises that did more to quell unrest in Iraq than the surge could have possibly hoped for: allowing the Kurds in the north to establish a de facto independent territory in the north of Iraq; enlisting the tribal leaders of the Sunni faction who were once insurgents themselves through bribes, honorifics, and political compromises (which has been nicknamed the “sunni awakening”); and let us not forget installing a pro-Shi’a government with ties to Iran (ever wonder why Muqtada al Sadr called for a cease fire a day after delivering his fiery anti-American rhetoric and a week before a “pull out” pledge had been reached witht he Iraqi government?).

Meanwhile, the casus beli for Islamic militants - by which I mean the plight of the Palestinians - has been largely ignored by the Bush administration. The free reign the Bush admin gave the Israelis over their affairs has led to an increase of 45% in the amount of illegal settlements in the West Bank. The modus operandi of the Israelis is to take over Arab Palestinian fields and use walls and a superior military to crush an already disposessed people, taking ever more arable land for themselves in true Revisionist Zionist/Lukhud party fashion. Though purporting to support “Democracy,” the Bush administration has done everything in its power to alienate Hamas leadership after it won the democratic elections of 2006. Why this fixation on economic and political sanctions has ever taken root is beyond me. How well have sanctions worked against Cuba? Time did what nearly a score of American Presidents could not; take our Fidel Castro. North Korea developed nuclear weapons under embargoes and trade restrictions. Iran’s economy flourished and oil revenues soared since 2005, particularly in 2008 when oil prices were astronomical. And in the case of Hamas, the more deprivation the Palestinian people face, the more Hamas can blame on the United States and Israel; it is true that “people will judge you on what you build not what you destroy.” and as it stands now, the Palestinian people’s hope for a peaceful furite and for Democracy has been destroyed by Israeli aggression and American apathy while Hamas visibly struggles to rebuild schools, hospitals and infrastructure bombed into nothingness by an Israeli military out for one more hurrah before the new President takes office. The Palestinian people will surely judge the efforts of Hamas to defend the people of Palestine, to “lift them up” and to ensure no more of their children die in UN-run schools. And the result will be millions more “martyrs” to the Hamas cause and even more problems for Israel. And the Bush administration did next to nothing to stop it all.

No, my dear conservative friends, Mr. Bush’s place in the pantheon of former Presidents will not be as you hope nor as you might wish; as another Eisenhower, Reagan, or Lincoln. But he will probably not be ranked as low as Nixon either if for no other reason than he wasn’t actually caught doing something illegal, so take heart. I suspect that after all is said and done, his administrational legacy will land him somewhere around Millard Filmore.

——————-Resources—————

BBC News “Italy Seals Libya colonial deal “

New Europe “ENI clinches USD 28 bln Libya oil and gas deal “

Afrol “Shell secures Libya deal during Blair visit “

The Telegraph “Nicolas Sarkozy defends Libyan arms deal “

Der Spiegel “Sarkozy’s Libyan Nuke Deal “

New York Times “Europe: France: Libya Compensation Deal Stalled “

BBC “US-Libya Compensation Deal Signed “

Columbia Encyclopedia “Iran-Iraq War ” (as linked through Bartleby.com)

Global Security “Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) “

George Washington University “National Security Archives/Publications/ Iran-Contra Affair “

International Herald Tribune “After 29 years, Syria leaves Lebanon “