Turnaround by Bush

UNITED States President George W Bush continues to amaze us by his blinkered and insensitive reaction to the frightful chaos he and his partner-in-crime Tony Blair have created in Iraq. No one, of course, expects Mr Bush, who will soon be facing re-election, to admit to his horrendous blunder in attacking Iraq, although the truth and extent of that gross miscalculation are now clear for all to see. Still, we are forced to wonder at the effrontery of his turnaround in light of his contemptuous rejection of opposition from the world community in general and the UN Security Council in particular to his relentless and illegal invasion of that Middle East country. Without blinking, Mr Bush is now calling on the international community — the same people whose objection to the “war” he summarily dismissed — to “let bygones be bygones” and rally to his appeal for troops and funds to assist in the effort to rebuild Iraq.

Clearly, the post-invasion events, most dramatically the rising death toll among occupying US soldiers, targets of a retaliatory guerrilla war, has brought home to Mr Bush the frightening reality that he has bitten off more than he can chew in that religiously divided land, that all his great expectations about post-war Iraq have gone askew and that the procession of American  servicemen returning home in bodybags will hardly serve to enhance his re-election prospects. Such is the arrogance of wielding the might of the world’s only superpower that Mr Bush can now calmly reverse his stand on Iraq and seek, with amazing earnestness, the support of the UN Security Council and other nations of the world. When it suited him, Mr Bush plunged recklessly ahead with his invasion of Iraq, ignoring the multi-lateral conventions and imperatives of our time, Now, not having the candour to admit to his monumental mistake, the US President is asking other countries for their support in rebuilding the country that he and Mr Blair totally destroyed and in which they have become trapped by their own unheeding arrogance.

Mr Bush dares not send any more US troops to Iraq to impose the needed security and control over a country in which all the civil and governmental institutions have broken down. They will only provide more targets for the guerrilla force, apparently augmented by combatants gathering from various parts of the “axis of evil”, who are now bent on driving the invaders out of the country. But the idea that Mr Bush, in this dilemma, can calmly call on other countries to send their soldiers into the explosive situation that he has created, to be killed alongside US troops, must present a new and distasteful study in US superpower politics. The irony of the Bush-Blair misadventure in Iraq is the fact that, instead of reducing the threat of terrorism against the US, it has given the terrorists a ready-made arena for dealing with what they call “the great satan.” Instead of wiping out Al Qaeda and bin Laden in Afghanistan, Mr Bush has apparently only strengthened their resolve. And back at home, the billions that he needs to maintain the occupying forces in those two countries and to fix the wholesale damage that he has caused is an expense that is not being well received. What a tangled web we weave...