Global Policy Forum

By Abdel Monem Said

Probably no area of the world had a keener interest in President George W. Bush's address on Tuesday than the Middle East. And probably nowhere will there be greater disappointment.

People in moderate Arab states will have concluded that the president, in a number of significant ways, is woefully misguided in his approach to the region's troubles.

First, the American government seems to have divided the Middle East into separate problems, each in its own little box: Iraq, Iran, the Palestinians and the Israelis, fundamentalism, terrorism. To an Arab these are all related issues. The United States should concentrate on the problem whose resolution would, ultimately, solve all the other problems.

That problem is not Iraq. In fact, tackling Iraq will worsen the situation in the Middle East.

It is the Palestinian question whose resolution has the best potential for a positive impact on the region and beyond. Unfortunately, this question received only a passing reference in the president's speech.

Second, Arabs do not agree with the rosy American view of an invasion of Iraq. Bush seems to believe that the Iraqi people will look at American soldiers as liberators. In three to four weeks Saddam Hussein and his cronies will be toppled. In a year or so Iraq will be a shining example of a democratic and prosperous country.

Arabs have a drastically different view. Some Iraqis will look at Americans as new colonialists. The various Iraqi factions and ethnic groups will take the opportunity to settle old scores. Iraq will descend into chaos.

Turkey and Iran will interfere. The fragile countries of the eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf will suffer. The Arab-Israeli conflict will become increasingly volatile as the flames of violence and fundamentalism cross national borders.

Third, President Bush sees the war on Iraq as part of the global war against terrorism. But in the absence of clear evidence of links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, Arabs see the Iraq campaign as a deviation and distraction from the real fight.

Iraq, now greatly weakened, is incapable of threatening its neighbors. Terrorism remains a greater threat. By going after Iraq the United States is taking the easy way out - a classic war in which it can find a capital to bomb, a regime to overthrow and weapons to dismantle. The war on terrorism is a completely different one, with political and socioeconomic dimensions that call for patience and agonizing time.

The historical bond between the United States and the moderate Arab states and mainstream Arabs in general contributed to the stability of the Middle East. For half a century the bond worked well - to thwart Communist expansion in the Cold War, to contain the waves of Iranian Islamic revolution and to end in 1991 Saddam's radical and regional ambitions.

Now, it seems for the Arabs, the major force for instability in the region is the United States itself, which is moving militarily to Iraq, ignoring the Arab-Israeli peace process, giving Ariel Sharon a free hand in Israel and insinuating a radical program for change in the region without building strategic understanding for it.

The writer is director of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, in Cairo.

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