-Caveat Lector- Analysis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927902,00.html Arab hopes rest on toppling Saddam and humbling the US Martin Woollacott Wednesday April 2, 2003 The Guardian The chastening of America has begun and the likely outcome of the war is coming into view - one regime gone, in Baghdad, another humbled, in Washington. According to those who analyse Arab policy and follow Arab opinion from here, the hopes of Arab governments now centre on this prospect. "They do not want Saddam Hussein to survive," according to Shibley Telhami, of the University of Maryland, a well known broadcaster to the Arab world, "and know the United States could not let that happen, but are glad that America is not having the easy war it expected." Arab states wanted the quick war the US promised but also feared the triumphalist America which would have emerged from it. Now the least worst option for them would be the less confident US which a harder war might produce, one which would not contemplate further military adventures, would get out of Iraq quickly, and might redeem itself by a more even handed approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Much of the rest of the world might well go along with this. Yet, to use one of the new military words which have invaded Washington talk, how do you "calibrate" such a victory? The "too easy" part is a given, but how hard a war would be too hard? Too hard, and you skirt the destabilisation of Arab regimes, even more encouragement of terrorist recruitment, and even the possible retreat of an angry US from the region, from all engagement, whether good or bad. The problem of public opinion has become worse not only because every bomb that falls on civilians and every checkpoint killing further enrages Arabs, but also because the idea that Saddam might physically win has begun to take hold. The success of the Iraqi regime in tripping up US and British forces has moved Arab public opinion, according to Professor Tellhami, from a resigned acceptance of western victory toward the view that Saddam may somehow defeat the US. "A week ago," says Telhami, "if I had asked Arabs if Saddam had any chance, they would have said No. Today they would say Yes." And this assessment, fed by the Arab coverage of the war, is daily playing into the homes of Iraqis. Their portrayal as Arab heroes must add to the divisions and complexities of the Iraqi mood. In the Panglossian world of Centcom, where everything is always for the best in the best of all possible military worlds, the problem of the political war, which must be short and take few lives, and the war of the generals, which may have to be long and take many, also lurks behind the mandatory optimism. But, in the American coverage, it is often cast in terms of what is happening, or may happen, to the troops, or reflected in investigations of quarrels at the Pentagon. There seems to be no urgency in examining the military choices in the light, above all, of the politics of the war. Prof Telhami believes the war is already politically lost and that there remains only a choice between bad and worse outcomes. Other American students of the Middle East, like Edward P. Djerejian, director of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, Houston, and a former US ambassador to Israel and Syria, are not of that mind. "We are wedged between the two pressures," he says, "if the war is prolonged and the resistance continues, that could make it much more of a political balancing act." His argument is that the damage done during the war can be repaired by the right policies in post-Saddam Iraq and by immediate attention to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. There will be a reckoning for those so enthusiastically embracing Iraqi resistance. First, when US victory comes, second, less certainly, when the Iraqi reaction is more clearly grasped, and, third, perhaps, when post-war US policy reveals itself. But what the Arabs have almost certainly got right is that even if the war takes a sudden turn for the better, post- Saddam America will be a very different place from the country that existed only two weeks ago, perhaps weaker, certainly more cautious. Syria, rhetorically backing the Iraqis, is a straw which shows the way the wind is blowing. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 Forwarded for your information. 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