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Challenges lie ahead of U.S. Mideast policy |
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15:51, September 14, 2007 |
General David H. Petaeus, the supreme commander of the American forces in Iraq, and Ryan C. Croker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, submitted assessments reports to Congress and attended the serial hearing sponsored by both chambers of house respectively on Sept 10-11. At the hearings, Petraeus said there was a drastic decline in violence and civilian casualties in Iraq over the past three months, forces of al-Qaeda in Anbar prove has been foiled and the security situation there greatly improved.
Nevertheless, their testimonies have caused doubts and questions. Many people say Petraeus' assessment differs widely from earlier estimates of the national information agencies, reports from the Inquiry Committee of Congress and conclusions made by an independent commission of retired American generals. Some reports doubted the remarks about reduced violence in Iraq and denied any progress that has been made in its political reconciliation. Some analyses, therefore, hold that the testimonies given by Petraeus and Croke, both bigwigs from the war frontline, seem unreliable as they are simply doing the PR job for President Bush.
The price of Iraq War is extremely costly
The Iraq war in early 2003 is a divide for the U.S.' Middle East strategy in the present post-cold war era. The first Iraq war (or otherwise called the 1991 Gulf War) is a war has to be fought and it heralds the start of the "American era" in the Middle East, whereas the second war (the 2003 Iraq war) could either be fought or not to be fought, and it has abruptly terminated the era, noted Richard N. Haass, President of the US council on Foreign Affairs.
After the 9/11 attacks in the United States, the U.S. Middle East strategy, capitalizing on the international and domestic situation in the “war on terror", has been manifested in a concentrated way the four pillars of the "Bush-ism". First, to combat international terrorism and prevent weapons of mass destruction from being proliferated; second, to transform the Middle East with democratization and remove "social" soil for breeding Islamic extremism and terrorism; third, to overthrow with the "use of force" the "axis of evil" nations that back up and harbor terrorism and, resort to the unilateral action or “alliances of volunteers "pieced together if with the absence of authorization by the United Nations and, fourth, to classify the nations around the globe based on their attitudes toward anti-terrorism and in accordance with the position of the U.S.
The United States has paid dearly for its Iraq war with Bush-ism as its guidance in the past four years. This cost is measured superficially by its growing casualties of the US forces and huge military spending and, also shown penetratingly in the structural punches caused to the environment of the U.S.' Middle East strategy.
At beginning, military "architects" originally planned the Iraq war for three reasons, namely, searching for the weapons of mass destruction, initiating democracy and combating terrorism. For the first reason, the ultimate conclusion is the ban-breaking weapons have been destroyed and new weapons had not yet been manufactured. For the second reason, Iraq has fulfilled its democratic process with "three steps", and a "democratic" Iraq been born merely on the paper despite rampant terrorism and sectarian violence in streets. And for the third reason, the U.S. has indeed spotted in Iraq a main battleground in the "war on terror". But there were no forces of al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden before the war and, with the hanging of the former “tyrant" President Saddam Hussein, there comes a vacuum of "law and order" for al-Qaeda and other anti-American forces to break in.
Of other related developments, the Iraq war enables al-Qaeda to win its unexpected, strategic victory and Osama bin Laden has become the spiritual leader of the Islamic world. The power of bin Laden and his al-Qaeda comes from spiritual calls rather than from military power and money. The United States' invasion of an Islamic nation with its combat planes and tanks has infuriated the entire Islamic world.
Consequently, with an impasse which having bogged down the U.S. in the Middle East, the presence of the U.S. forces has provided anti-Americanism with a powerful spiritual motive power, while the pullout of American troops means a victory for anti-Americanism and will possibly result in the spread of Islamic extremism in the whole Middle East.
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