Once the euphoria over the results of US congressional elections subsides, the picture will still look bleak throughout the Middle East, writes Hassan Nafaa* I've never been a Bush supporter. Far from it. Since he came to power in 2000, in one of the strangest presidential elections in American history, I've thought him unqualified and unfit to lead the word's most powerful and influential state. I was amazed that the American democratic system could have produced such a president and had hoped that in 2004 the American people would have realised their mistake and refuse to hand him a second term of office. After all, it was already clear that Bush was not only a danger to international peace and security, but also to the vital interests of the US. As we know, the results of the 2004 elections indicated that this lesson had not sunk in among the majority of the American people. Or if it had, it had been overshadowed the alarm spread by an aggressive Republican campaign that kept drilling the message that Bush was the only candidate capable of fighting and defeating terrorism, while the Democrats were unable to field a rival persuasiveness enough to convince voters that there was an alternative. Two years later the majority has woken to the fact that it is impossible to achieve military victory in Iraq and that Bush's policies, if allowed to continue, will be catastrophic for a country intent upon remaining at the helm of the international order. The mid-term Congressional elections results contained three messages. It was a vote against Bush personally, a fact borne out by opinion polls held on the eve of elections, indicating that less than 31 per cent of the American public still supports the president. Secondly, the vast majority of the American people now know that Washington's policies in Iraq have backfired drastically and want their troops home as soon as possible. Finally, a growing number of Americans realise the dangers inherent in the neo-conservatives' ideological/ evangelical approach to foreign policy and are eager for a return to a more conventional pragmatism. In short the American people, who had almost recovered from the Vietnam complex, are more inclined than ever to punish Bush and his fellow neo-conservatives for landing the US in another quagmire. This is not the same as to conclude that the vote was inspired by moral concerns over the injustice and illegality of the war against Iraq or the crimes and excesses perpetrated against the Iraqi people that by US forces during and after the war. If anything, voters were influenced by more practical matters: the war has failed to accomplish either the White House's declared or hidden objectives and the situation in Iraq has deteriorated to a degree that it is no longer possible to achieve a military or political victory. The American people hate loses and they will drop Bush like a hot potato if they feel his continued presence in power does more harm than good or, worse, will bring even greater disaster. America's material losses in Iraq are far greater than many had magined. According to one study, the war in Iraq could cost the US more than $2 trillion. The figure seemed so far- fetched at the time that few believed it. However, a more recent study, conducted by Columbia University professor and Nobel Prize laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, confirmed the estimate. Already, they said, the US has lost $2.267 trillion. Their study, a summary of which appeared last week and the full version of which will be published in December, comprised several subsets of estimates, including the total outlay on combat operations; compensations paid to the families of some 3,000 soldiers who died in Iraq and compensations, insurance payments and other reimbursements to the more than 20,000 wounded (according to official estimates); and the economic losses accruing from the repercussions from the war, such as skyrocketing oil prices. This drain on American blood and money with no exit strategy or end in sight is what drove the American electorate to take the opportunity of the mid-term congressional elections to voice their discontent and vote for Democratic candidates who are pressing for a withdrawal from Iraq. This time the American public were indifferent to Bush's scare tactics. During the campaign Bush had warned that a Democratic victory would "allow the forces of extremism in the Middle East pressure America to change its pro-Israeli policy and drive the price of oil up to $300 or $400 per barrel". Americans didn't buy that and we can now expect the Congress they elected to turn up the heat on the Bush administration in order to compel it to produce a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But will Congressional pressure go so far as to set in motion a wholesale redrawing of America's Middle East strategy, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, or will they focus solely on Iraq? The answer to this question is contingent upon a number of factors. Above all, what are the alternatives available to the White House for extricating itself from Iraq and how far is Bush willing to go to cooperate with Congress in formulating a bi- partisan foreign policy, especially now, following Rumsfeld's resignation? At the same time, while the Democrats are convinced that there can be no military solution to the Iraqi dilemma, leaving only the alternative of withdrawal, they are also aware that there is no easy political solution and that any solution they do come up with will depend, for its success, not only upon the administration the help of America's allies, but also upon those parties the administration regards as its enemies. Either Washington will have to speak with those "enemies", notably the resistance factions in Iraq and those regional powers, such as Iran and Syria, which have influence over them. Or the US can withdraw unilaterally, without prior arrangement with other parties apart from those who are able and willing to help ensure minimal losses during the withdrawal, which would probably be staged so as to permit for various redeployments and substitutions of forces in American bases in accordance with a stipulated time frame. The current US administration, as everyone knows, prefers a withdrawal that would allow it to keep a number of permanent bases in Iraq and would be willing to cooperate with Congress to formulate a solution that includes such a provision. However, the White House must realide by now that, even if the Democrats went along with it, putting it into effect would be another matter altogether. Even a staged unilateral withdrawal of this sort would require negotiations with the Iraqi resistance and "hostile" regional powers, that is if the US intends to avert a fully-fledged sectarian war in Iraq that sucks in all of Iraq's neighbours. Needless to say, the price that Syria and Iran would demand in exchange for cooperating with the US towards the implementation of a face-saving solution would be enormous. Iran would demand no less than permission to press ahead with its nuclear programme for peaceful purposes in exchange for guarantees that it will not develop a nuclear military capacity. Syria would settle for no less than the return of the Golan Heights and Israel's withdrawal to pre-June 1967 borders. It is highly unlikely that Israel or the US administration would agree to pay such a price. Nor would Congress be likely to press in that direction because the Democratic Party is no less opposed to the Iranian nuclear programme and to the Syrian regime than the Republicans; is, perhaps, even more so. Nancy Pelosi, now the House of Representatives Majority Speaker, has made no secret of her fanatical support for Israel. In a recent speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful pro-Israeli lobby in the US which had been charged with spying in the US on behalf of Israel, she was oblivious to the sufferings of the Palestinian people and Arab sensitivities. According to her, "the history of the [Arab-Israeli] conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist". This contention, uttered by a woman who will play a crucial role in the formulation of US foreign policy in the coming months, can have only one meaning: the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict does not necessarily require that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories though it absolutely requires that Arabs recognise Israel even as it sustains its grip on these territories. It is not just on the Middle East that US foreign policy needs a radical overhaul. Under Bush the US withdrew from the Kyoto protocol, in spite of the fact that the US a major cause of global warming. Bush also refused to ratify the treaty, initialed by Clinton during his last days in the White House, for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, thereby obstructing the possibility of international criminal law developing to better enable the pursuit and prosecution of war criminals. Under Bush, too, the US effectively legitimised "pre-emptive war", putting paid to centuries of international efforts to restrict the use of force in international relations. Congressional mid-term elections may have sent a harsh reminder to the neo-conservatives that their time is nearing an end. But if the euphoria that had them believing that they could tailor the world to American hegemony has faded, the sober aftermath in which people get together to design policies that would create a more just and safer world has yet to set in. * The writer is a professor of political science at Cairo University.
