From Mr M. Megawer

As President George W. Bush left the White House last Tuesday, a period full of political errors came to an end. George Bush came to office eight years ago proclaiming himself “a uniter not a divider” and he left office this week less popular both at home and internationally than any other president in the modern era.

President Bush’s presidency was marked by politics of intimidation, deception, hate, division, fear and doubt. He changed the course of events but, rather than for the better, things went seriously and dramatically wrong. The Bush administration firmly believed that as the USA was the last remaining superpower it could impose its will on the world even with force, and it made little effort to compromise with or even listen to a world it wanted to bring to heel.

During its eight years, the Bush presidency boasted of the need to maintain full-scale control over the planet and to have more firepower than all its potential rivals combined. It disregarded treaties, scorned the UN and refused to talk to anybody with whom it disagreed. It was always doomed to failure because very few international problems can be handled with force. The Bush administration broke all records for unpopularity, for which it will be best remembered in the history of mankind. George W. Bush’s inexperience in foreign affairs made him unrealistic about what “freedom” and “democracy” actually meant to much of the rest of the world.

The failure of his administration has impacted upon the Middle East more than anywhere else in the world. The strategic context in the region has changed profoundly for the worse with the scandalous fabrication about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and subsequent invasion of that country. Despite no weapons of mass destruction being found in Iraq, over one million Iraqis died and Iraqi children are still suffering from illnesses caused by the war, while some five million Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq and in the region. As troops will withdraw later on this year, tension between Shias and Sunnis will certainly escalate. The Bush administration’s policy of failure in Iraq and elsewhere in the region has greatly diminished American credibility in the Arab world. Moreover, the leaders of those Arab states that are closest to the USA have lost legitimacy as they are being challenged by popular opposition at home.

The lack of condemnation of the Gaza crisis was clear enough proof that Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than the 43rd President of the United States. The atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli troops against innocent civilians in Gaza resulted in hundreds of innocent men, women and children being killed in cold blood, while thousands have been wounded. George Bush was repeatedly reminding the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire, but it didn’t! Israel broke it, first on 4 November – when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza, and then again on 17 November – when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.

The Arabs themselves are partly to blame, as they have shown gross indifference to the plight of the Palestinian people while Gaza was under attack. The Palestinians believe Israel’s real purpose is to keep them divided and unable to operate as an independent state, and they see proof of this in the Gaza war.

It is time for Israel to be taken to task and charged with recognising the will of the international community and realising that the politics of intimidation, deception, hate, division, fear and doubt changed last Tuesday.

Moustafa Megawer

QAWRA