| November 10, 2006 | Friday | Shawwal 17, 1427 |
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For Bush satellites uncertain times
CALL it a triumph of American understanding, the great American people taking more than three years to wake up to the sordid reality of the Bush administration’s Iraq misadventure.
If the people of Iraq were to write the script, they would call it a crime against humanity. After all, if a million wantonly dead does not qualify as such, what does? But since it is the United States doing the writing, a more cautious use of words will have to suffice.
There were other issues in this American mid-term election — corruption, stories of sleaze and scandal in the Republican-dominated Congress — but Iraq was at the top, giving the Republican Party the “thumping” (George Bush’s word although with his gift for verbal innovation he actually said “thump-in”) it has received. The Democratic Party controls the House of Representatives decisively and also looks set to win control of the Senate, 51-49.
Although the polls largely had it right, one person who seems surprised by the outcome is George Bush. You could see it in his post-election press conference. He said the right things but the drawn expression on his face, and his grim attempts at laughter, said it all. He was shaken and for once the White House press corps, which before and after the Iraq invasion had set new records in outright servility, was being somewhat bold. America has woken up but, by God, it has taken its time doing so.
It bears remembering that in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, more stupid than Vietnam because Vietnam at least had an excuse in the “domino theory” which many Americans believed in sincerely, the Democratic Party also found itself caught in the war hysteria the Bush White House was whipping up.
True, some leading Democrats opposed the war and voted against its authorisation: among others, Senator Ted Kennedy, the elderly Senator Harry Byrd, Democratic Party chairman and presidential contender in 2004, Howard Dean, and Nancy Pelosi, all set to be the new House speaker, the first woman to hold this position in American history. But they were in a minority.
Most of the Democratic Party behaved in a craven and opportunistic fashion including Hillary Clinton. The Clintons, husband and wife, are smart. With their eyes on the long-term — a presidential bid for Senator Hillary in 2008 — they swam with the tide, as did most of their party.
Courtesy the Brookings Institution, I got a chance to meet some Democrats, a few of them important, at a seminar in Qatar in December 2003, nine months after the Iraq invasion. A more sorry bunch of wimps would be hard to imagine, waxing eloquent about extremism but reacting in horror to any suggestion that not only were the policies of the Bush administration themselves an example of extremism, they were also feeding it. President Clinton was there too, delivering what I thought was a stunning speech during which he mentioned every subject under the sun except Iraq.
Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the UN, actually said that speaking about Palestine and Iraq would be a waste of time. We would be much better off discussing education and healthcare. It was a funny gathering almost meant to show that some of Americas best and brightest, putting on blinkers, were in a world of their own.
Now these guys are dressed up as the apostles of change. The test of their zeal will be Iraq and we’ll have to see how much of a stomach for real change they have there. In Nancy Pelosi, however, the Democrats have a good leader — sound head, attractive personality, a flair for politics and, perhaps more important, sincerity. Someone who can call Bush “incompetent, a liar and...dangerous” is to be admired. There is abuse in American politics but plain speaking — seeing a lie and calling it one — is a bit out of fashion.
Ah, I almost forgot. Rummy has at last fallen, after all the mischief he has done in Iraq. Across America can be heard a sigh of relief although I think he is being unfairly blamed as the sole architect of the Iraq folly. Others besides him were pushing for invasion, not because of WMD — all along, they knew it was a lie — but because they thought it was a great idea, part of their plan to ‘redraw the map of the Middle East’.
Rummy was just one of this demented cabal which included Cheney, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, even Khalilzad, and a whole string of other luminaries. But as the man responsible for the war’s management, it’s only proper that he should be the first to go. Light rest the ashes of disgrace on his head.
But the US can sort out its own problems. The most remarkable thing on display in this election has been the American ability for course-correction. What about smaller fry like us who have been holding on to the Bush administration’s coattails?
It has been a bad time for Bush supporters generally. Jose Maria Aznar lost out in Spain, Silvio Berlusconi out of power in Italy, while Tony Blair, loyalist knight of all, on the verge of becoming history, his ride into the sunset proving to be a long one but a ride into oblivion nonetheless.
But it must also be a nervous time for Bush satellites as they contemplate the future: Hamid Karzai, the former restaurant owner turned puppet, in Afghanistan, Al-Maliki in Iraq and Gen Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan.
Karzai is out of his depth, hardly even Mayor of Kabul. The less said about him the better. Al-Maliki, on the other hand, can be his own man, his ideas not always coinciding with those of his American handlers. When in Washington recently — fighting was raging in Lebanon — he refused to condemn Hezbollah as the Americans probably wanted. On BBC the other day I heard someone saying that in private he was scathing about Rummy.
There won’t be many senior figures in Pakistan scathing about anything to do with the US. Only goes to show how conscientiously our leadership takes its American duties.
We take responsibility for American missile strikes on our territory and show no remorse when people are killed, as many as 80 in Bajaur only a few days ago. In season and out Gen Musharraf keeps returning to the theme of the ‘war on terrorism’, chanting it as a life-saving mantra, when public disgust with our American involvement is at an all-time high and fears are growing about the costs of following American dictates in our tribal areas.
Musharraf says he is a popular man and would win a presidential election against Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto hands down. Why doesn’t he give it a try? Why doesn’t he take off his uniform and step into the political ring? Or if he chooses, and his senior generals don’t murmur too much, he could keep his uniform on and still submit himself to an election. He will see the sky, the moon and the stars like he has never seen them before.
Bush has received a rebuff through the exercise of the popular will. The American people have spoken and he is having to adjust course, Rummy’s scalp the first sign of this. Musharraf says what comes into his mind, and does what he pleases, answerable to no one, subject to no checks-and-balances, because the popular will or rather its exercise lies buried somewhere between the political capital, Islamabad, and the military capital, Rawalpindi.
The Democrats are not about to advocate a policy of ‘cut-and-run’ but the old days of Camp David-style camaraderie for Musharraf are probably over. As Democrats tighten their grip on Congress, questions will be asked, when it comes to Pakistan, about the peculiar brand of democracy Musharraf practises. At other times this may not have mattered, in a Pakistani election year it will.
The Bush administration saw nothing odd in Musharraf’s uniformed democracy, indeed finding it convenient as even unreasonable demands were promptly met. The Democrats may have a different attitude.
Across the arc of Radical Islam which now spreads, thanks in part to the labours of the Bush administration, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Hindukush Mountains, the mid-term elections will be seen as a vindication of the spirit of resistance. Indeed, looked at from a slightly different angle, the Republican Party has been defeated not so much by sleaze, corruption or the response to Hurricane Katrina as by the strength of the Iraqi resistance.
But for Iraq, Mark Foley could have sent as many sexually-loaded email messages to Congressional page boys as he liked and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.
Afghanistan is the other place where Bush lit a fire and if it remains on the boil, as all the signs suggest it is likely to, Pakistan’s role will come under closer scrutiny. This makes the future a bit uncertain for the Musharraf regime. It may look outwardly strong but the plates underneath may have started to shift. Who knows?
