Bush's "New Middle East"

It's hard to disagree with some of the lofty statements President Bush made in his major speech on the Middle East on Sunday in the United Arab Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi. The problem is more with who was doing the talking, and where, rather than what was said. What America badly needs to do, both for its own national interests and for the sake of global security, is restore its credibility in the Middle East and make a constructive difference here. Yet, as a senior Middle East official told me after watching the address on live television, U.S. policy needs shock therapy, and the lame duck Bush is the last person who can provide that now.

Indeed, the choreography of Bush's tour leaves the impression that he's a political outcast. He didn't manage to get even a three-way photo of himself with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, even after a year of intense American diplomacy to restart Arab-Israeli negotiations and barely a month after he hosted the Annapolis peace conference. You can commend Bush for not just seeking another photo-op. On the other hand, if so little real progress is being made, you wonder how Bush is going to “encourage them to stay focused on the big picture,” as he describes his role, if he can't get the leaders in the same room with him together. Bush chose to deliver his grand address “to the people of the Middle East” from the Emirates Palace Hotel, a Xanadu unabashedly intended as a playground for Arab kings, princes and presidents, where even the least expensive room, running about $700 a night, comes with a private butler. Bush winds up his trip on Wednesday with a meeting with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in Sharm el Sheikh, another slice of paradise on the Red Sea and far Cairo, the largest Arab capital, where brave Muslim democrats are being harassed, arrested and jailed.

The first problem with the speech is Bush was up to his old scaremongering about the Islamic menace. I'm the last person to belittle terrorism, having reported on extremist violence first-hand in the Middle East for 25 years (and seen the bodies of my dead countrymen, or the tears of their comrades or survivors, in Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iraq). But Bush is going too far when he makes a sweeping statement like, “Today your aspirations are threatened by violent extremists who murder the innocent in pursuit of power. These extremists have hijacked the noble religion of Islam, and seek to impose their totalitarian ideology on millions.”

Either Bush is trying to alarm the Middle East—and the rest of us-- into blindly supporting the war on terrorism, or else he doesn't have a very good understanding of the region that has preoccupied his presidency and that he is currently touring. Al Qaeda and their ilk obviously have the capacity to kill individuals and have sought to use Islam as a justification for their acts. But they have hardly hijacked the Islamic faith. Thousands of Islamic leaders and scholars in every Muslim country, and millions of Muslim believers, reject Al Qaeda's ideology and are observing and evolving their faith in accordance with a far different understanding. Al Qaeda has as much chance to impose its “totalitarian ideology” on the world's 1.2 billion Muslims as the Ku Klux Klan has of imposing its racist ideology on 300 million Americans.

No surprise, Bush lumps the Iranian government, which has a seat in the United Nations and enjoys diplomatic ties with almost every country except the U.S. and Israel, in with Al Qaeda, whose leaders live in caves and safe houses and are condemned by every country on earth. Not that Iran does not pose disturbing challenges and threats to global security, but simplistically labeling a country as part of an “axis of evil” and exaggerating the immediate danger it poses is not the way to convince the rest of the world to do something constructive about it.

But the main thrust of Bush's Abu Dhabi speech was an appeal for liberty in the Middle East. That is a very welcome cry, which follows up Condi Rice's landmark 2005 address in Cairo when she acknowledged that U.S. support for Arab dictators had helped undermine democracy and security in the Middle East. The problem is that as Bush indirectly criticizes Arab autocrats for repression, he turns around and seeks their help in fighting Islamists and confronting Iran. He heaps wildly exaggerated praise on favored authoritarian rulers by inflating their democratic progress—calling the United Arab Emirates a model of freedom, for example—while without naming names criticizes others for jailing opponents and critics. The whole exercise is devoid of meaning for a region where Bush has almost zero credibility with the rulers or the street.

Here's what Bush could have said in a truly historic, shock-therapy speech on “A New Middle East,” which might have made some difference in restoring American credibility and resolving some of the tough issues, especially if he spoke with some humility and followed it up with some concrete actions.

First, Bush should have declared that neither the U.S. nor the rest of the international community will accept any further delay in negotiating an decisive end to the Israeli-Arab dispute, which has a ripple effect on security throughout the region and the world. Israelis should have been told that despite the long Arab refusal to accept the Jewish state's existence, there is no longer any justification for the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Syrian Golan Heights and Israel must prepare for a peace agreement that entails full withdrawal and that will include all the security assurances that Israel needs and deserves. Palestinians should have been told that while the U.S., Israel and much of the world disregarded their legitimate rights for many decades, the time for their self determination has arrived, anti-Israel violence must end and the agonizing plight of Palestinian refugees will have to be settled primarily through repatriation to the new Palestinian state, resettlement in third countries and compensation.

Second, to the average Arab Bush should have acknowledged America's past failures to help resolve the Arab-Israeli dispute and the U.S.'s long support of Arab dictators in the name of promoting regional stability. Then he should have added that the U.S. will now do everything possible to promote democracy and economic development throughout the Middle East. That includes respect for all parties and individuals, including Islamists, committed to pluralism, non-violence and other rules of the game.

Third, Bush should have told the regimes in the Arab world that while the U.S. respects the need to maintain public security and cultural traditions, the U.S. will adjust the level of political relations on the basis of how greatly countries are expanding political participation and promoting universal values like liberty and tolerance.

Fourth, to Iraqis Bush should have acknowledged the many fatal blunders involved in the U.S.-led invasion and occupation, pledged a timely withdrawal coordinated with the wishes of the Iraqi government and warned Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders on the urgent need to reconcile with Sunni forces including elements of the former Baath regime that are prepared to cooperate in a new pluralistic Iraq.

Fifth, to Iranians, Bush should have advanced the Clinton administration's olive branch and apologized to Iranians for the U.S. role in overthrowing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and supporting the brutally repressive Pahlavi regime—factors that led directly to the Iranian revolution and the establishment of an authoritarian Islamic government in Iran. Then instead of threatening to overthrow the Iranian regime, Bush should have offered to initiate a restoration of diplomatic relations based on Iran's willingness to discuss U.S. concerns about global and regional stability. Bush should have told Iranian democrats that America still supports them, but that an end to Iran's international isolation fostered by new U.S.-Iranian ties will enable them, as most of them wish, to pursue political change on their own from within.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo