The machinations of Washington's neo-conservatives have cost America dear yet the instigators of the disastrous war against Iraq have yet to admit to a single mistake, writes Mohamed Hakki* There was a time when no one knew who the neo-conservatives were. No one knew what they did or how intent they were on undermining the US national interest. A handful of people, perhaps, who cared about the Middle East and had been following the progress of the neo-cons with growing alarm, had an inkling of the havoc they would wreak. At the beginning of 2003, when the storm was gathering around Iraq, I was talking to a well-known Arab intellectual, a cabinet minister in the 1960s and 1970s. He asked me if I thought it could happen, that the US might really invade Iraq. We both agreed that it would be utter madness, dismissed the possibility, and blithely thought the voices of reason would prevail. Then the invasion happened. It was clear then, as it is clear now, that the plan for the invasion was conceived by this group of neo- cons. Now everybody knows them and is talking and writing about them. Tellingly, the word "cabal" crops up in many articles dealing with the upper echelons of the Bush administration. There is hardly a magazine across the political spectrum that has not discussed the role of the neo-cons in instigating, encouraging and pushing for the war in Iraq. Though two major players, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, are no longer at the Department of Defence, people continue to mull over their roles and influence over the war and their position within a group that is clannish and secretive. When Representative Walter Jones, the conservative Republican from North Carolina, clashed with Richard Perle, the Pentagon advisor who provided the Bush administration with logistical advice for the Iraq war, he said he was incensed that no one in the administration ever apologised for misleading Congress prior to the war. That was in April of this year. Jones had just written 900 condolence letters to families of fallen soldiers. He told Perle at a House Armed Services Committee meeting that he wished "there was somebody who was large enough to say we've made a mistake. I've not heard that yet." With neo-con chutzpah, Perle refused to apologise. He disavowed any responsibility for his confident pre-war assertions that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, heaping the blame instead on "appalling incompetence" at the CIA. The same thing goes for Perle's alter-ego, Paul Wolfowitz. Ariana Huffington, a conservative media personality, noted that while his former bosses Bush and Cheney are paying the price in public disapproval for leading us into the debacle in Iraq, Wolfowitz, one of the key architects of the war, has been successfully repackaged as the warm and fuzzy poverty-fighting president of the World Bank, and treated as an elder statesman. "Talk about extreme political make-over. Wolfie has gone from war-hawk to the second coming of Mother Teresa all without having to apologise for having been so wrong about Iraq." But Huffington should have known all neo- cons enjoy a sense of entitlement. If the administration is so naïve or stupid, why not enjoy their glory and bask in their own chutzpah? What is happening now is just as misleading and damaging to the country and its image abroad as Perle and Wolfowitz's actions were. I wonder who is advising the president to continue to defend failed policies in Iraq and continue to insist that America is succeeding. As Charley Reese, the anti-war.com columnist says, "the president has gone to Iraq only once, for a photo opportunity. He spiralled in, in the dead of the night, spent an hour or two in the heavily fortified Baghdad airport and then spiralled out. Never, so far, to return." Since he is so obsessed with the war, one has to wonder why he has not made several trips to the country. Leaders of other countries have done so. It's hard to lead from the rear. If things are going as well as he says, travel to Iraq should not present a great risk. What a great photo opportunity it would be if he would go out on a night patrol with one of the units. But there is no surprise there. Washington today is full of contradictions. First you fire all the Arabists from state and defence departments and the CIA and then start hiring nincompoops and half-wits to fill their places on fixed-term appointments. Then you rely on self-hating Arabs or bigoted elements of disreputable background and wonder why your policies are not working. Zbigniew Brezezinsky, National Security advisor under president Carter rightly says it is "particularly troubling that Bush also relied heavily in his recent speeches on what to many Muslims is bound to sound like Islamophobic language". "His speeches, though occasionally containing disclaimers that he is not speaking of Islam as a whole, have been replete with references to the murderous ideology of Islamic radicals, 'Islamic radicalism', 'militant jihadism', 'Islam-Fascism', or the 'Islamic Caliphate'." Such phraseology, Brezezinsky says, can have unintended consequences. Instead of mobilising moderate Muslims to stand by America, the repetitive refrain about Islamic terrorism might not only offend moderate Muslims but eventually contribute to a perception that the campaign against terrorism is also a campaign against Islam as a whole. I must admit that when the president repeats these terms so many times in one speech I personably feel offended, and I do not consider myself an Islamic extremist. America today is constantly trying to re- invent the wheel. Do the American people know how much the administration is spending on Al-Hurra television station and Sawa radio station? If it is true that they are spending more than $150 billion as has been mentioned in some recent articles, and the net result among the Arabs is zilch, isn't it time to ask why? There is no shame in anyone within the administration admitting that he or she does not understand the Arabs, though they should be willing to learn. Carter was quoted to me by a friend shortly before he was elected president, saying he had never met an Arab in his life, yet he became one of the most compassionate and understanding politicians when it came to Arabs. But to continue, as this administration does, to rely on bigoted elements, like Bernard Lewis, is unconscionable. On reading one of Lewis's revolting articles, Charles Glass answered him in The Nation, under the title "Lewis of Arabia": "In 1957 the United States was more popular in the Arab world than it is today. I know. I was there. We were not only popular, Arabs were crazy about us. At a dinner party someone might quote a line from our constitution or Declaration of Independence The boys in my high school in Beirut knew more about US history than the kids I had left behind in California. Moreover, they cared about it. In their eyes, America had never been a colonial power, had been a colony itself, had thrown off the master and gone off to prosper like no other nation in history. They wanted to be like us. Even the little matter of Israel was something the wise Americans would settle to everyone's satisfaction. Some of my classmates were named Woodrow or Wilson in honour of an American president who had argued in vain at Versailles for Arab independence. America never had to beg, buy, or fight for friendship. We had it -- had it, ignored it, abused it and lost it." * The writer is a political analyst resident in Washington.
