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The Bush doctrine: Hubris and humiliation

From Israel’s ill-fated Operation Peace for Galilee in Lebanon to France’s Algerie Francais; from Sir Anthony Eden’s attempt to seize the Suez Canal to the CIA’s countercoup that installed the Shah of Iran after overthrowing Mossadegh, Western intervention in the Middle East has always had multiple ripple effects unthinkable to the original intent of its architect.

George Bush’s invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist dictatorship may well be judged by history as a story where the "victor" won all the battles, the vanquished the final war.

The swift collapse of the Iraqi Army in General Tommy Frank’s military blitzkrieg to Baghdad created understandable hubris in the "hearts and minds" of the shocked, awed neo con hawks who dominate the Pentagon and the White House. The Bush Doctrine, fresh from its successes in Afghanistan, had just destroyed the war machine of the cruelest, most tyrannical dictator in the Arab world.

As Saddam’s grotesque statue toppled in Firdaus Square and Bush landed on an aircraft career’s flight deck to proclaim "mission accomplished" in Iraq, the bubble of American imperialism reached its apex in the Middle East. The United States has prevailed in Iraq, the President boasted. Threats that Syrian Baathists and Iran’s Ayatullahs, Israel’s mortal foes in the Middle East, were next proliferated in the world’s diplomatic chancelleries and corridors of power, in the rumour and intelligence souks of the Levant. George Dubya Bush’s father may have defanged the Republican Guards and ejected Saddam out of Kuwait but Bush jr. had taken the high road to Baghdad. Nothing seemed impossible for the victorious, triumphant Americans in 2003.

The invasion of Iraq was the Bush Doctrine’s revolution in US foreign policy. The Arab-Israeli conflict, the search for a diplomatic solution to the Palestinian question that met the international two state consensus, was dropped from the agenda of the Bush White House. As the Intifada raged and Yasser Arafat was besieged, humiliated in Ramallah on a scale he had never been in West Beirut, Bush’s "man of peace" Ariel Sharon launched a brutal crackdown in Gaza and the West Bank that made the spirit of Oslo as dead as the imperial ruins of Nineveh and Persepolis. Bush vowed to bring democracy to the Arab world, halt the region’s nuclear arms race, intimidate Israel’s enemies by threats of preemptive attack and regime change, and bulldoze American power to redraw the map of the Levant. The Bush Doctrine was a messianic, radical vision that Osama bin Laden and his squad of nineteen made possible with their horrifying attack on America on September 11.

However, the neocon vision to transform the Middle East now lies in shreds. Two thousand years ago, the Greek play wright Sophocles warned against hubris, the idea that those whom the Olympian deities destroy, they first raise to great heights. Hubris, from Dubya’s smirk to the Fourth Infantry Division’s well oiled war machine in the Sunni Triangle to the CIA’s blizzards of cash in the Afghanistan, would now haunt the Americans. It all went horribly wrong for the neo con Chicken Littles in the Bush White House in 2004. First, the bombshell that Saddam possessed no WMD. Two, the exposure that the intelligence agencies had no clue about Iraq’s real threat to the West. Three, the failure to find Osama bin Laden and "smoke him out of his cave."

Four, the mayhem, looting, killings and a violent insurgency in Iraq that America’s victorious war machine was entirely powerless to predict, let alone prevent. While it is true that empires that do not fight colonial wars do not remain empires for long, Roman emperors, Persian Shahs or British Raj viceroys never had to confront Gallop polls and CNN.

With 140,000 combat troops bogged down in the Mesopotamian quagmire, a full scale revolt in the Sunni Triangle and no hope of an exit strategy that would not compromise American’s "global superpower credentials, the Bush Doctrine was trapped in a geopolitical sandstorm.

The American failure in Iraq has helped the anti-Western factions in Damascus and Teheran tighten their grip on power. A year ago, both Iran and Syria faced the serious threat of "regime change" and preemptive attack by a determined, victorious George Bush. Now Syria ignores UN Resolution 1559 to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and Iran threatens retaliation if Israel dares to take out its clandestine nuclear programme precisely because it knows that budget realities, if not the public zeitgeist in America, makes another imperial adventure in the Middle East impossible.

The Ayatullahs of Teheran, in fact, have every reason to thank Bush, their existential Great Satan. Dubya took out the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, their two great enemies. He enabled the Shia Grand Ayatullah Sistani to become the leading power broker of Iraq as General Tommy Franks ended thousand years of Ottoman, Hashemite, Baathist Sunni monopoly of power in Baghdad. His embrace of Sharon and Israel’s violence in Gaza triggered visceral anti-Americanism across the Arab East.

The neocon smear campaign against Saudi Arabia forced the kingdom to accelerate its diplomatic rapprochement with Teheran. No wonder Iran’s hardline mullahs swept the Majlis elections, purged the reformists and turned the nuclear programme into a cause of Persian nationalism, like Mossadegh’s crusade against British Petroleum. The Bush Doctrine gifted Iran and Opec with $53 crude oil, a $200 billion petrodollar bonanza that is formidable insurance against "regime change". Bush’s democratic revolution may have been clueless in the Mideast but it left one footnote in Pakistan. Commando General Musharraf handpicked an ex Citibank man as his PM. History repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce, Marx once noted. So true. The Bush Doctrine in Iraq proves the point. Do not wish for anything too badly in life. You may just get it!

Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker