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The
'War President's' Latest Fiasco
President
George W. Bush likes to call himself
"the war president" and strike
martial poses against patriotic backdrops,
a trick he learned from another president
who never saw military action, Ronald
Reagan.
In
spite of Iraq and other foreign policy
misadventures, and failure to prevent
the 9/11 attacks, polls show that when
it comes to national security many
Americans still regard the Bush
Administration with approval and trust.
Their confidence is not well placed. To date, the
"war president" was asleep on
guard duty on 9/11, involved the US in
four lost wars, and has stirred up a
hornet’s nest of anti-American hatred
around the globe.
Defeat
I: Five years after Bush ordered
Afghanistan invaded and proclaimed
"total victory" there, US and
allied forces are struggling to defend
their bases and supply lines against
rising attacks from a growing number of
Afghan resistance groups. The war costs
$1.5 billion monthly. US-ruled Afghan
now produces over 80% of the world’s
heroin. The US just quietly deployed
thousands more troops to Afghanistan to
hunt al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden
and Ayman al-Zawahiri in a desperate
attempt to save Republicans from heavy
losses in November mid-term elections.
Defeat
II: Remember "Mission
accomplished!" in Iraq? President
Bush’s war in Iraq is clearly lost,
but few dare admit it. The US has spent
$300 billion on Afghanistan and Iraq,
with nothing to show there but chaos,
civil war, body bags, and growing
Iranian influence in Iraq and western
Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney
"liberation" of Iraq has now
cost more than the Vietnam War. So much
for the "cakewalk." Iraq is
likely the biggest American foreign
policy disaster in living memory –
even worse, in many ways, than Vietnam.
Defeat
III: Off in the strategic Horn of Africa,
another dangerous fiasco is unfolding. The
White House had CIA and Pentagon spend
tens of millions bribing Somali warlords
to fight Islamist reformers trying to
bring law and order to their
strife-ravaged nation. The Islamists
whipped CIA-backed warlords and ran them
out of Somalia. Following this defeat, the
US has encouraged and financed ally
Ethiopia –
shades of Lebanon – to invade Somalia,
thus raising the threat of a wider war
between Somalia, Ethiopia, and its old
foe, Eritrea. Meanwhile, growing numbers
of US Special Forces and CIA teams are
getting drawn into obscure tribal mêlées
in the Horn of Africa and the Saharan
regions.
Defeat
IV: Lebanon is, of course, the fourth major
American military disaster. Bush and Cheney
encouraged Israel to launch the hugely
destructive but militarily fruitless war in
Lebanon as the first part of their
long-nurtured plan to militarily crush
Hezbullah, Syria and Iran. The Bush
Administration brazenly thwarted world
efforts to halt the conflict while giving
Israel the green light to tear apart
Lebanon. Now, just over a month later, Bush
announces he will send $230 million to
"help rebuild" Lebanon – the
same Lebanon blasted apart by US smart bombs
rushed by air to Israel.
To
Washington and London’s shock and awe,
Hezbullah, Iran, and Syria emerged the war’s
victors. Hezbullah is now the Muslim World’s
new hero after battling Israel’s mighty
armed forces to a humiliating draw. Even
Syria’s President Bashar Asad, who played
dead during the Lebanon War in fear of an
Israeli attack, is now thumping his chest and
crowing that Syria played a major role in the
unexpected Arab victory.
Hezbullah’s
triumph thwarted, at least for the moment,
Bush/Cheney plans to attack Lebanon, Syria and
Iran. The US and Israel have become so used to
smashing nearly helpless foes armed with
obsolete weapons – like Iraq, Taliban, or
Palestine – that they were stunned to meet a
force that had modern arms and could actually
fight.
No
sooner had bombing
stopped than Hezbullah bulldozers were busy
clearing rubble, and Hezbullah social workers
resettling refugees. Perhaps President Bush
should ask Hezbullah to take over rebuilding
New Orleans and resettling all its refugees.
Hezbullah’s
big brother, Iran, has also emerged from the
Lebanon War with its political, moral and even
military stature greatly enhanced. America’s
Arab vassals – Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and
Egypt – were left badly shaken by
Hezbullah’s victory and Iran’s surging
influence which was already giving them
nightmares well before Lebanon.
Israelis
have now turned from fighting Arabs to furious
finger-pointing. Politicians and generals are
blaming each other for the Lebanon debacle
that killed 118 Israeli soldiers and 41
civilians, cost at least $6 billion, ruined
the summer tourist trade, and,
after a burst of initial sympathy, brought
worldwide condemnation. And no captured
soldiers – this war’s supposed objective
– have been yet returned.
Still,
a swap of Israeli for Lebanese and Palestinian
prisoners remains likely, as this column
predicted at war’s beginning. The killing of
1,000 Lebanese civilians, a million Lebanese
made refugees, and billions of dollars of
wanton destruction, could all have been
avoided.
By
turning a routine border skirmish into a big
war, Israel’s PM Ehud Olmert showed he had
no more grasp of military affairs than those
other amateur warlords, Bush, Cheney and Tony
Blair. Lebanon also showed that the western
leaders learned nothing from their debacle in
Iraq.
Now,
some Washington hawks are
wondering if invading Iran may not be the
"cakewalk" that pro-Israel
neoconservatives promise. Iran’s
Revolutionary Guards helped train and arm
Hezbullah’s victorious fighters. Suddenly,
neither the Israelis nor the Americans look so
invincible. As Napoleon said, in war, the
moral is to the physical as three to one.
America
was the big loser in the Lebanon war. From
Morocco to Indonesia, each night 1.5 billion
Muslims watched the carnage in Lebanon on TV
and blamed America. Even the poorest shepherd
in Uzbekistan heard the US was airlifting the
precision bombs and deadly cluster munitions
to Israel used against Lebanese civilians.
Any
hope of damping down the Islamic World’s
surging hatred of the US, Britain, Australia
and Israel (now add Canada) was killed in
Lebanon. Even the interestingly-timed airport
hysteria in London over alleged bomb plots
failed to divert attention from the latest
US-British Mideast policy disaster.
Yet
the White House still keeps listening to
absurd military advice from the same
neoconservatives thirsting for conquest, oil
and Muslim blood. Undaunted even by the fiasco
in Lebanon, the Bush/Cheney White House is now
heading into a full-blown crisis with Iran
over its nuclear enrichment program.
Call
this the "guns of August." All the
pieces are still in place for a bigger war.
Israel will keep violating the Lebanon
cease-fire and attempting to assassinate its
new nemesis, Hezbullah leader Sheik Hassan
Nasrallah. Bush’s pre-November surprise
remains to be unveiled. Iran is gearing up for
war. Even
Hezbullah may still have a few tricks up its
sleeve.
The
self-declared "war president" could
yet have a few more defeats in store for the
nation.
August
22, 2006
Copyright
© 2006 Eric Margolis
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