DETROIT -- They started to arrive first in a trickle, then in droves. Last Wednesday morning, I was in Detroit at an Iraqi cafe watching the events in Baghdad unfold. My photographer and I were the only people in the place who were not born in Iraq.
Cigarette smoke filled the air and the people who fled Saddam's Iraq sipped on tea or coffee as they watched Al Jazeera, the Arabic television network, and the sight many of them dreamed of for decades: Saddam's power collapsing.
I talked to men who were tortured, lost relatives in prison or had fathers, brothers or sons die in one of Saddam's failed military adventures. Men were there who had served in the Iraqi army or left before they were forced to.
One man ran into the cafe shouting and proceeded to spit at the TV set as the crowd in Baghdad started working to topple Saddam's statue. These people had a stake in what was happening and the events were deeply personal. They were jubilant, jumping in the air when the big statute went down. They shook hands, kissed one another and shouted in words I didn't understand, with the exception of a few universal expletives.
Afterwards, many of the men talked about getting calls through to relatives back in Iraq and plans to return to their homeland for a visit. For them, the war was worthwhile for now, but there were long pauses when they were asked about the future. Most had only vague thoughts about what the war might mean for a democratic Iraq and other vital issues like the plight of the Palestinians and the fear of Saudi-bred Islamist terrorism.
They were pleased with President Bush on this glorious day, but still wondering what the historic implications might be.
Others are not so troubled by complexity and history for them is only something to be spun to advance a partisan political agenda.
Later that night, while channel surfing between periods of a Maple Leafs playoff game -- thank God, finally something good on TV -- I ran into a ranting wave of nonsense and thrashing sound and fury. It was Sean Hannity on Fox Cable's "Hannity and Colmes." Hannity was, as usual, enraptured with himself as he went on a tumultuous tirade about how those who opposed the war were "on the wrong side of history."
Mind you, Hannity's idea of history is watching reruns of "The Brady Bunch" and reading the headlines from yesterday's New York Post. With those credentials and his unchallenged volume, Hannity was hyperventilating about how those of us who questioned the wisdom of attacking Iraq just don't understand the great surge of history that drives and justifies the military action.
Hannity's read (I'm being generous) on Middle Eastern history proves to him that showing American military muscle is the path to freedom, liberty and democracy in that region, and better security and prevention of terrorism back in the United States. Hannity and others of his ilk see Saddam's totalitarian political order in Iraq as part of an Arab and Islamic tradition that challenges western values and constitutes an imminent threat to our national security and the American "way of life."
Such a historic threat must be confronted in a great American crusade, which George W. Bush truly believes God has selected him to lead. Other irritating political orders in the Islamic world, like those in Syria and Iran, must also be confronted and made to conform to "our way."
This thinking disturbs Bernard Lewis, one of the foremost scholars on the Middle East. "In the western world, knowledge of history is poor -- and the awareness of history is frequently poorer," Lewis recently said during a lecture in Toronto.
He is Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, a British Jew and a longtime critic of simplistic, contemporary interpretations of the sources of conflict between the West and Islam that the United States is using as a guide for action.
"People often argue today as if the kind of political order that prevails in Iraq is part of the immemorial Arab and Islamic tradition. This is totally untrue. The kind of regime represented by Saddam Hussein has no roots in either the Arab or Islamic past."
Lewis argues that Saddam and his Baath Party stem, not from the Koran, but rather from European fascist traditions, most notably the Nazis, who were planting their propaganda in Syria and Lebanon when Vichy France controlled the area after 1940.
That influence inspired an apparatus of surveillance, totalitarianism and torture the Baath Party found useful in its ascent to and preservation of power. That fancy for fascism spread into Iraq and is a legacy of perverse European modernization, not the message of Mohammed, Lewis argues.
He does see hope, however. "The idea of absolute rule is totally alien to Islamic practice until, sad to say, modernization made it possible. ... Modernization has not erased the fact that the peoples of the Muslim Middle East have a tradition of limited, responsible government. While not democratic, this tradition shares many features of democratic western governments. It provides, I believe, a good basis for the development of democratic institutions -- as has happened elsewhere in the world. I remain cautiously optimistic for their future."
But before building democratic institutions in Iraq, the great challenge is to restore civil order and end the looting and mayhem that rage in the streets of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. Hospitals are shut down and museums ransacked.
In his weekly temper tantrum, Field Marshall Rumsfeld criticized media coverage of the chaos. The defense secretary defended the inability of U.S. forces to maintain any semblance of order. "You cannot do everything instantaneously," he whined, adding, "It's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes." That's an unusual justification for lawlessness from a "law and order" administration.
Rummy may protest, but the Geneva Convention he occasionally quotes clearly requires the occupying authority to maintain civil order. Our forces seem ill-prepared to do that and that does not bode well for their military role in establishing a working democracy in Iraq.
We do have a track record in that area and it's not pretty: Afghanistan, a land the new conquers of Iraq have strangely forgotten. After running the Taliban out of power, the Bush administration promised the dawn of democracy in that war-torn nation and helped install Harmid Karzai as president.
After the Soviets were driven from Afghanistan, we offered token assistance to build public education and other democratic institutions. But we quickly lost interest and moved on to other things, opening the door for the Taliban regime.
With usual historical blindness, we are repeating the same mistakes. Last December, President Bush signed the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act into law. It authorized $3.3 billion in economic, political, humanitarian and security aid for Afghanistan over the next four years. But one month later, when Bush submitted his budget authorization to Congress, the request for funds for Afghanistan was quite a bit less than that -- as in zero dollars. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The administration, always big on symbolism, often fails on the "show me the money" challenge. Republican congressional aides quickly jumped in and penciled in $295 million to cover for Bush's "oversight."
The military situation in Afghanistan is still unsettled, with pockets of resistance putting U.S. forces in peril, and much of the countryside is slipping back into the control of fundamentalist warlords.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's brother, says, "It is like I am seeing the same movie twice and no one is trying to fix the problem. What was promised to Afghans with the collapse of the Taliban was a new life of hope and change. But what was delivered? Nothing. Everyone is back in business."
Building from scratch functioning democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq may present far more difficulties than routing the Taliban and Saddam's paper tiger forces which, for the most part, scattered without a fight.
The jury is still out on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, the stated prime reason for invading Iraq. Whatever vestiges of chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons are there, we're sure to find something to justify "preemptive" war.
And what about Saddam's link with al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorists? That's the biggest myth of them all, but still sadly bought by a large number of duped Americans.
The fall of Saddam does not make us any more secure from al-Qaeda, and efforts to strike at that real danger are running into obstacles the Bush administration should be doing something to stop.
The Germans have broken up more al-Qaeda cells and captured more plotting terrorists than all other nations combined. Those foolish kids from Lackawanna the president labeled as an al-Qaeda cell are nothing of the sort.
In Detroit, the Justice Department is trying four "terrorists," largely based on the testimony of one career criminal at first charged in the case and then given immunity. The key "evidence" is scribbled, unintelligible writings in a notebook by a mentally ill relative of one of the defendants. Government lawyers say the notes show terrorist plots to blow up air bases in Turkey.
The Germans, who are more serious about these matters, have actually tried and convicted an associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers who knew they were plotting their mass murder when they were operating out of a cell in Hamburg. The al-Qaeda operative was convicted and the Germans did not alter a single protection in their criminal justice system in the process. Can you imagine that? John Ashcroft must be appalled.
Last month, lost in all the Iraq coverage, German police made another raid on a suspected al-Qaeda cell in Berlin. They found bomb-making equipment and flight-simulator software in the apartment of the six men who were arrested.
While keeping the suspects under surveillance -- old-fashioned police work -- the Germans learned something fascinating. The suspected terrorist cell's leader, Ihsan Garnaoui, met frequently with Muhammad Fakihi, who just happens be a top diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in Berlin.
The meetings took place at Berlin's Al Nur Mosque, a well-known hangout for Islamist extremists. The Germans told the Saudis of their concerns about the diplomat and, four days after the arrest, Fakihi slipped out of Germany, supposedly returning to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis now say they don't know where he is. Sure.
President Bush says he wants to bring democracy to the entire Middle East. Well, now, against my better judgment, we're in the neighborhood.
Let's insist on democratic reforms in Saudi Arabia and an immediate end to their fostering and financing of al-Qaeda and other instruments of terrorism.
When I see a member of the Saudi royal family who gave money to al-Qaeda hauled away in chains and Palestinians dancing in the streets, celebrating liberation on their own land, then I too will let out a cheer, invite Rummy and Dick Cheney over, pop open a bottle of Dom Perignon and say, by golly, George W. Bush's methods were wrong but, in the end, he was right.
I'm afraid I have a long wait for that celebration.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 15 2003 |