Doaa El-Bey looks for any glimmer of hope in Bush's new strategy in Iraq The new strategy for Iraq declared by US President George Bush last week Thursday is likely to increase violence and push the Middle East into further unrest. It only proved that Bush's prime concern this year is to secure Baghdad and safeguard his forces. Any talk about democratisation or stability are slogans of the past. Even the visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was regarded by many parties as unlikely to change the current situation in the region. Fouad Dabbour described Bush's new plan as a means of deepening the crisis in the Middle East. In the independent Jordanian daily Al-Dustour , Dabbour wrote that the plan has two targets: to control Iraqi oil, and guarantee the security and protection of the "Zionist entity". Dabbour underlined that the strategy aims to deal with the situation of the entire region, not only in Iraq, because it called for confronting Iran rather than opening channels of dialogue with it as the Baker- Hamilton report recommended. The strategy also called for dealing with Syria as the country which refused to bow to the dictates of the US administration. "Bush's strategy for Iraq and the region tries to correct mistakes with more mistakes; destruction with more destruction and war with a bigger war and more bloodshed," Dabbour wrote. Dabbour advocated constructive dialogue and joint efforts between all Middle Eastern countries, in order to avoid the dangers and horrors of war. "It is only through preserving the unity of Iraq and adopting a unified Arab stand that we can hold danger off." Rashed Saleh Al-Uraimi wrote in the independent United Arab Emirates daily Al-Ittihad that Bush's new plan carries within it the same seeds of failure, like his old plan. Increasing the number of US troops is not likely to end the havoc and state of civil war as past experience has proven. Al-Uraimi questioned whether Bush aims to pacify the situation in Iraq. "All the statements emanating from Washington aim to 'secure Baghdad' but any talk about stabilising the situation or reconciling the Sunnis and Shia or slogans like 'democratisation' and 'a new Middle East' are dead," Al-Uraimi said. Al-Uraimi said that while we hear about an old American plan and a new American plan, or Al-Maliki plan, we have yet to hear anything about an Arab plan. Al-Uraimi summed up his argument by asking whether the Arabs are out of all solutions for the region. Abdullah Khalifa Al-Shaigi called Bush's strategy, which was opposed by 70 per cent of the US public and a majority of the Democrats as a gamble, that by deciding to dispatch 21,500 more troops to Baghdad, Bush and his neocon aids completely disregarded the Baker-Hamilton report which advocated the gradual withdrawal of all US troops by spring 2008, opening dialogues with Iran and Syria and boosting the peace process. Al-Shaigi wrote in Al-Ittihad that Bush aimed to achieve a short-term victory as increasing the troops could decrease US casualties in Iraq. Meanwhile, he added, Rice came to the region to persuade the moderate states to accept Bush's new strategy in Iraq as the best for the region. "In his speech, Bush warned the Arab states that US failure in Iraq could have major repercussions on the region. Should we thus accept Bush's new strategy at a time when most Americans and Congress reject it and the Secretary of Defence Robert Gates cannot guarantee its success?" Al-Shaigi asked. In the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat Bilal Al-Hassan described Bush's plan as experimental tand lacking in any new strategic vision. It is not a new or substitute plan but a reconfirmation or repetition of the old US plan that has proved its failure in Iraq during the last three years, he wrote. All Bush is pledging to do is to provide his old plan with some factors that could guarantee its success, like increasing the number of US troops in Iraq, launching wide-scale US attacks on certain regions and setting a 10-month term for the new plan before handing security to the Iraqi government. In the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Abdullah Iskandar ruled out that the Bush plan will in any way boost the peace process. This means that the Palestinians will not get any bonus for supporting the new plan. Rice declared before her visit to the region that the administration does not have any plans for pushing the peace process forward. Iskandar wrote that the problem with the US administration is that it failed to realise that the crisis in Iraq is linked to the Palestinian question. Any attempt to separate the two not only fails to find the basis for resolving both issues, but weakens the moderate parties in the region as well. He added that the stalemate in the peace process was the main reason for the inter-Palestinian conflict since it left the Palestinian Authority in a very difficult situation. Iskandar questioned how Rice could persuade the moderate states in the region to support Bush's plan for Iraq, without the US's offering any plans for resolving the Palestinian problem.
