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Blair’s initiative
Arab News, 13 January 2003
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be applauded for going ahead with tomorrow’s London peace conference on the Middle East despite Israel’s prevention of Palestinian delegates from attending. The holding of the conference shows that Blair is not to be dissuaded from attempts at reviving the peace process, whether the obstacles be Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or suicide bomb attacks like the ones which killed 22 Israelis in Tel Aviv last week and which led Sharon to bar Palestinians from traveling to London.

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Transfer, as an Israeli policy 

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THESE DAYS, the highway between Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport and the city of Jerusalem is festooned with political placards and posters. One of them says: “Transfer means peace and security” — a slogan reminiscent of the Nazis.

Yet, such overtly racist slogans are not being met with the derision they deserve from the Israeli public, neither do the authorities attempt to remove them. “Transfer” (of native Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to neighbouring Arab countries, chiefly Jordan) has gained respectability; it has become the stated policy of Israel's far right, while moderates are scared to speak out against it.

Yet Israeli officials must realise that “transfer” is not a practical option; neither is the perpetuation of the current state of affairs with the Palestinians. The next Israeli government — whether led by Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or Labour Party leader Amram Mitzna — must act radically to break out of the impasse. In order to do that, Israel has three options only: a two-state solution, annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, and “transfer”.

The first option, that of an emasculated Palestinian state existing alongside Israel, means a return to the peace process and Israel's acceptance to withdraw totally from the West Bank and Gaza to the June 4, 1967, lines. This solution needs an Israeli “Charles de Gaulle” to carry it through; unfortunately, no such leader has yet appeared on Israel's political firmament.

The second option, annexation, which means giving 3 million Palestinians Israeli citizenship, is gaining support from an increasing number of people in the occupied territories. But this option would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state, replacing it with a multiethnic state — a solution that the Israelis, both left and right, find unacceptable for obvious reasons.

“Transfer”, meanwhile, is simply not practicable because neighbouring Arab countries — Jordan in particular — which have to bear its brunt, cannot tolerate it. Nor is the world likely to stand by while Israel carries out the biggest act of ethnic cleansing in modern times.

With these difficult choices, it is no wonder that the Jewish state is unable to decide what to do next. The country is waiting for a solution imposed from the outside, a solution that would protect Israel from itself and look after its long-term interests. This is the two-state solution proposed by US President George W. Bush.

It is hoped that the Americans were serious in what they proposed, and were not treading water while hoping that the proposal would soon be shot down by Arab and/or Israeli intransigence. It is in all the parties' interests to achieve peace.

Until a few weeks ago, Mitzna, a retired general and mayor of Haifa, had been a newcomer on the Israeli political scene. Yet he succeeded to unseat Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as leader of the Labour Party. So can Mitzna maintain this momentum and beat Sharon in next month's elections?

Not according to current indications. But there are still two weeks to go before polling day, weeks in which anything might happen. Mitzna, who came from virtually nowhere to clinch the Labour leadership, might yet pull off a bigger coup and win the election. Should this happen, it would not be because of any unique qualities he might have, but because he represents the only practical alternative to Sharon's failed policies.

It has been said that most Israelis had grown disillusioned with peace and became more extreme in their views. Yet they have not lost hope of achieving the security that Sharon promised but failed to deliver. More Israelis have been killed during Sharon's tenure than in the entire period since 1967. Reelecting Sharon will mean many more years of violent reactions.

Mitzna could win the election if he promises the electorate peace not only with the Palestinians, but also with all the Arab countries, according to the formula laid out at the Arab League summit last March.

Labour dashed the hopes of the Israeli peace camp when it agreed to be a partner of Sharon's and support his extremist policies. Israeli voters who support extremism would rather give their votes to the real thing than to the Labour leader. That is why trying to compete with Likud on extremism failed from the beginning.

Israeli voters are faced with a stark choice: They can vote for peace or for a continuation of the status quo. There is no doubt that there are many Israelis who would rather not choose as their leader a man wanted in Europe for war crimes. That would only perpetuate the image of Israel as a rogue state.

While the far right can rely on the settlers and soldiers for support, this can be offset for the peace camp by the Arab vote.

The bottom line is that it is impossible for the current cycle of violence to go on indefinitely. Both peoples need and deserve peace. But how can peace be realised?

It has become clear as the light of day that new leaders are needed on both sides. The Palestinians can never trust Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud. On the other hand, the Israelis have lost all confidence in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

While the Israelis have a mechanism (also known as the ballot box) by which to choose and depose their leaders, the Palestinians cannot boast such a luxury. On the other hand, Israel will always be able to deprive the Palestinians of independence, while the Palestinians can always deprive the Israelis of security.

Bush has apparently understood how difficult a situation this is. That is why he proposed a half solution; he publicly asked the Palestinians to replace Arafat, but failed to make a similar overt demand of the Israelis regarding Sharon. When Bush described Sharon as a “man of peace”, he did that half-mockingly. The American president was confident that his listeners were smart enough to understand that he meant the exact opposite of what he said.

Time is of the essence. The general election is almost upon us and, to win, Sharon only needs a few more Palestinian attacks inside the Green Line.

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US and Britain ‘running short of excuses for war’

An Arab press review, By The Daily Star, 1/13/03

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Abderrazzak al-Hashemi, commenting in Babil, the Iraqi daily controlled by President Saddam Hussein’s son Odai, says an intensive and fastidious seven-week search for banned biological, chemical and nuclear weapons by UN inspectors has produced nothing incriminating.
This after inspectors scoured “over 300 sites” in the country ­ “most of which were specifically designated” by US CIA and British intelligence “and 46 of which were not even suspect from far or near” ­ and after the said teams exceeded their mandate and carried out “pure intelligence work” by asking questions about Iraqi scientists, army camps and legitimate military production.
Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, told the UN Security Council that the search for doomsday weapons produced “no smoking gun” so far. Both he and Mohammed al-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), called on the United States to provide more specific intelligence to help in the search for any banned weapons.
Responding to the remarks by Blix that his team has not found a smoking gun in the inspections so far, writes Hashemi, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared (to NBC News) that no smoking gun is required for the United States to attack Iraq. “The lack of a smoking gun does not mean that there is not one there … You don’t really have to have a smoking gun,” according to Powell.
Immediately after the secretary of state made his remarks, Hashemi says, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw declared that while the UN arms inspectors have still to find doomsday weapons in Iraq, the burden of proof remains on Baghdad. Straw, in other words, “feigns ignorance. He knows, and everyone else knows, that such a thing is impossible ­ for how can a person prove he does not possess something that is not in his possession?”
Hashemi says the that “third leader of the gang,” US Vice-President Dick Cheney, went further than Powell and Straw, telling the US Chamber of Commerce: “Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or individual terrorist, which is why the ‘war on terror’ will not be won until Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of mass destruction.”
But, says the Babil leader writer, “Cheney knows, and so does the rest of the world, that there are no links whatsoever between Iraq and any act of terror anywhere in the world. On the contrary, Iraq is the victim of terror, including the state terrorism to which it is subjected by the US administration.”
The UAE daily Al-Khaleej sees the number of Arab countries on America’s hit-list after its war on Iraq as growing.
The Sharjah-based daily was commenting on a report by the CIA submitted to Congress in December and made public last week claiming that Libya, Syria and possibly Sudan are quietly trying to acquire or expand secret arsenals of mass destruction weapons.
According to the document, which features a broad overview of the most pressing proliferation concerns in the second half of 2001, Libya continues to develop a nuclear infrastructure, trying to negotiate with Russia a deal to purchase a nuclear reactor and secure Moscow’s assistance in developing the Tajura Nuclear Research Center.
“Tripoli still appears to be working toward an offensive CW (chemical weapon) capability and eventually indigenous production,” the report stated. “Evidence suggests that Libya also is seeking to acquire the capability to develop and produce BW (biological weapons) agents.” Syria is accused of trying to acquire precursor materials and knowhow for a chemical weapons program.
“Damascus already holds a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin but apparently is trying to develop more toxic and persistent nerve agents,” the CIA said. The agency believes it is “highly probable” Syria is also developing biological weapons.
The CIA said Sudan “has been developing the capability to produce chemical weapons for many years” and “may be interested in a BW program as well.”
Al-Khaleej says US accusations against Libya, Syria and Sudan concerning their purported possession of, or quest for, doomsday weapons are not made flippantly. “The country leveling such charges has its policies, strategies, national interests, alliances, friends and enemies. Any position the US takes vis-a-vis another country is a derivative of all these considerations.
“When the United States insists that Iraq holds weapons of mass destruction and prepares to wage war on it on the basis of suspicion, rather than proof, it simply means that Washington has a set war policy vis-a-vis Baghdad because the current situation in Iraq runs counter to US policy in the region.
“Likewise, when Washington names three Arab countries among scores of others around the world and declares that they stockpile mass destruction weapons, this means that they are also being targeted as potential enemies of the US, such as Iraq. The said countries will therefore be subjected by the US to either direct military action or to political and/or economic pressure via the UN Security Council or other means. In fact, this is exactly what the US has done against other countries, without providing incriminating evidence against them.
“The invariable question is: Why is Israel always exempt from any measure or sanction, even though the whole world knows that it stockpiles all sorts of weapons of mass destruction and engages in state terrorism on a daily basis with impunity? The answer is simple: Israel represents US interests in the region and the world.”
Al-Khaleej expects the number of Arab countries on America’s hit-list to keep growing, “which means that the impending American war will not be limited to Iraq.”
“As usual,” however, the Arabs have prepared “nothing” for the impending confrontation.
Zuhair Qusaibati, writing in the Saudi-run pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, says one story making the rounds in world diplomatic circles revolves around the search for a way out of the Iraq crisis.
The “tall tale,” he says, “is that  ‘Comrade’ Kim Jong II ­ rather than mate Vladimir Putin ­ will be the one to propose offering Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a safe haven in Pyongyang. ‘Comrade’ Kim is the latest addition to the long list of beneficiaries from the Iraqi crisis. The more Baghdad bows to the arms inspectors’ demands to avoid a devastating war by America and a consequent regime change in Baghdad, the further Kim goes in embarrassing and challenging George W. Bush by moving to unfreeze his nuclear weapons program.”
“Comrade” Kim does not fear for the Iraqi president’s fate despite the fact that North Korea and Iraq are partners in the so-called “axis of evil.” At the same time, Iraq is unable to take advantage of Kim’s defiance of the US president who has clearly elected to use dialogue with Pyongyang and might and fire in dealing with Saddam.
What is certain, according to Qusaibati, is that Saddam will not find his salvation in either Korea or in neighboring Iran, the third side in the axis of evil triangle.
Ali Khamenei promised that the Islamic world would not allow the Americans “to swallow Iraq and its oil wells easily.” But Iran’s spiritual leader, much as the “comrade” in Pyongyang, overlooked the fate of the man at the helm in Baghdad now that most Arab countries accept the impending third Gulf war as an inescapable fact.
Qusaibati says little joins Kim, Saddam and Khamenei except their common hatred of the American “godfather” sitting at the White House, happy to hear his administration’s “dove,” Powell, declare that no smoking gun is required for America to attack Iraq, thus closing ranks with administration hawks Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who continue tempting Americans with talk of the benefits an invasion of Iraq would have on the drive to win their “war on terror.”
Whereas he has been annoyed by Korea’s defiance, says Qusaibati, Bush is still able to use the intimidation or enticement weapon to neutralize the Arabs and enlist most of them either to prepare for joining the war or for watching it from the sidelines ­ promising money to some of them or special forces to chase terrorists to others; waving the stick in the face of some or CIA reports on their endeavors to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
According to Basem Sakkijha, writing in the Jordanian daily Ad-Dustour, “North Korea pulls out from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), moves to unfreeze its nuclear weapons program, blocks IAEA monitors, declares that any economic blockade against it would mean war, parades intercontinental ballistic missiles and hundreds of thousands of troops in Pyongyang, and raises the tone of its voice against Washington and the Americans reply that they would be addressing the problem by diplomatic means.”
“Israel is shocked and shaken by a case of corruption involving Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his speech to the Israeli public is blacked out by the Central Election Committee chairman for using official media to engage in election propaganda, the High Court of Justice lifts the election ban imposed on Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara by a right-wing-dominated Knesset panel, Sharon’s tanks keep shelling Palestinian towns and refugee camps, his troops continue their daily killings of Palestinian civilians and the US administration does not cease repeating that he is the democratically elected prime minister of a democratic country.
“Iraq opens all sites to UN arms inspections teams, allows them to interview its scientists, does not miss any opportunity to show its goodwill, sends diplomats all over the world to explain its position, meets tough deadlines set by the UN Security Council and remains silent in the face of provocation, and yet the drums of war continue beating around it and hundreds of thousands of troops, missiles and tanks keep pouring into the region together with a flood of statements hostile to Iraq.
“The Palestinian Authority (PA) condemns so-called ‘terrorist operations’ and appeals for peaceful solutions, irrespective of the political concessions involved; it announces elections, conditions permitting, together with a program to fight corruption, introduce a new constitution and shuffle the government, and yet no one objects when Sharon prevents PA members from traveling for a quasi-international conference to discuss the Palestinian reforms.”
After all this, Sakkijha adds, the Americans ask us naively: “Why are you so critical of US policy?” The depth of Arab hatred for Americans   surprises them. They introduce one initiative after another to bring us democracy and leak all sorts of news about the new face they’ll bring to the region. “In fact, they won’t mind seeing us dead with a grin on our faces expressing our elation with US policy. Where else can they find as unproblematic an enemy?”
Hashem Abdulaziz asks on the front page of the Yemeni daily Ath-Thawra: “Why are the American shouting?”He says Powell’s statement that the US doesn’t really have to have a smoking gun to invade Iraq is not surprising. “It’s several years since the American-British alliance has been waging war on Iraq on an almost daily basis ­ a war that is about to culminate in the destruction and occupation of Iraq in defiance of UN principles and the UN Charter that prohibit meddling in the internal affairs of a UN member state or in undermining its unity and territorial integrity.”
Abdulaziz attributes Powell’s statement to US frustration at Iraq’s full cooperation with UN arms inspectors. “Even provocations by some inspection teams went unanswered” by Iraq, he writes.
The Americans “thought that the inspection episode would provide them with the ideal opportunity to obtain all sorts of reasons to mobilize opinion for war on Iraq ­ except that Iraq’s positive response to the UN Security Council’s disarmament resolution turned things on their head, which in turn explains Powell’s insolent declaration,” Abdulaziz says.

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Not all White House reporters are pushovers

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The latest in a long line of presidential spinners, Ari Fleischer, began a news conference on Jan. 6 with a nice greeting: “Good afternoon and happy New Year to everybody.” But his bonhomie didn't last more than a minute.

“At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the president deplored the taking of innocent lives,” Helen Thomas began. “Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world?”

It was a simple question — and, unfortunately, an extraordinary one. Few journalists at the White House move beyond the subtle but powerful ties that bind reporters and top officials in Washington. Routinely, shared assumptions are the unspoken name of the game.

In this case, Thomas wasn't playing — and Fleischer's new year wasn't exactly off to a great start. His tongue moved, but he declined to answer the question. Instead, he parried: “I refer specifically to a horrible terrorist attack on Tel Aviv that killed scores and wounded hundreds.”

Of course that attack was reprehensible. But Thomas had asked whether President George Bush deplored the taking of “all innocent lives in the world”. And Fleischer didn't want to go there.

But Thomas, an 82-year-old journalist who has been covering the White House for several decades, was not to be deterred by the flack's sleight-of-tongue manoeuvre. “My follow-up is,” she persisted, “why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?”

On a dime, Fleischer spun paternal and nationalistic. “Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies and friends.”

What Fleischer had just called “the question” was actually his question. He had no use for hers.

Thomas responded: “They're not attacking you. Have they [the Iraqis] laid the glove on you or on the United States ... in 11 years?”

Fleischer laced his retort with sarcasm. “I guess you have forgotten about the Americans who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein's aggression then.”

“Is this revenge,” Thomas replied, “11 years of revenge?”

The man in charge of White House spin revved up the RPMs. “Helen, I think you know very well that the president's position is that he wants to avert war ...”

But the journalist refused to jettison her original, still-unanswered question. She asked: “Would the president attack innocent Iraqi lives?”

“The president wants to make certain that he can defend our country ...”

Thomas would not back off. She demanded to know whether Bush thinks the Iraqi people “are a threat to us”.

At that point, Fleischer went off message with a weird statement. “The Iraqi people are represented by their government,” said the man, speaking for the president of the United States. A journalist's persistence had led him to put foot in polished mouth.

Some people like to play “Hail to the Chief”. I would prefer to say “Hail to the dean of the Washington press corps — Helen Thomas”. She knows that asking truly tough questions involves a lot more than echoing partisan ping-pong.

After 57 years as a reporter for United Press International, she quit UPI in 2000 when it was bought by News World Communications, a firm affiliated with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's right-wing Unification Church. (Among its holdings is The Washington Times.) Since then, Thomas has been writing an incisive syndicated column for Hearst Newspapers.

In a speech at MIT a couple of months ago, Thomas told the audience: “I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter.” Media professionals are frequently unwilling to say in public what they know in private. When a mainstream journalist breaks out of self-censorship, the public benefits.

Day in and day out, Thomas is conspicuous for her fortitude at White House press conferences. And let's also give credit to an intrepid newcomer at such press follies. The other day, Russell Mokhiber of the Corporate Crime Reporter was asking a simple question that went unanswered: “Ari, other than Elliott Abrams, how many convicted criminals are on the White House staff?”

You can find transcripts of Mokhiber's many exchanges with Fleischer posted at www.commondreams.org — under the heading “Ari and I” — examples of unflinching questions and slimy evasions at the White House.

Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Mokhiber. It sure is refreshing to see journalists doing their jobs instead of going along to get along.

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Passionate attachment to Israel

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For more than 54 years the Israelis have committed acts that no other nation would get away with. But even here, in America, where it is not yet illegal to publicly ask the wrong questions, any public figure that does so is subjected to smears, intimidation and the attempted destruction of his career and reputation by Jewish organisations and by the very cooperative news media.

A few examples of these criminal acts committed by Israel include the treacherous attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171 others. There can now be no disputing that Israel knew its identity, and that the ship was in international waters and clearly marked as a US naval vessel. What was most treacherous, though, was not the perfidy of Israel, but that of President Lyndon Johnson ordering the recall of the sixth fleet when he found out that the attackers were not the Arabs but the Israelis. The treasonous compliance continues today, as corrupt politicians refuse to take any action against Israel and continue their efforts to hush up the whole affair although there seems to be a strong campaign by the Liberty survivors and other brave patriotic Americans in exposing the Israelis of their criminal attack.

Another example of Israel's callous disregard for its supposed “ally” America was the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, which killed over 200 US servicemen. According to former Israeli Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, Israeli intelligence knew of the plan by terrorists to bomb the building in plenty of time to warn the innocent men, but cynically refused to say anything.

In April 1996, the Israelis attacked a UN refugee camp in Qana, Lebanon, and killed 103 innocent men, women and children. A UN investigation determined the attack was intentional and stated that “while the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, the pattern of impacts in the Qana area makes it unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of technical and/or procedural errors”. Shortly after this report, the UN Security Council voted to condemn Israel for the attack and all nations, with the exception of the US, voted in favour of the resolution. In other words, intentionally slaughtering 103 civilians was not sufficient for the United States to condemn Israel. Yet, when Hizbollah attacks Israel's illegal occupation of southern Lebanon resulting in the deaths of two Israeli soldiers, the US is first to condemn this legal resistance.

During the past 27 months, the Palestinian resistance to the brutal and illegal Israeli occupation has resulted in more than 2,000 Palestinians and 670 Israelis killed. When Israelis are killed or injured by Palestinian suicide bombers, the White House wastes not a second to harshly condemn these brutal acts, and it does so in an understandable manner. But when Israelis drop a one-tonne bomb in the centre of a Gaza City apartment complex and kills 15 innocent Palestinians, including nine small children, the US issues a diplomatic statement criticising the attack only for using “excessive force”.

Other times when Palestinian children are slaughtered for throwing stones at tanks, the United States remains silent.

These are just a few of the criminal acts committed by the Israeli government and shielded from criticism by US politicians or even reported by the controlled media.

Shielding Israel from criticism and supporting the Jewish state no matter what crimes it commits has caused the United States the loss of respect around the world. In addition, Israel has cost American taxpayers more than $120 billion in the past 40 years. Our one-sided unbalanced Middle East policy has created the hatred of millions and the primary cause of terrorism that has landed on our own soil.

Criticising our government's dangerous policies and its submissions to the Jewish lobby doesn't make anyone less patriotic or any less American.

George Washington said it best when he stated that “passionate attachment to another nation produces a variety of evils... the illusion of common interests where no real common interests exist; adopting the enmities of the other; and participation in the quarrels and wars of the other without any justification. Still another evil is that such a passionate attachment gives to ambitious, corrupted or deluded citizens the facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country.”

The writer is a retired brigadier general and a graduate of the US Army's Command and General Staff College, and the National Security Course, National Defence University, Washington, DC. He served as a Company Commander with the 101st Airborne Division in the Republic of Vietnam in 1969 and 1970 and also served nearly three years of army active duty in and around the Middle East, between 1967 and 1969. 

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Conflicting signals between the White House and 10 Downing Street
Gulf News, 13-01-2003
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There are conflicting signals emerging between the White House and 10 Downing Street. The Bush administration has, within the space of 24 hours, twice increased the number of troops destined for the Gulf region. Yet British Prime Minister Tony Blair is quoted as saying that an attack on Iraq should wait until the UN weapons inspectors complete their task. But this, while he sends Britain's largest naval task force to the region since the days of the Falkland war.

It is also said Blair and American President George W. Bush will not make any "final" decisions until the UN weapons inspectors report to the Security Council on January 27. But Blair says January 27 is not a deadline and inspections will continue past that date.

Rumour and speculation are rife so it is difficult to gauge the measure of the thinking in such illustrious quarters. However, talk of Blair preferring that an invasion be delayed until autumn makes observers suspicious that he is having second thoughts. Certainly Blair does not have the support of the public behind him. And for a person who has one eye on his popularity ratings, it is all-important. It may affect whether there is war in Iraq, for Bush would not be keen on unilateral action, despite his claims otherwise.

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Realities, fantasies of situation over Iraq
By Dr. James J. Zogby ,  13-01-2003
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There is a disconnect between the reality of U.S. foreign policy and Arab perceptions about that policy. The issue of war in Iraq is a case in point.

During a recent visit to the Middle East it was made clear to me, in a number of conversations, that not only do many believe a war to be inevitable, but they also see that war to be part of a U.S. grand design to dominate Middle East and Central Asian oil, re-draw the political maps of the region and establish a type of U.S. imperial hegemony.

Now to be fair, such a view cannot be dismissed as mere "conspiratorial fantasy".  In fact, a number of individuals, many of whom are hard-line extremists, both inside the U.S. government and outside, but still close to the administration, have projected elements of such a grand imperial strategy. In articles and public forums they have advanced their case for a war on Iraq as the essential first step of a U.S.-led radical transformation of the entire Middle East region. The Pentagon's release earlier this year of a new military strategy paper calling for "preemptive U.S. strikes" and projecting a vision of U.S. military hegemony, only created greater fears about U.S. intentions.

This vision of an Iraq war and U.S. policy designed to refashion the entire Middle East after such a war is arrogant. It is also frighteningly naïve. Despite the unease it has caused in the United States and the fear and anger it has created in the Middle East, those projecting this war and post-war strategy are waging an intense battle both with the inner circles of the administration and in the broader arena of public opinion to establish their vision as official U.S. policy.  But thus far, they have not succeeded. The debate continues. The imperial war group has not yet won - nor do I believe they will win.

The president, to date, has gone only as far as to seek to apply maximum pressure on Baghdad to disarm and implement UN Security Council Resolutions on weapons of mass destruction.  While I believe and have argued that U.S. domestic politics has played a role in administration calculations, it has done so in two ways. On the one hand, the president found it useful to change the subject last summer and move the national political discussion away from the failing economy and corporate scandals to more Administration-friendly topics - i.e., national security and Iraq. On the other hand, while pushing Democrats to give him a freer hand in his efforts to confront Iraq, Bush has also been attentive to the concerns that the public is expressing about the possibilities of an Iraq war.  This explains the shifting of administration rhetoric on this subject over the last several months.

U.S. opinion sees the Iraqi dictator as evil and dangerous. They want to see him removed and even express support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq to disarm and depose the Baghdad regime.  It was on this wave of opinion that Bush built his initiatives to pressure Congress to get behind his leadership.    

But, U.S. public opinion has deep reservations about a war with Iraq as well. They are concerned with casualties (both U.S. and Iraqi civilians); they do not want to see the U.S. go it alone and they want UN backing for any conflict; they are wary of any prolonged U.S. military presence in Iraq and if there are to be hostilities they want the U.S. military to remain in the country after the conflict for as short an amount of time as possible.

Attitudes such as these do not lend themselves to support for grand imperial schemes.  And it is attitudes such as these that can explain why President Bush decided, after all, to go to the UN to seek UN Security Council Resolution 1441 and now hints that the U.S. may see a second UN resolution as necessary before any hostilities can be launched; or why after floating the possibility that a U.S. general might run a post-war Iraq, the Pentagon dropped the idea; or why recent administra-tion statements on Iraq speak only of disarming the dictator, not removing him; or why, even though verbally abusing the inspectors, the Administration shows some degree of cooperation with this effort.  The inspectors remain critical to U.S. policy since if they fail to produce a "smoking gun" proving Iraqi non-compliance, then UN support and also U.S. public opinion support for a war will not be easy to achieve. 

Given all of this, some have gone so far as to suggest that, in reality, U.S. policy goals would easily be met by either a verifiably disarmed or deposed Saddam and that U.S. war-talk and actions to date are designed mainly to apply maximum pressure on the regime in order to bring about one of those two ends.

At the end of the day President Bush is a conservative, to be sure, but a pragmatist as well. Ideological visions may be useful in shaping the policy debate - but they do not win wars, win elections or hold sway in the all-important court of U.S. public opinion.

The U.S. is not well suited to empire building or management.  We are an unruly and even, at times, chaotic democracy, more driven by day-to-day domestic concerns than grand schemes, especially those involving foreign affairs. Despite our power and our economic and military global reach, there are clear-headed leaders within the military and State Department who, understanding the realities of the world and of America's democracy, are against over extending our commitments and our designs in the world.

Right now, President Bush has on his plate both the important business of Afghanistan - bin Laden and Mullah Omar remain free and the newly installed government is still not in control of much of the country - and several critical domestic economic concerns.

Bush will not repeat the error of his father's administration. Bush Sr. won a war and lost reelection because the economy did not recover and the budget compromise he reached with Congress early in his Admini-stration cost him important conservative support.

The neo-conservatives within this Administration may have designs on an empire, but President Bush's principle designs are on re-election in 2004. He may be far out on a limb with war talk and war preparation, but not so far out that he is left without a way to declare victory and pullback should Iraq change or unconditionally disarm.  And he is not so far out that if conditions are not right and public support is not strong enough or sustainable enough to risk engagement in a long-term military adventure that he will not be able to find a way to ease back.  The President's advisers know that a risky war, while potentially satisfying to some of his supporters, could prove fatal to his own, longer-term goals, and may, therefore, not be worth the risk.
   
So do not believe the op-eds or the "leaks" from unnamed "Pentagon officials".  The matter of the war and the goals of the war are not yet resolved.  And more than that, the grand scheme you and I have read about that calls for redrawing maps and creating a domino effect of regime change - all are still just the fantasy of some neo-conservative ideologues.  They may write fanciful positions papers.  But the generals who must execute them and the politicians who must live or die by the consequences of these fanciful papers - all know better and are attempting to provide some restraint. 

This being said, it is still possible for the regime in Baghdad to miscalculate and set in motion a chain of events that could lead to a devastating war.

Depending on the outcome and duration of the hostilities it is also possible that, as a result of such a war, elements of the design of the empire-builders could be implemented and advanced. This, of course, should be avoided, which is why it is important for all of us to continue to act and urge others to act responsibly.  


Dr. James J. Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute.

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