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"This will just drive up anti-Americanism to new heights," warned Hass.
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CAIRO — The blind backing of the Bush
administration to Israel in its war on Lebanon will turn the "new
Middle East" into a quagmire for the US, drive up
anti-Americanism to new heights and undermine reform and
democratization efforts, former US diplomats and analysts believe.
"The arrows are all pointing in the wrong
direction," Richard N. Haass, who was President George W. Bush's
first-term State Department policy planning director, told The
Washington Post on Monday, July 31.
He warned that the "daily drumbeat of
suffering" in Lebanon and the heart-breaking images of children
killed in the Qana massacre is alienating Arabs.
Experts believe this policy would create a new
generation of Arab youth perceiving Americans as enemies, leaving the
US more isolated than at any time since the Iraq invasion three years
ago.
"The biggest danger in the short run is it
just increases frustration and alienation from the United States in
the Arab world…this will just drive up anti-Americanism to new
heights."
The US is coming under rebuke at the popular and
official levels for opposing an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon even
after the Qana carnage.
Up to 60 civilians, including 37 children, were
killed Sunday, July 30, in a deadly Israeli air strike on the southern
Lebanese village.
The deadly attack triggered a storm of worldwide
condemnations and demands for an immediate ceasefire, something the UN
Security Council failed to call for over American opposition.
Repression
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Alterman expects extremism to increase and "weakened" Arab regimes to "respond with more repression."
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Many experts believe the Bush administration's
Lebanon strategy would enforce an already common perception that
American bias towards Israel exceeds all and every red lines.
Mara Rudman, a deputy national security adviser in
the Clinton White House now at the liberal Center for American
Progress, fears such a wrong-headed foreign policy would only fan
extremism.
"The worst-case scenario . . . is a much more
radicalized Islamic fundamentalist Middle East and much more isolated
Israel and a much more isolated United States and fewer people to talk
with," he said.
Foreign policy veterans in Washington expect the
openly one-sided Lebanon policy could end up straining relations with
America's Arab allies.
Jon B. Alterman, a Middle East specialist at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, outlined a bad-case
scenario in which Hizbullah emerges stronger from the war and takes
credit for rebuilding a bettered Lebanese south.
"The reaction of surrounding states weakens
them, radicalism rises, and they respond with more repression,"
he went on.
"None of this is especially far-fetched. And
in all of this, the US is seen as a fundamentally hostile party."
The American daily also expected domestic pressures
on countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which initially blamed
Hizbullah for the crisis, force them to distance themselves from the
US and crack down on opponents to keep power.
Optimistic Bush
President George Bush believes the Israeli war on
Lebanon is a "moment of opportunity" for broader change in
the region and that the "consequences will be profound for our
country and the world."
Haass, who now heads the Council on Foreign
Relations, laughed at this public optimism.
"An opportunity?" Haass said. "Lord,
spare me. I don't laugh a lot. That's the funniest thing I've heard in
a long time. If this is an opportunity, what's Iraq? A
once-in-a-lifetime chance?"
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice created seismic
waves across the Arab world when she said earlier this month that the
Israeli-Hizbullah conflict was paving the way for a new Middle East.
Analysts and former diplomats, both Arabs and
Americans, wondered what kind of a Middle East that could emerge from
such shocking scenes and massive destruction caused by Israel.
Writing in The Washington Post Sunday,
former Secretary of State Warren Christopher gave Rice a lesson in
sound diplomacy.
"Every day America gives the green light to
further Israeli violence, our already tattered reputation sinks even
lower."
