GEORGE BUSH'S BLUNDERS

War killed 655,000 Iraqis

Rashidul Bari

Many political pundits started writing books assessing President George Bush's successes and failures. He is leaving White House after seven months. How much he could do in these time period? Could he fix the damage he made over the past seven years? Could he leave Iraq before he leaves White House?
   Harry Truman, the 33rd President of the United States, gave a permission to drop Atomic Bombs on Japan-which killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki.
   
   Is Bush a man of God?
   We know that President George W. Bush is a man of God. "A few of his predecessors have been as openly religious as him" said Jerald Posman of York College. Theoretically he is the strongest person in the world. However, that has never been the case in reality. Many of his biggest adversaries, international figures, even his closest associates have been lashing out at him and his administration such as Barack Obama, Muhammad Yunus and many more. Why has Bush become everyone's punching bag? Former White House press secretary McClellan claims in his new book that his former boss misled him concerning the CIA leak case.
   Public Affairs - which published Muhammad Yunus' two best sellers: Banker to the Poor, and Creating a World without Poverty -- the publisher of McClellan's "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What's Wrong with Washington" - released the book on 28 May. McClellan writes, "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the President himself." Like McClellan, many Americans believed that the President purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq. People believe that Mr. Bush likes to govern rather than making the best choices. Why people like McClellan harshly criticized the president? This is the big question.
   
   Digging the Truth
   Everything goes back to the roots of the problem-the September 11, 2001. It was the day when the followers of Osama Bin Laden hijacked airplanes hoping that they could destroy the United Sates by hitting few buildings! Millions of Muslims became victims because of that single terrorist act. As a result, every single Muslim has been treated as a potential terrorist by Bush's Administration since 9/11. He also invaded Afghanistan and Iraq to hunt bin Laden. However, millions of innocents lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq but Laden still enjoys freedom to video-tape his voice threatening both: secular Muslims and Christians alike.
   
   Solving the problem
   One cannot destroy terrorist nor can bring peace through war. We must need to address the basic issue of terrorism and solve it in a human way, address those issues and solve them one by one, piece by piece. "It could be done" said Yunus, "If there's frustration among Muslim people for something-either it's an economic frustration or a political one or some sense of deprivation that we are not being listened to, terrorism will be good breeding ground for terrorism." This is why war cannot stop terrorism. It will come back in a more frightening way. So instead of trying to conquer it through war, we need to sit down together (all monotheists and polytheists) on the table of brotherhood to discuss the issues and solve them in a peaceful way.
   These two wars (where Bush spent $3 trillion) bring nothing but more blood, the blood of innocent people including women and children!
   
   War of revenge
   To the question, "Why did you invade Iraq?" President Bush should be forgiven for answering, "...because of anger...the murder of 5,000 innocents made me mad..."! War killed about 655,000 Iraqis or more than 500 people a day since the U.S.-led invasion, according to a CNN report on October 11, 2006,. Thousands of people died from worsening health and environmental conditions directly related to the conflict.
   
   Bush loves oil
   Bush loves oil, so does his Vice President. The pair has a great deal of affection for oil since their Texas days. In fact, Dick Chaney used to be the President of Halliburton, one of the biggest oil exporters in the United States, while Mr. Bush was the Governor of the same state. So Iraq war was not for protecting homeland, but to ensure the continued flow of cheap oil from the Gulf? But oil was not the reason either! "Imposing democracy"-played the significant role in Bush's Iraq invasion. What drove the godly 'man of oil' to became the 'symbol of democracy' (in the eyes of Karl Rove)?
   "In God we Trust" is the official motto of the United States of America, and "imposing democracy" was Bush's personnel motto in Iraq. In fact, Bush said to James Robinson in 2000: "I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it." Thus, in December 2000, a month after Al Gore won the popular vote, the Divine (Supreme) Court declared George W. Bush to be the 43rd President of the United States. Perhaps the highest court elected him because its nine divine angels believed that the man of Taxas was more God loving than the man from Tennessee to preserve the official motto, "In God we Trust". They elected him regardless the popular votes. (Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000).
   
   What happened?
   In 2003, the 'man of God' picked Iraq to experiment his motto without thinking about the serious consequences. In 2002, Obama opposed the Iraq war on Iraq and predict, "It would require a U.S occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences." The Senator was right.
   America is the richest country in the world, but that does not mean we have to throw away trillions of dollars on 'War on Terror' because-as Muhammad Yunus said to Amy Goodman, "...terrorism cannot be won by the military action. Terrorism must be condemned in the strongest possible language. We must stand solidly against it and find all the means to end it. We must address the root cause of terrorism to end terrorism for all time to come. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor is a better strategy than spending it on guns."
   
   Trillion dollar war
   So far, Iraq war cost us more than three trillion Dollars! In a world with millions of poor and illiterate children, we could have achieved literacy for all-for less than the price of a month's war in Iraq! "We are concerned about China's mounting influence over Africa, but the cost of a month of war in Iraq would double our yearly present aid expenditure in Africa. On the other hand, what we contribute in foreign aid to Latin America which is approximately $2.7 billion is what we spend in Iraq in a week. It is no surprise, which we've seen people like Hugo Chavez and countries like China move into the void because we've been neglectful of that." said Barack Obama. "I will end this war if I am the President. We will not have a permanent occupation and permanent bases in Iraq" the Senator of Illinois said who opposed Iraq war since the day one.
   
   In the name of democracy
   The 20th century saw all kinds of experiments from few noted players of politics (Lenin, Zedong, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Hitler); including fascism, socialism, anarchism, monarchism, Marxism and theocracy - and all came undone. Out of the cruel struggle among these political ideas-(somehow) democracy came out well on top through the contribution of many men such as Washington, Lincoln, Jackson and it protected by many more including George Bush, the first leader of the 21st Century's global village.(Clinton was the last leader of 20th Century).
   However, some Republicans-still praise Bush for his 'accomplishment' in Iraq. They claimed that Bush is the man of God who abolished the gunboat democracy in Iraq, but at what cost? By introducing the Gunpoint democracy? The consequences of the Gunpoint Democracy are dangerous: many Iraqi lost their loved-ones in the war. As a result, these people get terrified and see America as an occupier of their land rather than liberator as claimed by President Bush. Thus, they hate America-which eventually turns into anger which leads to shameful events such as burning of the American flag. "This anger and hate move men to kill but also to die" writes Fareed Zakaria in his "Why They Hate Us". Every initiative President Bush has undertaken such as keeping Lebanon out from Iran, Syrian sociopolitical control, creating democracy in Egypt, liberating Iraq, and secularizing Iran has made American enemies stronger, and allies weaker. Because of Bush's eight year long failed foreign policy, the next president (Barack Obama!) will be faced with some unprecedented challenges.
   Nobody is perfect, so does Bush. Thus, everybody including Barack Obama, Muhammad Yunus, Scott McClellan and Jerald Posman like to believe that the 43rd president is big enough to admits his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them by withdrawing forces from Iraq. That should be the mission of the lame duck, and this is his moment.
   Let's look forward to perceive a happy ending for George W. Bush. A happy ending will polish up his blunders and eventually give him a Truman like vindication-because "all's well that ends well".
   Rashidul Bari, biographer of Muhammad Yunus, is a Bangladeshi born writer based in the United States. He is a Secretary General of Bangladeshi American for Obama. His website: http://www.rashidulbari.info/http://www.bangladeshiamericanforobama.com/

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Sadeq Khan

We have seen how historically at times when a sense of sustained crisis and threat perception, believed to be of alien making, took root in common consciousness, Bangladeshis felt the urge for a consensus approach or a national unity government. When the right of state language and ethno-cultural identity was threatened, the common response built up the jukta front defence. When the right of self-determination and community sentiments were defied, the resource was simultaneous build-up of soft-power and hard-power defence by a united Bangladesh National Front.
   In the competitive field of the globalised order that we have entered at the threshold of the new millennium, a new urge began to take shape, that of national consensus and unified approach on governance issues, so that the nation may make best use of its development potential and global opportunities. We have seen the strong pleadings of the business community for a government of national conciliation in 2000 and 2004. We have also seen how the development partners led by the World Bank put on record their advocacy for a consensus approach on development and governance issues as a paramount necessity for the survival of Bangladesh.
   
   Psy-war attacks
   Indeed the survival of Bangladesh has come under question mark consequent to a sustained barrage of Psy-war of words ever since our people achieved the nation-state status. First, the economic viability of the state was questioned. Then the adverse population pressure on its landmass was cited as a cause for concern of neighbouring states from unmanageable exodus of economic refugees. Both the alarms proved baseless. But at the turn of the new millennium, particularly since the 9/11 attack on America, Bangladesh has come under suspicious eyes of the western powers, and also under hegemonic pressures from its big neighbour as a likely source of trans-national terrorist threat. Alien propaganda began harping on concerns about internal conditions of Bangladesh that could turn it into a cocoon of terrorism. The adverse propaganda climaxed in claims about signs that Bangladesh was soon to become a failed state. The nation-state was thus put under a siege of psy-war adversity. The constructive urge from opportunity needs for a national unity government was thus buttressed by a defensive urge for combating external factors impacting on our internal order. Such external pressures need to be squarely met by combination of hard power and soft power bargains.
   Fingers are repeatedly being pointed to Bangladesh as a possible source of terrorist subversion even for remote places of serial bombings like in Hyderabad or in Jaipur in India. Bangladeshi wage-earners in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are under orchestrated propaganda attack about alleged criminal conduct and lawlessness. This cannot but be matter of serious concern for the state that depends a lot on remittances. Some go so far as to believe that the current food crisis in the world market heightened by organic fuel production is a diabolic scheme to discourage Third World countries like Bangladesh to abandon industrialisation competitive to First World products and revert to agriculture, albeit rewarding, and become technology dependent food and service providers for the industrially advanced nations. Ignoring such extreme views, one cannot escape the simple conclusion that Bangladesh is under attack from historical or circumstantial adversaries, not the least for its success in becoming a competitive economy from the dire straits of dependence on international charity as ridiculed by the-then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as the international "basket case". On the other hand, despite the "war-on-terror" conditioning of the world order that forces Bangladesh revise its state policies in "defensive" hard-power terms to cope with "soft power" warnings of the coalition of powers engaged in anti-terror offensives, Bangladesh is likely to find, on account of its diligent and intelligent manpower-resources, geo-strategic location and various tiers of enterprise, windows of opportunity in the new world order. It is the blooming opportunity aspect of the idea of national unity government that I now come to.
   
   Global scenario
   For a brief outline of the global scenario in which we are precariously placed today as a 'vulnerable' (to put it mildly) nation-state, I shall quote from an analysis of "The Age of No-polarity' by Richard Haass published in the US journal 'Foreign Affairs' May/June 2008.
   "The dollar has weakened against the euro and the British pound, and it is likely to decline in value relative to Asian currencies as well. A majority of the world's foreign exchange holdings are now in currencies other than the dollar, and a move to denominate oil in euros or basket of currencies is possible, a step that would only leave the U.S. economy move vulnerable to inflation as well as currency crises.
   "U.S. primacy is also being challenged in other realms, such as military effectiveness and diplomacy. Measures of military spending are not the same as measures of military capacity. September 11 showed how a small investment by terrorists could cause extraordinary levels of human and physical damage. Many of the most costly pieces of modern weaponry are not particularly useful in modern conflicts in which traditional battlefields are replaced by urban combat zones. In such environments, large numbers of lightly armed soldiers can prove to be more than a match for smaller numbers of highly trained and better-armed U.S. troops.
   "Power and influence are influence are less and linked in an era of no-polarity. U.S. calls for others to reform will tend to fall on deaf ears, U.S. assistance programmes will buy less, and U.S.-led sanctions will accomplish less. ...
   "Web sites and blogs from other countries provide further competition for U.S.-produced news and commentary. The proliferation of information is as much a cause of no-polarity as is the proliferation weaponry. ...
   "At first glance, the world today may appear to be multi-polar. The major powers - China, the European Union (EU), India, Japan, Russia and the United States - contain just over half the world's people and account for 75 per cent of global GDP and 80 per cent of global defence spending. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Today's world differs in a fundamental way from one of classic multi-polarity: there are many more power centres, and quite a few of these poles are not nation-states. Indeed, one of the cardinal features of the contemporary international system is that nation-states have lost their monopoly on power and in some domains their pre-eminence as well. States are being challenged from above, by regional and global organisations; from below, by militias; and from the side, by a variety of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and corporations. Power is now found in many hands and in many places.
   
   Dispersal of power
   "In addition to the six major world powers, there are numerous regional powers: Brazil and, arguably, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela in Latin America; Nigeria and South Africa in Africa; Egypt, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, Pakistan in South Asia, Australia, Indonesia, and South Korea in East Asia and Oceania. A good many organizations would be on the list of power centres, including those that are global (the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the World Bank), those that are regional (the African Union, the Arab League, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the EU the Organisation of American States, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), and those that are functional (the International Energy Agency, OPEC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the World Health Organisation). So, too, would states within nation-states, such as California and India's Uttar Pradesh, and cities, such as New York, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai. Then there are the large global companies, including those that dominate the worlds of energy finance, and manufacturing. Other entities deserving inclusion would be global media outlets (al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN), militias (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Mahdi Army, the Taliban), political parties, religious institutions and movements, terrorist organizations (al Qaeda), drug cartels, and NGOs of a more benign sort (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace). Today's world is increasingly one of distributed, rather than concentrated, power."
   That it will not be possible for any state or non-state actor in the global order to ignore sole superpower interests altogether or to challenge its vital interests was also candidly explained by Haass with reason: "In this world, the United States is and will long remain the largest single aggregation of power. It spends more than $500 billion annually on its military-and more than $700 billion if the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are included-and boasts land, air, and naval forces that are the world's most capable. Its economy, with a GDP of some $14 trillion, is the world's largest. The United States is also a major source of culture (through films and television), information, and innovation. But the reality of American strength should not mask the relative decline of the United States' position in the world-and with this relative decline in power an absolute decline in influence and independence. The U.S. share of global imports is already down to 25 percent. Although U.S. GDP accounts for over 25 percent of the world's total, this percentage is sure to decline over time given the actual and projected differential between the United States' growth rate and those of the Asian giants and many other countries....
   "United States - for all its corrective mechanisms and dynamism-has not proved to be immune. It is not simply that the U.S. military will take a generation to recover from Iraq; it is also that the United States lacks sufficient military assets to continue doing what it is doing in Iraq, much less assume new burdens of any scale elsewhere...
   "The rise of sovereign wealth funds-in countries such as China, Kuwait, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates--is another. These government-controlled pools of wealth, mostly the result of oil and gas exports, now total some $3 trillion. They are growing at a projected rate of $1 trillion a year and are an increasingly important source of liquidity for U.S. firms. High energy prices, fuelled mostly by the surge in Chinese and Indian demand, are here to stay for some time, meaning that the size and significance of these funds will continue to grow....
   
   Single-mindedness needed
   "(Finally) Globalisation reinforces no-polarity in two fundamental ways. First many cross-border flows take place outside the control of governments and without their knowledge. As a result, globalization dilutes the influence of the major powers. Second, these same flows often strengthen the capacities of non-state actors, such as energy exporters (who are experiencing a dramatic increase in wealth owing to transfers from importers), terrorists (who use the Internet to recruit and train, the international banking system to move resources, and the global transport system to move people), rogue states (who can exploit black and grey markets), and Fortune 500 firms (who quickly move personnel and investments). It is increasingly apparent that being the strongest state no longer means having a near monopoly on power."
   It is quite clear, if we take into account the interpretation of the changing world order as above, that Bangladesh under a national unity government may benefit tremendously as a nation-state by intelligent "soft-power" bargains in the emerging world. On the other hand "hard power" involvement in decision making will be necessary not only for the protection of the nation-state, but also for compulsive expansion of its territorial horizons for exploitation of sea-bed resources of the Bengal Sea Fan' a natural claim of Bangladesh.

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