Middle East: Where are the blossoming roses? by DR FEISAL M CHOWDHURY
Some time ago, George W. Bush, the most powerful man in the world, while talking to the Palestinian delegation which met him at the White House, said that God had asked him to go and attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein. But God does not speak to anyone by Himself. He spoke directly only once to Prophet Moses. Hence it was Bush's bad dream. Taking the bad dream as the word of God, if one attacks a sovereign country and messes it up, then one can't blame God for it. One of Bush's favourite lines is also that 'Freedom and democracy are God's gift to mankind' "And I, George W. Bush, am merely the delivery man." The US President has indeed been making deliveries--planting seeds of democracy, at least rhetorically, wherever he goes. In Iraq, in the Palestinian territories, in troubled. Lebanon, even in politically stifled Egypt, the world is told, democracy is blooming like so many biblical lilies of the field.
Iraq is in deep turmoil. A country that had been no threat to world peace is now a country under foreign occupation, a country ripped apart by raging violence, turned into a magnet for terrorists, a once prosperous country with its economy and infrastructure utterly ruined by a war of occupation and its aftermath. Death, destruction and despair have combined to force Iraqis to live or breathe in a virtual hell on earth. Consider the election results in Iraq. US officials waxed hope that their man Allawi, the secular Shiite exile would be returned. Newcons in Washington also thought that the Pentagon favourite Chalabi might be on the verge of a dramatic comeback. Instead, the outcome stunned the administration. According to the EU foreign policy chief Solana, 80 per cent of Iraqis voted for religious candidates. The secularists favoured by US were marginalised. Allawi garnered mere 20 seats out of 275 in the new Iraqi parliament, while Chalabi's party was completely shut out. The broader reason for the rise of Islamic politics has been the failure of secular politics. Bush says one thing and then he suddenly swerves away from the line of thought, reverting to boiler- plate. He says elections are democracy and democracy is good but when it produced results in Palestinian polls unacceptable to US, he says Hamas government will lack legitimacy, as Hamas are terrorists. And US can't deal with them. In fact, Bush has boxed himself in an impossible situation. He promoted elections that have produced results opposite of the ones he wanted. Unless he gets over his confusion on democracy, a fatal paralysis will continue to afflict the region.
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