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Bush's Crusade Backfires
(Paul McGeough, The Syndey Morning Herald, July 24, 2006)
AS CONDOLEEZZA RICE dawdles on her way to the Middle East, Washington is rushing to replenish Israel's arsenal of precision-guided bombs. . . . In a region burdened with a history of self-serving double standards by the West, this shipment is just another piece in a chaotic policy jigsaw that has plunged the region into crisis in the wake of September 11. . . . Iraq is a disaster; Afghanistan only marginally less so. . . . The collapse of these two has provided the launch pad for a new Iranian ascendancy that tears into the ancient schism at the heart of Islam - Sunni versus Shiite. . . . Listening to no advice, Israel has embarked on one of its most aggressive military campaigns in decades. And America's gift to the region - democracy - has delivered power to US-declared terrorists in the Palestinian territories and to a pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad. . . . Lunging for control of their own destiny, Shiites in Iraq and Lebanon have taken their cue from the U.S. prescription for change through war and violence. . . . As a result, Washington's Sunni client regimes - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the statelets of the Gulf - now cower in the face of a combustible cocktail of strident Shiite ambition and intense Arab resentment at their dependence on the US and at Washington's guardianship of Israel. . . . "These leaders spend time on cosmetic democratic reforms. But the concessions they make are to Washington, not to their own people." . . . As Israel and Iran ignore Western efforts to restrain them, there is a growing unease that any ability to control events in the region is slipping from the grasp of foreign powers. . . . "After 9/11, the US and its allies took the terms 'national liberation' and 'resistance' and they did a damned good job of transforming them into 'terrorists'. . . . "The modern Hezbollah can't in any way be termed a terrorist organisation. Clearly it's a resistance movement - the US declarations against it have no meaning here. And if Washington persists in lumping everyone together as terrorists, Arab public opinion will end up supporting Osama bin Laden." . . . The American replenishment of Israeli arms will stoke Arab anger and will be used to justify Iran supplying missiles to Hezbollah. It ill not help that reports from Washington described the shipment as the fast-tracked delivery of part of an order placed last year which included 5000-pound bunker-buster bombs. . . . "Where are those who filled the world with slogans of freedom and democracy? Don't they fear that history will condemn them for their double standards?"

posted by LoZo 4:06 AM