Blame it on America, say both friends and foes (AP) 25 February 2006
CAIRO It may seem bewildering to Americans who see themselves as helping Iraq. The rush to blame the United States for the shrine bombing is a sign not only of the deteriorating situation in Iraq, but the tense state of West-Mideast relations overall. From riots over the blasphemous cartoons to Hamas election win, little is going right for the United States across the Arab world. Even a supposed friend a top Iraqi Shia leader, Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, who US President George W. Bush once praised at the White House took a poke after Wednesdays attack on the Askariya shrine, saying the US ambassador gave a green light to terrorist groups. The outcry, as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on a troubled visit to the region, is a sign of just how much Americas Mideast policy has unravelled in recent months. Some of that was predictable and even positive in an odd way: the Bush administration has achieved some success at promoting democracy here. It could have expected that determined foes like Iran and Syria would fight back hard as they are. But other, unforeseen problems have cropped up. One is the widespread Mideast belief that the Iraq war is going badly, and that the United States having invaded against Arab wishes is now responsible for the growing sectarian violence. Or, as then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell once supposedly, famously warned: You break it, you own it. With Iraq veering closer to civil war, many feel like Dr Nabil Salim, a political science professor at Baghdad University who says US-led forces share blame for the shrine bombing because they are in charge of security in the country ... And they are not doing a good job of improving internal security or controlling borders. Beyond Iraq, there have been other controversies undermining US stature here that no one could have foreseen. First was the culture war fight over the blasphemous drawings, and the serious misunderstandings it exposed on each side. Countries like Iran and Syria found the perfect chance to kick back at America the symbol of the West allowing destructive riots that accused Europe and the United States of seeking to destroy Islam. Those then spread. Then there was Hamas and its election win, and the escalation that caused in the ever-present tension over American support for Israel. Old friends Egypt and Saudi Arabia told Rice this week they wont go along with US hopes for a total aid ban to a Hamas-led Palestinian government. Even Abu Ghraib still causes a stir here. When new pictures of Iraqi prison abuse emerged earlier this month, Egyptian critics promptly used them to accuse Rice of hypocrisy for citing Egyptian human rights woes. The problem is that the Middle East is in fact deeply troubled rage toward the West that lead people toward extremism. Complicating it all are sectarian tensions, mostly Shia-Sunni, that are easily exploited by the likes of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi seemingly determined to cause not just civil war in Iraq, but internal Muslim divisions across the region. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah no friend of the United States hinted at just that Thursday when he told huge Shia crowds in Lebanon: Lets not blame each other. We shouldnt give them that opportunity. We should limit the accusations to the American occupation, its agents and the Sunni extremists. Toward those our rage should be directed. In the end, it may never be known who actually blew up the shrine: Many Shias did immediately blame Sunnis so extreme, like Zarqawi. Many Sunnis in turn immediately blamed extremist Shias, saying they blew up the shrine to appear more like victims and strengthen their political hand. All sides Shia, Sunni, Hezbollah, Iran, friend, foe blamed the United States. Why? In the end it may boil down to this: America is the outsider. And if youre an outsider trying to get your way, sometimes everybody else may pull together just enough to blame you. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/February/middleeast_February786.xml§ion=middleeast&col= Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
