While the White House is sending American soldiers all over the world to “fight terrorism,” two prominent stories out of the Bush administration over the last week tell a different story.
In fact, it is no longer an exaggeration to say that the administration’s less and less thoughtful policies are now, incredibly, actively encouraging terrorism across the world.
First, consider the recent change of policy over Iran, which was issued in a presidential statement on July 12 but came to public attention only this week.
President Bush, of course, had already last winter listed the Islamic state, along with Iraq and North Korea, as part of his “axis of evil.” This was because–despite the fact that a relatively liberal cleric, President Mohammad Khatami, was formally running the country–certain ministries in Tehran were still actively supporting terrorism. But this part of Bush’s “axis” was quiescent–until now.
A front-page story in The Washington Post this week outlined that the president has now concluded that Khatami and his liberal supporters are “too weak” and “not serious” enough to deserve American support.
Instead, there was now a conscious decision to support “the Iranian people” directly, through such elements as recent large pro-democracy and anti-government street demonstrations in Iran.
Now what could we possibly have here?
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Is it possible that Washington is going to muck around again in Iran–and with the always explosive “street”?
Do you do it in the old way, with the CIA buying off “our” factions?
Have we discovered some magical new way to control from afar frenetic mobs on Near Eastern streets?
Oh yes, most officials will admit, it was that officious meddling and those old 1940s and ’50s tactics that did lead to the fall of the shah in 1979 and, the next year, to dozens of American hostages being taken and held for months. It was in large part those actions that led to Iran being isolated inside a brutal Islamic fundamentalist cocoon and shut off from America until now.
But now, the administration will insist, in today’s Iran, the huge numbers of young people, particularly the students, are pro-American, if only because they hate the retrograde ayatollahs so much.
America can once again become involved. Any legal or moral questions about whether America has the right to change regimes or to support anti-government forces in a foreign country are no longer even asked.
Meanwhile, prudent and historically apt words on the subject came from our former ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk. This approach, he said this week, “may help those we are trying to harm, and harm those we are trying to help,” because reformers can then easily be tagged as agents of the United States. “The same principle applies to Iran as the Palestinians. We should be careful about leaving the impression that we intend to determine who the leadership will be.”
Second, consider the White House’s decision, coming right on top of the Iran policy statement, that the United States would not contribute to the United Nations Population Fund, a UN agency that Secretary of State Colin Powell last year praised for its “invaluable work.” The White House decided to withhold a previously approved $34 million in aid for women’s health, family planning and contraception because it does not support any American funds going for the “management” of forced abortion or sterilization.
Let’s look at the facts. This announcement comes hard on the heels of a high-level State Department delegation sent to China in May to investigate this situation. The delegation found no evidence whatsoever that the program “knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”
In fact, by law the UN program is already barred from using U.S. money in China–so the outcome of the decision is only to punish other countries that desperately need family-planning help.
With 12.5 percent of the UN agency’s budget now wiped out, programs such as midwife training in Algeria and a new AIDS center in Haiti will now simply not be funded–and the United States will be seen, even more, as a unilateralist hegemon that cares little about the people of the world.
What do these two important decisions mean to us as Americans?
What do they tell us about the way this administration is heading ideologically–and the outcomes we can expect, particularly regarding terrorism?
First, from anyone who truly understands the wellsprings of terrorism, there is no question that these decisions will only feed its ugly wrath. The picture of America again involving itself in Iran, one of America’s historical areas of failed diplomacy–and announcing its intent to effectively change the regime–will serve to con-vince any unconvinced Third World young people that the United States imperium will not leave them alone and must indeed, as many of them already believe, be fought at whatever cost.
Second, one of the root causes of terrorism is overpopulation. Across the swath of the terrorist-producing countries–from overcrowded Egypt to overcrowded Pakistan–tens of thousands of undisciplined young males emerge from the schools every year, with no jobs or futures awaiting them.
To control population growth is absolutely the first call for reasoned and progressive societies–and yet, we are throwing it all to the wind in the name of the ideological delusion that seems to predominate today.
Third, these decisions show the extent to which the State Department and Secretary Colin Powell are being sidelined–and even deliberately humiliated (Powell was not even allowed to announce the population decision). They illustrate the degree to which the fanatic neoconservatives around the administration, the rabid Israel supporters in the White House and the Pentagon, and some of the Christian conservatives now have the president’s ear.
The neoconservatives’ larger policy, often spoken of privately and now even publicly, is that “the road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad and Tehran.” This is by way of introducing the idea that the U.S. must first “democratize” the entire Middle East, including Syria and Saudi Arabia, if necessary by military means, in order to secure Ariel Sharon’s Israel.
One wonders how many months these men, virtually none of whom have served in the military, will give it.
A strange and ominous quiet extends over Washington these days about all of these bizarre plans of the administration. But respected scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke directly to the problems this week, advising that “America should avoid the temptation of strategic oversimplification and should carefully avoid the risk of political, perhaps even historical, self-isolation.”
Yes, it is true that terrorism is being encouraged by many countries across the globe–but not always where one would expect.
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